(ESPNCRICINFO) –  Having AB de Villiers in your line-up is like having a cheat code in a videogame. Take him away and Royal Challengers Bangalore were very much second best to Rajasthan Royals yesterday, with all their other batsmen struggling to find the boundary on a slow pitch, in a chase of 178. Take him away, however, is exactly what the Royals couldn’t do.

de Villiers arrived with the Royal Challengers needing 76 from 42, which became 76 from 41 when Virat Kohli departed. Gurkeerat Singh was on strike for 17 of those 41 balls, and scored just 19 off them.

But even with all these layers of difficulty added to his task, de Villiers pulled it off, and made it look easy, with just a bit of help from the Royals’ tactics.

With the equation coming down to 35 off 12, they left their best bowler, Jofra Archer, for the 20th over rather than use him in the 19th as most teams would have done.

de Villiers hit Jaydev Unadkat for 6, 6, 6 off the first three balls of that 19th over, and the game was pretty much in the bag. He finished unbeaten on 55 off 22, having hit six sixes – one more than Royals managed in their entire innings – and Royal Challengers won with two balls to spare.

Uthappa turns back the clock

Robin Uthappa has always been at his best as a top-order batsman. Before today, he had an average of 29.81 and a strike rate of 133.47 from 121 IPL innings in the top three, as against 24.45 and 119.68 in 55 innings lower down. And yet, he had batted down the order in all of his matches this season, until today, when the Royals shuffled their line-up once again.

Having tried four opening combinations already this season, they then turned to Uthappa, in his preferred position, alongside Ben Stokes.

Having struggled for fluency all season, Uthappa found it, making full use of the powerplay field restrictions. He used the crease excellently to pick up four fours in the third over of the match – a drive past mid-off and three sweeps or swipes over backward square leg – when Washington Sundar bowled with long-on and deep midwicket as his two boundary fielders.

In the next over, he hit the medium-fast Isuru Udana for a four and a six over mid-on – another favourite zone – and Royals were up and running.

Chahal intervenes

Stokes wasn’t quite as fluent, and he fell in the last over of the powerplay, off a slower bouncer from Chris Morris. Uthappa was still going strong, though, hitting Navdeep Saini for a pair of fours in the seventh over, and when Sanju Samson greeted Yuzvendra Chahal’s introduction with a massive six over midwicket – which took the score to 68 for 1 in 8.1 overs – Royal Challengers may have wondered how they were going to stem the scoring rate.

The answer was right in front of them. Since the start of the 2018 season, there had been 12 occasions before today in which Chahal had taken a wicket in an over where he’d also been hit for at least one six. No other spinner had come close – Sunil Narine and Shreyas Gopal were a distant joint second, having done so six times each.

Chahal usually achieves this by continuing to challenge batsmen to hit him for six, and he did so again today, taking out both Uthappa and Samson in that same over, trusting in his flight, a wider line, and the long boundaries in Dubai.

Samson’s wicket may have seemed like a poor choice of shot, but there was a bit of deception involved too, with the dip and the slowness of the delivery causing him to drag the ball straighter than intended, and hit the ball to long-off rather than over extra-cover.

Smith, Tewatia help set challenging target

Jos Buttler found the boundary twice in the next three overs, but Chahal, Sundar and Saini combined to give away just 17 runs from overs 12 to 14. Royals needed someone to restore their ebbing momentum, and Steven Smith provided the boost they needed, using his movement around the crease and the deftest of hands to pick up a pair of fours off Udana and a six and another four – either side of Buttler’s dismissal – off Morris. He picked up three more fours in the 18th over, off Chahal, two via the reverse-sweep.

With Udana bowling an expensive 19th – Rahut Tewatia, who seems to enjoy batting against left-arm seam, got stuck into him – and Morris a tight 20th, Royals posted 177 for 6.

The boundaries dry up

Through most of their chase, Royal Challengers simply got stuck. A feature of their innings was the inability to hit fours. They only hit five in all, compared to the Royals’ 17 and part of the reason for this was the unwillingness or inability of their top order to play the sweep, which is such a key weapon on slow pitches.

Where the Royals – for whom Uthappa and Smith played the shot particularly well – picked up 25 runs off 11 balls with conventional, reverse, paddle and slog-sweeps against the spinners, Royal Challengers only picked up three runs, off two balls.

Devdutt Padikkal struggled to 35 off 37 balls, with only two boundaries, while Kohli struggled for fluency but muscled a pair of sixes in scoring 43 off 32.

By the time de Villiers came to the crease, Royal Challengers’ required rate had climbed from 8.9 at the start of their chase to 10.9 at the 13-over mark.