Match Details
Akshaya: Earlier, CSK won the toss and opted to bowl. RCB started well with their skipper, Faf du Plessis smashing the bowlers all around the park in the powerplay. He along with Virat Kohli added 62 for the first wicket. Kohli was playing a supporting role to his captain. Faf (38 off 22) was playing glorious shots before he was caught down at deep mid wicket.
Glenn Maxwell (3 off 3) had a night to forget as he was victim of a wrong call by his partner Kohli. Moeen Ali then bamboozled Kohli (30 off 33) with a perfect off spinner's dismissal. Mahipal Lomror and Rajat Patidar took the responsibility of stabilizing this faltering RCB innings from 79-3.
Patidar and Lomror added 44 for the fourth wicket as the former (21 off 15) was undone by a cutter by Dwaine Pretorius as he was caught brilliantly by the rushing Mukesh Choudhary from deep square leg.
Lomror played well but couldn’t go and get his well deserved fifty as he ended up miscuing one to long on in the first ball of the 19th over. Maheesh Theekshana bowled exceedingly well and gave away just two runs and picked three wickets in this over to put brakes on the final surge of the batting side. Theeskhana picked Lomror (42 off 27) and Hasaranga (0 off 1) in consecutive balls and then cleaned up Shahbaz (1 off 2) too.
Dinesh Karthik (26* off 17) clubbed a couple of sixes in the last over to propel the side’s total over 170. Though they lost Harshal Patel (0 off 0) in the last over, RCB posted 173/8 in their allotted 20 overs.
For CSK, Maheesh Theekshana picked three wickets while his colleague Moeen Ali picked two wickets. Dwaine Pretorius was expensive but broke the much important partnership of Lomror and Patidar.
Devon Conway played responsibly at the other end and brought up his second consecutive half-century in the IPL. Moeen Ali joined him and the things were going smoothly before Conway (56 off 37) was found wanted on sweeping Wanindu Hasaranga.
Once Conway perished, they had new batters coming in from his end. Ravindra Jadeja (3 off 5) and MS Dhoni came and went without adding much to the total. Mooen (34 off 27) was undone by a beautiful slower delivery by Harshal Patel as he toe ended one to short extra covers. With his wicket they lost hope but Dhoni was there. Thala (2 off 3) had no other options to go after the bowlers and found the deep mid wicket fielder's bucket hands.
With 31 requiring of the last over, Dwaine Pretorius (13 off 8) smoked the first delivery to a six and departed in trying the same on the second delivery. Maheesh Theekshana (7* off 4) did dent the net run rate of RCB with some strokes in the last over but couldn't stop RCB winning it. CSK were restricted for 160/8.
For RCB, Harshal Patel was the pick of the bowlers with his spell reading 4-0-35-3. Glenn Maxwell was also impressive with his bowling and finished with figures of 4-0-22-2. Wanindu Hasaranga, Josh Hazlewood, and Shahbaz Ahmed scalped a wicket each in the support of the main bowlers.