A sixth consecutive defeat was added to Royal Challengers Bangalore’s (RCB) long litany of woes as Delhi Capitals registered a four-wicket win at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium here on Sunday.
Skipper Shreyas Iyer scored a match-winning 67 (50b, 8x4, 2x6) as the Capitals chased down the 150-run target with seven balls to spare.
The visitors lost three late wickets, including that of Shreyas and Rishab Pant, with only a handful of runs left to accumulate. But they didn’t have to break much sweat to collect their third win of the season.
Herculean task
RCB, on the other hand, will in all probability need to win each of its eight remaining games — a near-impossible task considering the rut the team is in — to harbour any hopes of qualification.
When Tim Southee dismissed Shikhar Dhawan for nought off the third ball, caught by Navdeep Saini at short third-man, the mood was upbeat. The Kiwi paceman could have had Shreyas in the same over, but a diving Parthiv Patel couldn’t cling on. Southee’s redemption, following his forgettable effort against KKR on Friday, lasted only a brief while as Prithvi Shaw creamed him for four consecutive fours in the third over.
Shaw added only 10 more runs, but the cameo threw open the gates for the rest of his teammates to wade through, which Colin Ingram (21) and Pant (18), alongside Shreyas, gleefully accepted.
Earlier, after being put in to bat, RCB encountered a tricky wicket. It wasn’t the same strip which was used against KKR that saw over 400 runs being scored. There was considerable green cover, but this proved a decoy, with its double-paced nature rendering it sluggish.
Kohli stays put
Kohli, mindful of the fact, played the anchor by tying one end up. He started with a edged four wide of first slip, but wouldn’t breach the ropes until the 17th over when he hit leggie Sandeep Lamichhane for consecutive sixes. It was left to A.B. de Villiers, and then Marcus Stoinis, to do the scoring but both batsmen failed.
de Villiers did hit two delectable shots, pulling Chris Morris in front of square for six and slashing Ishant Sharma through cover for four.
But he was tricked by a slower ball from Kagiso Rabada (4-0-21-4), with a running Ingram completing the catch at mid-on.
Moeen Ali (32, 18b, 1x4, 3x6) fared better, and when he carted Ishant for a six and a four in the 14th over, the stage seemed set for a death overs assault.
But once Lamichhane had Moeen stumped, and Rabada claimed three RCB batsmen in the 18th over, including the prized scalp of Kohli, caught by Shreyas at long-on, the planned heist never took off.
Both then and later, Kohli’s counterpart had the last laugh.