Bangalore: It could not have got better at Chinnaswamy Stadium as Royal Challengers Bangalore outplayed Delhi Daredevils in the Super Over to clinch their fourth victory at their home ground on Tuesday.
It was an electrifying finish to this thrilling contest as Ravi Rampaul and AB De Villiers came up with some brilliant performances in the crunch situation to give Bangalore the win.
Chasing the target of 153, Royal Challengers Bangalore started off as they added 20 runs in just three overs but lost the wickets of Lokesh Rahul and Chris Gayle in quick succession. However Virat Kohli and AB De Villiers played sensibly and started converting ones in to twos to create pressure on the fielders. Both of them went on to add 103 runs for the third wicket. De Villiers departed while looking for an impossible double which led to his suicidal run-out. Twist in the tail came when RCB lost their next four wickets, including a big-one of Virat Kohli very quickly and were 138 for 7. Virat Kohli and AB De Villiers scored 65 and 39 runs off 50 and 32 balls respectively
With 12 runs needed off the last over, Ravi Rampaul started off well by smashing the first one for six but match went on to super over as Irfan bowled exceedingly well to get the scores tie. Chris Gayle and De Villiers came out to bat in super-over for RCB but failed to do much in first four balls. However De Villiers smashed Umesh Yadav for two huge sixes on the last two deliveries.
Chasing a target of 16 runs to win in teh Super Over, Delhi started badly as they lost the wicket of David Warner on the first ball but Pathan came in to bat and scored 11 runs in next four deliveries. With five runs needed to win off the last ball, Ravi Rampaul came in with a deadly yorker to get Ben Roher out and helped his team to four-run win in this exciting thriller.
Earlier, Delhi Daredevils were off to blistering start with David Warner and Virender Sehwag as both of them added 43 runs for the first wicket. But DD lost both the openers at the same score (43). Sehwag scored 25 off 23 balls while Warner scored 15 off 13 balls. Mahela Jayawardene came in to bat but found it hard as he kept running out of partners. Manprit Juneja and Ben Rohrer departed after scoring 17 and 14 runs.
But Mahela found an able partner in Kedar Jadhav who batted superbly with Jayawardene till the 18th over of the match. In 18th over, they lost the crucial wicket of Jayawardene, but Pathan filled his boots quite nicely as he scored 19 runs off just 8 balls. Kedar remained not out on 29 off just 16 balls as Delhi put on a tough total of 152 runs on the board.
By ISN