The Monday night turned out to be one of the worsts outings for Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) as they were bundled out for just 92 by Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) in their Indian Premier League (IPL) 2021 clash in Abu Dhabi.
RCB skipper Virat Kohli could only manage to score just 5 runs, while the South African superstar AB de Villiers was dismissed for a golden duck.
De Villiers, who is considered as a crisis man for the Challengers, came out to bat at No. 5 and was expected to get RCB out of hot waters, but a brutal delivery by KKR all-rounder Andre Russell sent him back to the dugout without troubling the scorers.
It all happened in the ninth over when Russell bowled a toe-crushing yorker targeted at leg-stump. De Villiers couldn’t land his bat at the right time as the white-leather hit his left pad and went on to hit the stumps.
Here is the video:
https://twitter.com/CowCorner9/status/1439969387134394371
Apart from De Villiers, Russell sent back Srikar Bharat (16) and Mohammed Siraj (8) to complete his three-wicket haul while conceding only nine runs in three overs. Mystery spinner Varun Chakravarthy also dominated the proceedings and picked up three scalps for just 13 runs in his quota of 4 overs.
Chasing a paltry target of 93, KKR ended the match in 10 overs with nine wickets in hand. Shubman Gill and Venkatesh Iyer formed a brilliant 82 runs partnership for the opening wicket and took the game away from RCB. Gill made 48 runs while Iyer remained unbeaten on 41.
RCB captain Kohli termed the embarrassing loss as a wake-up call for the team. He said the major setback came right at the start of the second leg, so now they know what are the exact areas they need to work on.
“We honestly didn’t expect that much dew to kick in so early, we couldn’t have predicted that. It looked like a good wicket to bat on first up. We were 42-odd for one and then lost about five wickets within 20 runs from there, which is a very difficult situation to come back from. Bit of a collapse there for us, a bit of a wake-up call, and might as well have this at the start of the second leg so that we know exactly what we need to work on,” said Kohli during the post-match presentation.
