Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore has not been a happy hunting ground for the home this season.
It was raining cats and dogs just before the start of play. Hence, the game was reduced to 14 overs with bowler restrictions and power play limitations imposed.
Shreyas Ayer, the Punjab Kings captain, decided to bowl first and found his strong opponents’ struggling in their own backyard
reduced to 43 for 7 wickets by the 8th over. Sad.
The seamer paradise aided Marco Jansen and Arshdeep Singh upfront whilst the top and middle over batters of RCB falling in clusters with only Rajat Paditar getting to double figures of 23 but the pertinent point to note is that classy batters like Phil Salt, Virat Kholi, Liam Livingston, with ball hitters in RCB batting cordon namely Jitesh Sharma and Krunal Pandya looked non entities on this pitch.
Tim David comes to the rescue Royal Challengers Bangalore like a compassionate friend helps in need thumping 50 runs in 26 deliveries with 3 massive sixes and 5 on a gloomy evening to finally totaling 95 for 9 wickets in their allotted 14 overs.
Arshdeep Singh 2 for 23 in his allotted 3 overs, Marco Jansen 2 for 10 with his seam and Yuzvendra Chahal 1 for 11 were very disciplined, Hapret Brorar too rolled his arm over with 2 for 25 .
96 as a target in 14 overs given the seamer friendly conditions will be a challenge, especially with the likes of Jos Hazelwood, Bhuvanesh Kumar, and Yahes Dyal defending the target with seam.
Jos Hazelwood would have felt he was back home again as the tall right arm seamer extracted bounce and cut shots going under the bat was great to watch.
Punjab Kings lost 5 wickets for 81 runs by the 12th over. The difference is that the visitors’ top orders got into double figures, unlike the home team batters.
Priyanash Priya 16 , Jos Inglis 14 , Priyanash Singh 13 kept the visitors on target , whilst Nehal Wadara kept his composure when the score was on 81 for 5 wickets in 11.3 overs to take his team to victory with an unbeaten 33 in 12.1 overs , basically holding 11 balls in the bank with Marcus Stonis unbeaten on 7.
Hazelwood 3 for 14 looked excellent whilst Bhuvanesh Kumar 2 for 26 were a challenge the winners had to cope up with.
PBKS are now placed 2nd in the points table whilst RCB are on their tail at 3.