Bangalore: Chasing a target of 191 in alloted 20 overs, Rajasthan Royals won the IPL battle against Royal Challengers Bangalore in a thrilling encounter by 5 wickets and 7 balls to spare.
Impressive batting performance by the duo - Steve Smith and James Faulkner - led the Royals to victory. Earlier, Royal Challengers Bangalore won the toss and elected to bat against Rajasthan Royals in the 35th Match of IPL 7 here.
Brief Scorecard
Royal Challengers Bangalore: 190 for 5 in 20 overs.
(Yuvraj Singh 83, AB de Villiers 58; K Richardson 2/43).
Rajasthan Royals: 191 for 5 in 18.5 overs.
(Karun Nair 56, Steven Smith 48 not out; Y Singh 4/35)
Yuvraj, who received criticism for his slow batting and failures in this IPL, punished the bowlers with seven fours and seven sixes in 38-ball knock. De Villiers, who is the most consistent batsman of RCB, continued with his splendid form in T20, punished the bowlers with five sixes and a four.
Yuvraj and de Villiers were competing in hitting fours and sixes towards the end of the innings after RCB had a disastrous start, losing three wickets for 40 runs in 8.1 overs. RCB innings was off to a disastrous start after their captain Virat Kohli, who opened the innings instead of Parthiv Patel, returned to the dugout cheaply in third over.
Kohli tried to smash the ball over extra-cover, got a thick edge that went into the hands of Rajat Bhatia stationed at third man off Kane Richardson. The mighty West Indian Chris Gayle, who is yet to get a big score under his belt in this IPL, started his innings sedately but shifted gears by smashing two boundaries in Pravin Tambe's first over for nine runs.
However, in the next over the oldest IPL player had the last laugh by having Gayle reaching for a googly and was caught by Sanju Samson behind the stumps after he had made 19 off 25 balls with three boundaries. Vijay Zol, who played his first match of the season, made 16 runs off 14 balls with three boundaries, before he thick edged right-arm legbreak Rahul Tewatia's wrong one to captain Shane Watson standing in first slip.
After the match KXIP tops the chart with 14 points, with a net run-tate of 1.030, followed by CSK again with 14 points with a run-rate of 0.610. Chick here for IPL 2014 Points Table
