The Royal Challengers Bangalore produced a complete performance and defeated Kolkata Knight Riders in IPL 2021. It’s now 3 wins out of 3 for Kohli’s side as they remain the only undefeated side in the tournament.
Batting first, it was the Glenn Maxwell and Ab de Villiers who powered RCB to a total of 205 runs. Maxwell continued his dominant batting form and scored 78 from 49 whereas the great De Villiers scored 76 in mere 34 balls.
Royal Challengers Bangalore wins by 38 runs against Kolkata Knight Riders
In the run chase, it was always going to be a daunting task for Kolkata Knight Riders batting to chase a target of over 200 on a slow Chennai pitch. The RCB bowlers adapted well to the conditions and never allowed KKR to have high overs.
The wickets were shared by the RCB bowlers as they kept striking at regular intervals. Towards the end, Andre Russell gave KKR a little hope but by then it was always going to be RCB’s match.
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Who Said What?
Meanwhile here’s what the winning captain of Royal Challengers Bangalore Virat Kohli and losing captain Eoin Morgan said in the post-match presentation
“Certainly RCB’s day with the bat on a rocket-hot afternoon game. It [The Chennai pitch] certainly has stumped me, and I can’t gauge the wicket. Everyone who batted on this wicket felt it played better but RCB played better. Probably not to be honest [should you have given Varun another over in the powerplay?] Maxwell is a fine player, but to bowl to AB you need to have that [option]. Yeah, yeah, we struggled to kick on and got us into a position where only Andre could do it. Different wicket [in Mumbai], dew, and we have been watching those games”, said Morgan.
“Especially Siraj’s over to Russell [was good] – he has had some history against Russell. He’s a different bowler after the Australia tour and he shut the game out. Harshal has so much clarity in the end and I think Jamieson also bowled well. That’s the reason why we have three out of three. To be fair, on a pitch like Chennai, you probably have a bit more space to make an error on the longer boundary. It has to be on the off side and not on side. Siraj did miss on the full-toss, but he has two men on the boundary. The execution was spot-on. We played in Wankhede, Kolkata and Ahmedabad where the margin of error keeps getting smaller. Well, I said at the halfway mark we have 200 because of two genius innings back-to-back. Maxwell was outstanding and AB to follow. When he gets in with that kind of form and flow, it’s impossible to stop him. We got 40 extra runs on that pitch which slowed down”, said Kohli.
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” I did play well and had a lot of fun. Maxi made it easier and it’s difficult coming into a game on a pitch that has been slower. It was a bit of both. It wasn’t a 200-wicket; maybe 170 was about par today. The most important thing is I’m enjoying myself and my cricket – my family is here”, said the man of the match Ab de Villiers.
