Royal Challengers Bangalore suffered a thrashing at the hands of Sunrisers Hyderabad, as they were subjected to perhaps the worst defeat in this edition of the Indian Premier League. It was a complete and total failure in RCB’s batting line-up, for which credit must be accorded to the sensational Marco Jansen.
The South African induced a calamitous collapse in the RCB top-order, breaking the back of their batting, after which it only went downwards for Faf du Plessis’ men, who eventually folded for a hapless total of 68. The small target was a walk in the park for the Orange Army, who knocked it off in eight overs to bring up a significant victory.
Du Plessis lost his third toss in a row, and the Sunrisers elected to bowl first. The unchanged RCB were to suffer three huge blows in the second over. Jansen started off by bowling a crackajack of a delivery to send the captain packing.
Virat Kohli’s horror show continued as he suffered a second straight golden duck, this time edging one to first slip, much to his horror. Anuj Rawat’s dismissal made it three for the young South African, who had managed to dictate the terms of the game with just a single over.
It only got worse for the Royal Challengers, whose wickets fell like a pack of cards, one after the other. Their messiah Dinesh Karthik also was not able to do much, and Bangalore went tantalisingly close to worsening their dubious record for the lowest total in the tournament’s history, coincidentally on the same day five years later. Although they were able to avoid it, they could not do much better, as the Sunrisers shot them out for 68.
With 69 needed for the win, SRH were never going to face any trouble for the win. Opener Abhishek Sharma decided to take the attacking route and ended up scoring a 28-ball 47. His innings won the game for Hyderabad in just eight overs, giving a huge boost to their net run rate. It was only a disappointment for RCB, however, whose good start was disfigured by the massive loss in net run rate.
Brief scores
Sunrisers Hyderabad 72 for 1 (Abhishek 47, Williamson 16*, Harshal 1-18) beat Royal Challengers Bangalore 68 (Prabhudessai 15, Jansen 3-25, Natarajan 3-10) by nine wickets
