It can’t get bigger than this. Royal Challengers Bangalore’s AB de Villiers probably played the knock of the IPL. It was simply ecstatic. Earlier, we have seen how their opener Chris Gayle can explode. Sunday’s afternoon match against the Mumbai Indians showed how dangerous de Villiers can be when he gets going. He came into bat right after Gayle was dismissed and mesmerized the Bangalore fans with some exquisite batting.
AB’s knock wasn’t like a typical Gayle innings. It was a well thought out batting display, where he made use of hapless Mumbai attack. This was the same bowling department of Mumbai, which had earned them five straight wins.
Surprisingly, they failed to stop AB in this match. Lasith Malinga and his colleagues had only a moment of celebration in the fourth over of the RCB innings after capturing Gayle’s wicket. Thereafter, AB started his innings with five dot balls before launching his trademark attacking strokes.
It was AB all the way. No one could have stopped him as he used the depth of the cease to perfection. Even the best fast bowler in the world, Mitchell Starc, who is incidentally his teammate, would have struggled against AB.
In total, AB played 59 deliveries to make an unbeaten 133. And to make that score, he struck only four sixes, as most of his runs came from 19 boundaries. Even his captain Virat Kohli punched same number of sixes and remained unconquered, but he could make only 82 off 50 deliveries. The Indian Test captain was fortunate to have be dropped at a very early stage of his innings, but he made most of his second chance.
Eventually, Kohli’s strike-rate was also very good, but it was nothing compared to AB’s. The pair made the highest undefeated partnership of 215 runs in the history of IPL. They overhauled the previous record of stand of Adam Gilchrist and Shaun Marsh of 206, which the par had made during the 2011 season.
Thanks to this record-breaking partnership RCB posted a massive 235 for one in stipulated 20 overs. When Mumbai batsmen came to the crease, they knew that outshining such a score needed some special effort, a rapid start to the chase and some lusty hitting from the middle-order. All that happened in patches, but Mumbai were never in the game to match RCB.
Opener Lendl Simmons and middle-order batsman Kieron Pollard did try their best to take the home team close to the winning total, but somewhere down the line they knew that it was beyond anyone’s reach.
With his defeat, Mumbai now need to win rest of their two league matches to be in the play-off. And with this win, RCB strengthen their chances of making it to the play-offs. So, it will be interesting to see who goes where from here!
