
Not much daredevilry was required of the Royal Challengers Bangalore. And yet they managed to muck up the match against the Delhi Daredevils, who got away needing forty-three runs in the last four overs.
Jacques Kallis opened the innings for the RCB team and the first ball he faced, he looked to leave the ball only to have the ball crash into his stumps, leaving RCB feeling frail. It took the combined batting of Kevin Pietersen, Virat Kohli, Ross Taylor and Mark Boucher to push the Bangalore team’s innings total to 149 in the face of some rather decent Delhi bowling. If RCB missed a trick in the batting department, they let themselves down badly in the latter part of the Delhi Daredevils innings to give them a facile win in the end.
The RCB team played better than expected in that they held a tight leash over the Daredevil batsmen for the better part of the match. Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir failed to get going and it was once again up to ton man AB de Villiers to resurrect the innings and the chase. But it was the Sri Lankan Tillekeratne Dilshan who provided the nucleus for the team’s win.
Dilshan’s sixty-seven defied the momentum which the RCB managed to keep under the hold only to lose it all in the final over bowled by Jacques Kallis. A misjudged catch only added to Robin Uthappa’s woes while Appanna, who till then bowled well to earn merit, missed a simple fielding chance at the boundary to give the Daredevils four runs.
The pressure eased as Delhi coasted to victory in a match that should have been tighter than it was had the seventeen over bowled by Kallis gone according to plan. But the RCB have to learn to win from winning position as they must learn to break their jinx that appears to have caught up with them.
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