With help of best innings of AB de Villiers (57) and Quinton de Kock (45), Royal Challengers Bangalore opened their winning account at the 11th edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) at the MA Chidambaram Stadium. Bangalore beat Kings XI Punjab by four wickets in the match. Punjab, batting first, had set a target of 156 in front of the host RCB, which the team achieved after losing three balls while remaining six wickets. De Villiers completed his half-century in 40 balls with the help of two fours and four sixes. Batsman Mandeep Singh gave his best in this game and scored 22 runs in 19 balls with the help of a four. Akshar Patel has denied Bangalore a good start. He got the wicket of dangerous Brendon McCullum at Mujib ur Rahim on the second ball of the second over. McCullum could not open his account.
Skipper Virat Kohli scored 21 runs in 16 balls with the help of four fours, but on the total score of 33, he got bowled by Rahman. At the other end, D-Cock was continuously running the scoreboard. De Kock was five runs away from the half-century, then Punjab captain Ravichandran Ashwin bowled them. He faced 34 balls in his innings and put a six against seven squares.
Earlier, the Kings XI Punjab team could not take advantage of a good start and were all out for just 155 in 19.2 overs. Umesh Yadav, a right-arm-fast bowler of the hosts, has been an important contributor who took three wickets in Punjab to stop this score. He sent the pavilion to top three batsmen of the team within four runs and pushed him back to the backfoot. Apart from Umesh for Bangalore, Chris Woakes, Kulwant Khazorolia, Washington Sunder get two wickets each. Yuzvendra Chahal got a single wicket but he looked costly in this game. Captain Ravichandran Ashwin finally scored 33 runs in 21 balls and brought Punjab to 150 runs. He was out on a total score of 153. Punjab lost their last wicket as Mujib ur Rahim Rahman could not even open the account.
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