Indian Premier League season 18 has started In the very first match, Royal Challengers Bengaluru defeated champions Kolkata Knight Riders by 7 wickets.
Ajinkya Rahane on fire
Royal Challengers Bangalore captain Rajat Patidar won the toss and decided to bowl first. Josh Hazelwood and Yash Dayal bowled tight in the first three overs. Josh Hazelwood sent South African veteran batsman Quinton de Kock to the pavilion after getting him caught by Jitesh Sharma on a individual score of four runs.
Kolkata Knight Riders captain Ajinkya Rahane came out to bat at number three. He adopted an aggressive approach from the start and shared a 103-run partnership in 55 balls with Sunil Narine. Sunil Narine was out after scoring 44 runs. Ajinkya Rahane also completed his half-century. He was dismissed by Kunal Pandya on a personal score of 56 runs. He played 31 balls in his innings with a strike rate of 180.65 . In his innings, he hit 6 fours and 4 maximums.
Krunal Pandya Show for Royal Challengers Bengaluru debut
At one time it seemed that the team would easily reach the score of 200 runs but the brilliant bowling of Kunal Pandya stopped them before that. In his second over, he dismissed Ajinkya Rahane and IPL Season 18 third most expensive player Venkatesh Iyer in the same over.
Rinku Singh(12) and Russel(4) could not do much and they too got out on low scores. Young batsman Angkrish Raghuvanshi managed KKR’s innings to some extent and took the team to a respectable score. He has scored 30 runs in 22 deliveries including 2 fours and one maximum. Josh Hazelwood took two wickets for Royal Challengers Bengaluru and Krunal Pandya took three wickets. Yash Dayal, Rasikh Salam and Suyash Sharma got one wicket each.
Virat- Salt magic at Eden gardens
Chasing a target of 175 runs, Royal Challengers Bangalore openers Phil Salt and Virat Kohli made a quick start and did not give any chance to the strong bowling of Kolkata Knight Riders.
Phil Salt adopted an aggressive approach and he scored 21 runs in a single over of a spinner like Varun Chakaravarthy. Salt fell prey to Varun Chakaravarthy’s ball after scoring 56 runs, but before that he along with Virat Kohli put RCB in a strong position by making a partnership of 95 runs in 51 balls. After that Devdutt Padikkal got out on the individual score of 10 runs on the ball of Sunil Narine.
Royal Challengers Bengaluru captain Rajat Patidar came to bat at number four. Rajat Patidar along with Virat Kohli shared a 44-run partnership to take the team closer to a target. During this partnership Virat Kohli also completed his half century. Virat Kohli hit four fours and three sixes in his innings. After the dismissal of Rajat Patidar, Liam Livingstone(15) hit the winning shot to help RCB win the match by 7 wickets in 16.2 overs.
Krunal Pandya was named Man of the Match for his brilliant bowling.
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