Bengaluru: Despite Phil Salt producing a well-crafted 63, Delhi Capitals muffled the big guns in Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s batting unit to restrict the defending champions to a sub-par 175 for eight in their IPL match Saturday.
After being asked to bat first, Royal Challengers’ start was anything but smooth as the Capitals bowlers stuck to a good line in the first four overs on a slightly slow Chinnaswamy pitch.
Virat Kohli (19), who added 52 runs for the first wicket with Salt whose fifty came off 38 balls, played a couple of delectable shots off pacer Mukesh Kumar, and his partner from England too unfurled a cracking four off Auqib Nabi.
But even then, the run-rate remained a tad above eight in that phase. However, DC skipper Axar Patel’s decision to give a third over to Nabi shifted the momentum in favour of RCB.
Salt feasted on Nabi’s medium pace offerings, carting him for two fours and a six in the fifth over that yielded 18 runs.
It helped RCB finish the Power Play at a rather happy note of 59 for 1, despite losing Kohli to Lungi Ngidi.
Salt too seemed to have shed his indifferent form, bringing up his fifty in 30 balls and looked good for a few more.
Salt and Devdutt Padikkal milked 47 runs for the second wicket before the latter skied a simple catch to David Miller at deep off Axar (2/18).
It gave DC a chance to gain some foothold in the match, and they used it quite brilliantly.
After ousting Devdutt, the visitors managed to get rid of Salt, who hoiked Kuldeep Yadav (2/32) to Tristan Stubbs in the deep, as RCB were 105 for three.
Skipper Rajat Patidar and Tim David looked set for a familiar destruction job, hammering a couple of big blows.
But Patidar chased a wide delivery from Mukesh to get caught behind by KL Rahul, and David could not negotiate Axar’s spin, and his heave ended in the hands of T Natarajan at the edge of the circle.
The much-improved performance by Axar and Kuldeep meant that RCB could not attain the familiar middle-over momentum.
They made 99 for 2 in the first 10 overs for a reasonable platform, but they could muster only 76 runs in a powerless back 10 period as the hosts ended up with their season’s first total under 200.
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