press trust of india
New Delhi, April 26: Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) continued their revival in IPL-VIII as they made short work of Delhi Daredevils (DD), defeating them by 10 wickets at the Feroz Shah Kotla Stadium here Sunday. Chasing a meagre 96 for a win, RCB overhauled the target in 10.3 overs with Chris Gayle (62 n o, 40b, 6×4, 4×6) and skipper Virat Kohli (35 n o, 23b, 6×4) staying unbeaten till the end.
Earlier, RCB’s pace trio of Mitchell Starc, David Wiese and Varon Aaron toyed around with DD batsmen to bundle them out for 95 runs. Starc (3/20) was again at his deadly best as he struck in the very first over of the match sending back Shreyas Iyer (0) with a vicious inswinger which trapped him in front of the wicket. Wiese (2/18) then joined the party as he got JP Duminy caught by Dinesh Karthik.
Soon DD was left tottering at 39 for four due to the double strikes of Varun Aaron (2/24) in the seventh over. He first got Yuvraj Singh caught behind with a shortish delivery which the left-hander swang at and then dismissed the Sri lankan skipper Angello Mathews for a naught.
Iqbal Abdulla then broke the fifth wicket partnership between Mayank Agarwal (27) and Kedar Jadav (33) by getting the opener stumped. Thereafter it was all downhill for the Daredevils as none of the batsmen could provide any support to Jadav.
Starc came back for a second spell and cleaned up Amit Mishra and Shahbaz Nadeem. Jadav was the only hope of the home team but he too suffered while pulling Harshal Patel’s short delivery to deep midwicket.