Royal Challengers Bangalore were pushed close to exit door of IPL 7 after a crushing 7-wicket defeat against Sunrisers Hyderabad, who kept their glimmer of playoff hopes alive in their last home game of the season.
Chasing a challenging 161 to win, David Warner returned to Hyderabad’s opening slot with a bang, hitting 59 and adding 100 runs for the first wicket with Shikhar Dhawan, who too returned to form with 50.
The partnership laid the foundation of a successful chase, which saw SRH jump a place to No. 6 on the table with 10 points, leaving behind Mumbai Indians on points (8). RCB remain No. 5 but only just, ahead of SRH on net run rate but level on 10 points.
Earlier, skipper Virat Kohli was back in form at the nick of time as Bangalore scored a respectable total after winning the toss and deciding to bat.
Kohli struck his first half century of the seventh edition with a free-stroking 67 off 41 balls studded with four boundaries and as many sixes. AB de Villiers (29 off 17 balls) and Yuvraj Singh (21) made small contributions.
It was largely due to Kohli’s contribution that RCB scored 112 runs in the back 10 overs having crawled to 48 for 2 in the front 10.
‘Purple Cap’ holder Bhuvneshwar Kumar again was the prime performer for the Sunrisers with 2 for 27 in four overs. Parveez Rasool, playing his first game of the tournament replacing Amit Mishra, also had more than a decent outing with figures of 1 for 26.
The first half certainly belonged to Kohli, who came early after Parthiv Patel was caught plumb in-front by Bhuvneshwar. He took a few balls to settle down but then played some signature shots through the off-side.
Out of his four sixes, two were hit off one over from Karn Sharma. Kohli charged down the track and hit him over straight boundary for a six while the other one was an inside-out over extra cover for the second six.
The other two sixes came off Darren Sammy and Irfan Pathan.
The two significant partnership that Kohli was involved were 57 for the third wicket with Yuvraj and more importantly 61 in only 5.1 overs with De Villiers.
