Bengaluru script a Royal victory over Rajasthan

The Dubai International Stadium took the centre stage for the 'royal clash'. Royal Challengers Bangalore won the toss and elected to field first. Captain Kohli announced the Bengaluru-based club had made one change to their line-up. George Garton made his IPL debut by replacing Kyle Jamieson in the eleven.

Evin Lewis and Yashasvi Jaiswal began the innings with positive intent, scoring handsomely in the batting powerplay for the Rajasthan Royals. Dan Christian gave RCB the first breakthrough by dismissing Jaiswal. The West Indian continued his blistering form, also bringing up his half-century, and RR reached the three-figure mark in less than 11 overs. The pressure was clearly on the RCB bowlers, and they did exactly that.

The debutante got the wicket of Lewis, and that gave RCB bowlers an opportunity to make a comeback. Yuzvendra Chahal and Shahbaz Ahmed didn't give the opposition breathing space. Bowling in tandem - the spinners enforced a middle-order collapse against Rajasthan where both of them bagged two wickets each.

They say, "one brings two." Shahbaz acknowledges that by sending both Sanju Samson and Rahul Tewatia back to the pavilion in the same over. Interestingly, Devdutt Padikkal was the catcher of both the dismissals that the Bengal spinner effected. In the death overs, Mohammed Siraj and Harshal Patel didn't allow the Royals' batsmen to get into the zone, so it looked like this game might be a high-scoring extravaganza, but the RCB bowlers had other ideas and restricted them under 150 runs on board.

Guess what? Purple Patel continued his dream run, scalping three wickets in the final over to extend his purple cap lead to 26, which also helped him surpass Vinay Kumar and Yuzvendra Chahal's most wicket tally for a RCB bowler in an IPL season.

Virat Kohli and Devdutt Padikkal began the run-chase for the Men in Red & Gold. Getting off to a quick start, the openers played exciting cricketing strokes all-over the park. KS Bharat and Glenn Maxwell played excellent knocks in the middle to ensure the seventh win of the season to sit in third spot with 14 points.

The wicketkeeper-batsman missed out on a well-deserved maiden IPL fifty, but his Aussie partner scored his fourth half-century of the season and as many 22 runs came off the 17th over from Chris Morris. Finally, AB de Villiers finished the match with a boundary and RCB won by 7 wickets and 17 balls to spare.

Up next, RCB will face the Punjab Kings in match 48 of IPL 2021 at the Sharjah Cricket Stadium on Sunday, October 3, in their only day game of the UAE leg.