IPL 2020 Rewind: Chahal and the story of ‘Comeback and a half’

The IPL entourage moved to furnace-like conditions of the UAE, and in their first game of the season, Royal Challengers Bangalore brought their A-game against Sunrisers Hyderabad.

In his debut IPL innings, Young Turk Devdutt Padikkal scored a well crafted fifty, ABD did ABD things and the Challengers managed 163/5.

While the score was not huge by the IPL standards, RCB had the attack to make it look like one. David Warner getting run out in the second over only boosted their morale. But fate had more tricks up its sleeve, at least for a while if not the entire duration of the match.

Jonny Bairstow found a partner in Manish Pandey and the duo 71 runs together before Chahal induced a false hit from Pandey. The leggie had tasted the blood.

His next wicket would go on to almost seal the game for the Men in Red.

Putting a lot of flight on the ball, while slowing it down, he lured Bairstow into going for a big one. And in the game of you miss I hit, there are not enough players who can claim to have gotten the better of Chahal. The ball crashed on to the stumps, and the subsequent euphoric celebrations treated us with Virat Kohli fist-pumping around the ground.

Chahal was not done for the night; in no mood to take any chance he removed Vijay Shankar off the next delivery hammering the last nail in the SRH coffin.

SRH fell 10 runs short in the end, and skipper Virat Kohli, famously, described the effort as a comeback and a half.