On this day in 2011: AB delivers on RCB debut

The Royal Challengers Bangalore line-up wore a brand new look in the 2011 season. The old guard had been dissolved in exchange for youth, with Virat Kohli being the lone player retained from the previous season. The first test for the new-look side was against the newly formed Kochi Tuskers Kerala. This game would also go down in history for a special reason for RCB fans, for it was the debut of AB de Villiers in RCB colours.

Batting first, KTK got off to the best possible start in their IPL journey. Brendon McCullum and VVS Laxman had given them a blistering opening, scoring 80 in the first 9 overs for the first wicket. Laxman tried on a new attire, one in which he had traded his classical ballet for the hip hop of T20 . The opening partnership was broken when Laxman slog-swept Dilshan but managed to only find Cheteshwar Pujara at deep mid-wicket. McCullum fell soon, the wicket coming from an unlikely source of Virat Kohli.

Kochi found the slower bowlers hard to get away. Virat Kohli and Asad Pathan, the 6th and the 7th choice bowlers going for only 33 runs in a combined 4 overs which also included the wicket of the talismanic Brendon McCullum. The frustration of not being able to get the scoring rate up got the better of the KTK captain Mahela Jayawardene as he unsuccessfully charged his opposite number Daniel Vettori, only to find his stumps dislodged by an alert AB de Villiers behind the stumps. The death overs did not yield many for the new franchise, as Kochi only managed 161 on the board in their 20 overs.

AB de Villiers put on an exhibition of his abilities on RCB debut and took the team across the finish line in a tense run-chase

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Chasing 162, RCB needed a good start, but that never came to fruition as the Dilshan was dismissed off only the eight ball of the innings. Kohli and Mayank Agarwal put on a 41-run partnership, scoring at a brisk rate until Virat Kohli missed a flick and the ball caught his pads plumb in front of the stumps. RCB batting however was not to be bogged down. AB de Villiers walked out for his RCB debut, a bond that no one at the time might have predicted would last a decade to this day.

First, the South African superman put on a partnership of 37 with Mayank Agarwal, and then a 52 run partnership for the fourth wicket with Saurabh Tiwary. De Villiers introduced himself to the RCB fans with a scoop over fine-leg against Sreesanth which went all the way, a shot which would become synonymous with De Villiers in the coming years. 

AB bid his time. He realised scoring would be difficult against spinners on a slow track, even more so against the quality of Ravindra Jadeja and Muttiah Muralitharan. With 33 required off the last 3 overs, he targeted the hapless Raiphi Gomez. He launched into the inexperienced Gomez and took 20, reducing the runs required to only 13 off the last two overs. Three boundaries by a debuting Asad Pathan later, RCB were home and dry with 8 balls to spare. AB de Villiers’s unbeaten 54 off 40 balls fetched him the Man of the Match honours on his RCB debut.