Following a slow start to the 2015 season which saw RCB winning only one of the first 5 games, the team had managed to resurrect the campaign with three wins and a washout in the next five fixtures. However, a defeat to the Chennai Superkings meant the team needed to quickly get back on the winning track. RCB’s opponents in the tenth game of the season were Kings XI Punjab and the venue, the Chinnaswamy stadium.

As everyone inevitably does, George Bailey decided that the team from Punjab would prefer to chase a target. Punjab went to the age-old trick of using pace to ruffle Chris Gayle’s feathers with Mitchell Johnson. Johnson, endured the worst treatment he has ever received in an over in a T20; the over going for 20 runs, Gayle instilling fear in the Punjab bowlers right from the outset, taking their premium bowler and slaughtering him for two sixers in the very first over he bowls. It is not unusual for the Jamaican to bide his time at the beginning and to go berserk once he is set. But, on this day, one got the feeling that Gayle was batting elsewhere for an hour before the game started and just took off from the beginning. He took on Sandeep Sharma in the next over and the over yielded another two sixers and 24 runs. RCB had galloped to 45/0 in 3 overs; Kohli a mere spectator having faced only 3 balls.

Chris Gayle took set the tone for the evening at the very beginning by successfully taking on Mitchell Johnson

On such days when Gayle gets going, there is no hiding for the opposition bowlers. Against a bowling attack which had its confidence sucked out with a sucker punch in only the second over of the game, RCB hardly looked like losing a wicket. The Punjab attack looked toothless; the spin of Maxwell and Axar Patel also enduring the same fate as the fast bowlers. RCB crossed the hundred mark within the first 10 overs and had all ten wickets intact. Virat Kohli was playing his role smartly, giving strike to the in-form Gayle. The first taste of success for Punjab came in the 12th over when Sandeep Sharma’s yorker snuck beneath Kohli’s attempted block and disturbed the stumps. There was no respite for Punjab though, as Kohli’s dismissal brought AB De Villiers to the crease.

Gayle and de Villiers put on a show for the noisy Chinnaswamy crowd. Gayle fittingly brought up his century with a boundary against Mitchell Johnson. The first signs of aggression from AB De Villiers came in the 15th over, the Punjab leg-spinner Karanveer Singh his victim. Three back-to-back sixers meant the over went for 23 runs. Gayle eventually fell for 117 off 57 balls, Axar Patel taking a brave return catch off his own bowling. The De Villiers - Gayle combo had put on 71 runs in 34 balls. Despite the dismissal of Gayle, AB De Villiers carried on with his merry ways and stayed unbeaten on 47 off 24 balls. RCB had finished with a mammoth 226/3.

The hammering received at the hands of RCB batting seemed to have crushed the spirits of the Punjab players, and when they took the field for the run chase, they never looked up for it. S Aravind, ran through the Punjab top order. Even more impressive was his hit-list comprising of Maxwell, Wriddhiman Saha, David Miller and George Bailey. The top 6 had managed to survive only 43 balls. Punjab were put out of their misery in the 14th over of their run-chase. RCB had crushed their opponents by 138 runs.