There was no stopping the Kings XI Punjab juggernaut as they steamrolled Royal Challengers Bangalore by five wickets in a one-sided affair to extend their winning start to IPL 7.
In front of the fifth straight sold-out Dubai International Stadium crowd, the much-heralded batting line-up of Bangalore flopped miserably once again.
A score of 124-8 was never going to challenge the confident Punjab side, which finished as the only team not to lose a single match in the UAE leg of the Indian Premier League.
With five wins in five matches, Punjab are on top of the table with 10 points, while Chennai Super Kings are second with one loss.
Bangalore, with their third successive defeat, have slipped to fifth place.
After another superb performance from his bowlers, a delighted Punjab captain George Bailey said: “We focused a lot on our plans. If you spent all your time looking at the strengths of that RCB batting line-up, you’d be exhausted by the time you got to the game.
“They are a very, very strong side. But we focused on what our bowling group does well and then tried to match up the bowlers we thought might be able to do well against their batters.”
RCB skipper Virat Kohli could not put a finger on what has suddenly gone wrong with what is considered one of the strongest teams in the tournament.
“When you lose momentum in this format, it is difficult to come back. In these two matches, we have tried different things, but they haven’t come off. We were quite a few runs short,” said Kohli.
Punjab won the toss and invited Bangalore to bat, a decision that looked like going horribly wrong when Chris Gayle, finally recovered from his injuries and playing his first match of the season, took Glenn Maxwell to the cleaners and smashed him for 20 runs in the opening over.
It was an eventful innings from Gayle that lasted seven balls. He blasted Maxwell for two sixes, two streaky fours and was nearly out leg before once before he was clean bowled off the seventh ball he faced from Man-of-the-Match Sandeep Sharma.
From 21-1 in 1.2 overs, it quickly became 26-4 before the end of the fourth over. Kohli was a questionable decision as he was given led before to the second ball he faced from Sandeep, after hitting the first for a delightful boundary. Kohli was understandably peeved as the ball seemed to be going down leg.
Sharma (3-15) bowled brilliantly, especially to the left-handers, and he also induced Parthiv Patel to edge it to the keeper.
Moments before that, Yogesh Takawale had ended his misery by edging Mitchell Johnson (2-19), also to Wriddhiman Saha behind the wicket.
Yuvraj Singh, who top-scored with 35 in 32 balls, provided the only semblance of resistance and was the seventh batsman out in the 15th over.Thereafter, Bangalore could add only 27 runs in the last 5.3 overs.
In their last match against Rajasthan Royals, Bangalore were dismissed for 70.
The only reason one could think of why Bailey used Maxwell’s off-spin for three overs, which cost a whopping 39 runs, was perhaps to ensure Bangalore put up enough runs to give his star batsman one last crack at entertaining the crowd with the bat here in the UAE.
However, Maxwell (six in six balls) failed with the bat too, brilliantly caught by Mitchell Starc, running in from fine-leg boundary and scooping the catch inches off the ground diving forward.
It is often said in cricket that catches win matches, and the highlights of the match were two stunning catches by Starc. But if you do not have a score good enough to defend, no number of good catches will help.
Apart from Maxwell, Starc also took another blinder to dismiss Saha. A pull off Varun Aaron was sailing for a six, when he pluck it running from fine-leg, and had to balance himself running several more yards alongside the rope.
The Punjab innings was nicely anchored by Virendra Sehwag (32 in 26 balls) before he became the second of leg-spinner Yuzvendra Chahal’s two victims in his fourth over.
Four balls earlier, he removed the dangerous looking David Miller (26 in 20 balls). Sehwag was the fifth man to fall with the score at 88, and that would have given some hopes for Bangalore.
But Bailey (16 in 16 balls) and Rishi Dhawan (23 in 22 balls) added 39 runs without any further hiccups.
