Hits & Flops as MI down Virat Kohli’s Bangalore courtesy Surya-Bumrah show
Suryakumar Yadav and Jasprit Bumarah combined to humble Virat Kohli led Royal Challengers Bangalore by five wickets in Abu Dhabi to move closer to the Playoffs of the Indian Premier League 2020.
The Kieron Pollard led team was pushed to the back foot in the initial 10 overs of the game after a brilliant partnership between young guns Josh Philippe and Devdutt Padikkal gave RCB a flying start. However, that did not last long as Mumbai bowlers picked up their line and length and mixed it up throughout the innings to strict RCB to a modest total of 166.
Coming into bat, despite losing a couple of wickets in quick succession, ignored for the Down Under tour, Suryakumar Yadav produced an absolute masterclass to take MI home.
On this note let’s look at the Hits and Flops of the game.
Hits
#1 Suryakumar Yadav
Having not been selected in the Indian team for the limited-over series down-under, Yadav pulled up his socks and decided that it would be his weapon of choice - his bat which would do the talking. And boy did he talk! Taking the attack to the opposition, Surya built partnerships with not just one but four batsmen in Ishan Kishan, Saurabh Tiwari, Krunal Pandya, and Hardik Pandya before winning the game alongside his skipper Kieron Pollard.
In his innings of 73* off just 43 balls, Yadav hit 10 fours and three sixes, puncturing the entire attack of the Bengaluru based team. Yadav, since the start of this season, has scored 362 runs and is looking solid to score some more.
#2 Jasprit Bumrah
RCB at one stage were cruising at 71-0 in seven overs. After that Rahul Chahar got the crucial wicket Joshua Philippe, but then it was all Jasprit Bumrah who started building pressure upon the likes of Virat Kohli and to a certain extent even Devdutt Padikkal, stopping the flow of runs and thereby forcing the players to play rash shots.
In this attempt of his, Bumrah got the wickets of Virat Kohli and Devudtt and later on dismissed Shivam Dube as well. At one stage the score was looking to go beyond 180 as de Villiers and Padikkal were going great at 130-2 in 15 overs, even after the fall of Kohli’s wicket. However, that was pulled back to just 165 courtesy of some nasty yorkers and disguised slower ones from the Gujarati maestro.
With these three scalps, Bumrah has now moved to the second spot in the race to the Purple Cap.
#3 Devdutt Padikkal
Padikkal has shown in this entire tournament that he belongs at the international level, especially with the range of shots that he possesses. In this game, too, he was at the full swing hitting the balls left-right, and centre, and built a crucial 71 run partnership with another youngster Joshua Philippe.
He did not stop there and played well alongside skipper Kohli and senior pro de Villiers as well. In total, Padikkal made 74 off 45 balls with the help of 12 fours and one six.
Flops
#1 Virat Kohli
Virat didn’t just fail as a batsman but also as a captain. Chopping and changing the team so often wouldn’t give satisfactory results as has been seen in the cases of successful teams like Chennai and Mumbai. These teams always back one set of players to win them every match instead of just keep on changing players.
While the changes were surely a flop decision, his batting too was disdainful. Kohli could only muster to score nine runs and played 14 deliveries for that, building pressure on young Padikkal.
#2 Dale Steyn
Steyn was ‘called into the team to swing the ball early on’ as per skipper Kohli. However, he couldn’t get any purchase from the deck. Also in the 18th over, when Mumbai required 27 to win from 18 balls, he was hit for 11 runs, getting the run rate down by a huge margin.
In the entire match, Steyn could not pick up even a single wicket and finished with the figures of 0-43 in his quota of four overs.
With this loss, Virat Kohli and co. now have their task cut out as they will be facing Sunrisres Hyderabad and Delhi Capitals both of which would also be fighting for a qualification spot, just like the RCB.
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