IPL 2021 | Hits and Flops as ABD-Harshal Patel hand RCB a royal start against Mumbai Indians

The first game of the 14th edition of the Indian Premier League could not have scripted a better finish than the contest going right down the wire and ending on the very last ball.

The Royal Challengers Bangalore were up and running in the chase of 160 runs before the Mumbai bowlers pulled things back picking up a cluster of wickets. The match got into a precarious situation and the RCB were on the verge of losing the opening encounter of the season. However, AB de Villiers had other ideas and he produced a gem of an innings to take the Bangalore-based franchise over the finishing line.

Earlier, Royal Challengers bowlers too were rescued from an onslaught by Mumbai’s middle order as Harshal Patel broke their back with a maiden five-wicket haul against the five-times IPL champions Mumbai.

Here, we dissect the best and worst performances that turned the course of the game between the Mumbai Indians and the Royal Challengers Bangalore.

Hits

AB de Villiers

AB de Villiers is inevitable. The former South Africa international came into the clash against the Mumbai Indians with a significant amount of time away from the game, but it was hardly visible in his timing.

He walked out to bat in the 13th over when Virat Kohli was trapped LBW by his nemesis in the IPL— Jasprit Bumrah. At the other end of the pitch, Glenn Maxwell was going great guns and justifying his promotion ahead of the de Villiers himself.

However, the partnership got broken just an over later and the onus fell on de Villiers’ shoulders once again to see the team out of trouble. By the end of the 15th over, RCB needed 54 runs with only Daniel Christian remaining on the other end as a batsman with the ball-striking credential.

ABD could not afford to take time to get his eyes in and he hit the ground running against the leg spinner Rahul Chahar. Two half-decent deliveries from the spinner were dispatched mercilessly over the top through inside out shots and RCB were back in the reckoning. 

The task got steeper for him as Christian, too, fell quickly and all those runs were hard to come by as the Mumbai Indians had the luxury of two overs of Bumrah remaining in the kitty. 

With 34 needed off the last three overs, de Villiers made sure to make the most of the six deliveries Trent Boult had to offer. The very first ball was dispatched with a full-blooded gold swing of the bat over the long-off boundary. He took nine more runs off his next five balls and RCB were now cruising.

By the time Bumrah returned for his final over, ABD was in cruise mode and two unreal shots off him to the boundary almost sealed Mumbai Indians’ fate in the opening encounter. First, he sliced the first ball of the over which was pitched just an inch away from the yorker length over cover while a short ball targeted at the ribs was guided nonchalantly past the keeper for the second four in the penultimate over.

Having taken both Boult and Bumrah to the cleaners, de Villiers adopted a safe approach to close the game. But, the move backfired and he got run out in a bid to complete a very tight second run in the last over. 

The task of leading the RCB’s resurgence was complete, although he could not finish off the task on the first night of what promises to be another riveting season of the IPL.

Harshal Patel

Harshal Patel was traded to the Royal Challengers Bangalore from the Delhi Capitals before the auction earlier this year. The 14th edition of the IPL served as a sort of homecoming for the 30-year-old pacer and he has made a rocking start to celebrate the move.

Patel could muster only five wickets across the last two seasons of the IPL before the Capitals ran out of patience with him. Before that, RCB had the same issues with him and it would seem that Patel has been baggage for his sides in the past.

But, on the opening night of the IPL against the Mumbai Indians, Patel shed off all of the bad names he had earned in a 9-year-long career in the league. 

In a single bowling innings, Harshal Patel registered three records to his name. 

Bagging a fifer from his four overs, he became the first bowler to pick up a five-wicket haul against the Mumbai Indians, the first bowler to bag a fifer in the opening game of a season, and the only uncapped bowler to have taken a five-wicket haul.

However, none of that success came easy as the start was as ominous as it has been in his career. Suryakumar Yadav was eager to take the game to him and his first over which was the eighth over of the innings went for 15 runs. 

Kohli took him off the attack and held him back until the end of the 15th over. He was confident enough to rely on his slower balls to fox both the prolific six hitters of the Mumbai Indians—Ishan Kishan and Hardik Pandya. Pandya was smarter and he waited on an outside off-stump delivery to hit him for four. 

Patel corrected his line while the mode of the attack remained the same. A slower ball which appeared a juicy full toss to Pandya dipped in sharplyfor the right-hander and he was found out embarrassingly in front of the stumps.

With the ball slightly reversing in the air and he struck again in the next over to see the back of Ishan Kishan. Mohammed Siraj dropped a sitter to give the left-hander a reprieve, but Patel had another trick up his sleeve and a searing yorker that found Kishan wanting.

An abysmal looking bowling figure of 1-0-15-0 was corrected to a much more impressive figure of 3-0-26-2. However, the night was young.

He was assigned the difficult task of bowling the last over against the pair of Kieron Pollard and Krunal Pandya. Another disguised slower ball found Krunal holing out in the deep while Pollard, who is known for his muscling power against slower balls, too was guilty of playing his shot too early.

Two big wickets in two back to back balls brought RCB’s nose in front in the game as the rookie Marco Jansen had the task of negating the hattrick ball. He could not but Patel was unlucky that a phenomenal yorker missed the leg stump. Patel, like he was doing after every disappointment in the night, produced another gem of a yorker to castle Jansen and register a much-deserved fifer.

Harshal Patel would not have been a certainty for the RCB coming into the IPL, but he has made sure to make life difficult for Kohli going forward. It was a homecoming for Patel, and he made the most of the opportunity in the season of ‘work from home.’

Glenn Maxwell

If ever there was an enigma in the game of cricket, and more so in the IPL, Glenn Maxwell has been an epitome of it. Having ruled the 2014 season of the league, he got serious investors looking out for the box office stuffs he promises, but only to be left bereaved season after season.

He has been ridiculed for his non-performances in the IPL and when the RCB bid so passionately for him in the auction earlier this year, the move was laughed off as poetic justice for a team that has not been able to justify the potential, just like the man Maxwell.

The RCB management has had other ideas though and the decision to bring in Maxwell was taken to take off some pressure from the Kohli-de Villiers duo, who have been in the perpetual scheme of things for the team.

When Maxwell walked into bat at the number four position, the tactics of Maxwell in the team was clear. However, the setting could not have been more lethal for him as Rahul Chahar was introduced by Rohit straightway into the attack. Maxwell has had a torrid history against leg spinners and Rohit was aware of his miseries.

However, the night turned out to be different for him. He started in his signature style by pulling out his reverse sweeps (can’t quite call it a sweep though) against Chahar. The leg spinner tried to be smarter and dragged his line outside the off-stump but only to find Maxwell an uppish drive over cover yielded yet another four.

Rohit carried on with spin twins of Chahar and Krunal against Maxwell and the Australian was happily nudging them for singles for some time. However, entertainment was not far away and it arrived in the form of a monstrous hit that went as far as 100 metres and the monkey of not hitting a six for a long time in the IPL was off his back.

In the following over, Chahar was once again reverse-swatted over the point and as the timing improved with every big shot, the ball landed beyond the boundary line.

But, just when he was looking ominous to take the game completely out of Mumbai’s hands, he found the short fine leg fielder to walk back in a tame manner which has now become a trademark for Maxwell. Thankfully for the RCB though, he had already produced an innings of substance before walking back to the dugout.

It’s not often that 17 wickets fall in a T20 game and wrist spinners don’t enjoy success but the opening game of the IPL 2021 turned out to be an absolute nightmare for leg spinners from either side—Yuzvendra Chahal and Rahul Chahar.

Flops

Yuzvendra Chahal

Yuzvendra Chahal, along with Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers, has been one of the mainstays of the RCB in the last many seasons of the IPL.

However, his stars have started dwindling in the recent past with batsmen channelising his lack of skills in terms of spinning the ball. Chahal has been a wily bowler who uses the angle of both the bowling and batting crease while relying on subtle variations.

In the game against the Mumbai Indians, Virat Kohli could not go to his go-to man in the powerplay—Washington Sundar as the opposition had two right-handed openers in Rohit Sharma and Chris Lynn. Therefore, Kohli needed him to come good in the powerplay as both Rohit and Lynn have been known to be susceptible against leg-spin early on in their innings.

To Chahal’s credit, he started well against Lynn and troubled him big time. However, against Rohit, he looked to be worried about leaking big shots. He did not help himself by bowling on the leg stump line and Rohit was smart enough to pick his brains straightaway.

He ended up conceding 41 runs from his four overs and RCB’s premier spinner is looking seriously out of sorts at the start of a very long and demanding tournament. 

Rahul Chahar

Rahul Chahar conceded runs at an economy rate of more than eight runs per over in the last edition of the IPL. However, crucial wickets and a brilliant campaign for all other bowlers hid his inaccuracies with the ball for the entire season until the night of the final when Rohit Sharma decided to drop him for Jayant Yadav although the move was seen as a match-up game.

On the very first night of the fresh seasons, Rohit needed him to come out with flying colours as Mumbai were not defending a lot of runs and the RCB batting line up had quite a few players with known vulnerabilities against leg spinners.

But, to Rohit and MI’s dismay, Chahar appeared to be toothless and Maxwell attacked him from the outset to force him to lose his nerves.

Chahar needs to make amends quickly or else the ruthlessness of the Mumbai leadership group will rethink their tactics on playing him with a rich bunch of resources available on the bench.

The game provided a perfect platform for the new season of the IPL, but both captains will be honest to themselves if they will relook this game as the one where they allowed things to get out of their control from a seamless position. The Mumbai Indians had not won their first game of a season since 2012 and the record was intact in 2021 as well. 

However, they have shown the might and mettle to come back strongly after initial defeats. 

On the other hand, the RCB have had a tendency of faltering as the tournament gets deeper. 

Will any of that prevalence and reputations change in this season? Time will tell.