After captain David Warner smashed a 27-ball 57 in an opening stand of 82 in 7.5 overs, Sunrisers Hyderabad only needed to play sensibly to chase down Royal Challengers Bangalore's 166 in IPL 2015. And they did just that on their way to an eight-wicket win at the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru on Monday night.
However, Warner wasn't the only one to have influenced the win. The SRH bowlers, led by Trent Boult, came back strongly in the second half of the first innings and took five wickets in the last two overs to keep RCB quite a few runs short. Buoyed by his bowlers' late comeback, Warner provided his team with a blistering start and the RCB bowlers no answers to his assault that included three fours and a six in the second over bowled by Harshal Patel. The foundations of a successful chase were laid.
Legspinner Yuzvendra Chahal removed Warner and Kane Williamson, promoted to No.3, in quick succession but that was as good as it got for SRH. Shikhar Dhawan (50*) and Lokesh Rahul (44*) forged a 78-run alliance to take their team to their first win this season with 16 balls to spare.
Boult and Bhuvneshwar Kumar might have damaged RCB's hopes of a good total in the last few overs but it was Ravi Bopara at the heart of SRH's revival. Bopara, the bowler is not someone who you would put your money on in a crucial situation. However, his dibbly-dobblies were responsible in reining in RCB from a solid position. At 93 for 2 and with Virat Kohli and de Villiers at the crease in the 12th over, RCB were looking good for a big total when Bopara bowled back-to-back wicket-taking deliveries.
De Villiers had already hit the England allrounder for fours off the first two balls of the over and not giving another was what must have preoccupied him. Once de Villiers was off strike off the fourth ball, Bopara accounted for Kohli and Mandeep Singh to bring SRH in the ascendancy for the first time in the match.
Kohli made 41 off 37 balls but wasn't at his best and got out just when he had started playing his strokes. Boult must have felt robbed when the umpire denied him what looked like a straight lbw against Kohli, who was on 5, in the third over of the match.
Boult's first spell of three overs wasn't what one would expect from a bowler who was the joint-highest wicket-taker at the World Cup. He erred in length several times and once even fell down in his follow-through. Boult's ineffectual spell meant Chris Gayle and Kohli raced away to 43 in 5.2 overs and it needed former India bowler Praveen Kumar, playing his first game, to remove Gayle for 21. Karn Sharma accounted for Dinesh Karthik for 9 not long after that, and then Bopara bowled that double-wicket over to buoy SRH's spirits.
De Villiers scored a 28-ball 46 to keep RCB's quest of a good total alive before things fell apart in the last two overs. Boult made up for his poor first spell with the wickets of de Villiers, Sean Abbott and Harshal in the penultimate over and played a big role in RCB being at least 15 runs short. Bhuvneshwar too shone in the last over and picked up two wickets to end RCB's innings in 19.5 overs. Those two overs went a long way towards securing SRH an easy win.
Brief scores: Royal Challengers Bangalore 166 all out in 19.5 overs (De Villiers 46; Kohli 41, Gayle 21; Boult 3/36, Bhuvneshwar 2/30) lose to Sunrisers Hyderabad 172/2 in 17.2 overs (Warner 57, Dhawan 50*, Rahul 44*; Chahal 2/28) by eight wickets.
