Sharjah: Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) today defeated Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) by 82 runs in 28th match of the IPL 2020 at Sharjah International Cricket Stadium.
RCB won the toss and chose to bat first. Padikkal (32 runs off 23 balls) and Finch (47 runs off 37 balls) gave a good start to the Royals. Virat Kohli seemed out of touch as he just hit one ball to the boundary. However, the pace was slow until De Villiers arrived. AB de Villiers’ 73 runs off 33 balls single-handedly powered the Challengers to 194 runs. The bowlers initially showed discipline restricting batsmen from hitting boundaries until AB de Villiers arrived. RCB had set a 195-run target for KKR.
Chasing 195-run target, KKR couldn’t manage to put a good partnership and kept losing wickets as Yuzvendra Chahal and Washington Sundar sweeped KKR’S middle order. For KKR, only Shubman Gill (34 runs off 25 balls), Andre Russell (16 runs off 10 balls) and Rahul Tripathi (16 runs off 22 balls) managed to reach double figure score. All RCB bowlers remained successful with Chris Morris and Washington Sundar picking two wickets each. Besides, Saini, Siraj, Chahal, and Udana picked a wicket each. KKR, however, managed to score just 112 runs in their 20 overs, losing the match by a huge margin of 82 runs.
AB de Villiers was named the Player of the Match for his blistering batting performance. With this win, RCB has climbed to the third spot of IPL 2020 Points Table with 10 points in 7 matches.