IPL-2024: Rajasthan Royals continues to top the points table with four wins in a row
In IPL, Rajasthan Royals continues to top the points table with four wins in a row. Butler scored a century to seal a comfortable win over RCB for their fourth win in a row. Virat Kholi (119*) scored a century in this match but failed to achieve a huge score as he did not perform as well as expected in the last slog overs.
Virat Kohli’s eighth IPL century went in vain as Rajasthan Royals secured a comfortable six-wicket win to go four-from-four at the start of IPL 2024. It was the third time that Kohli’s IPL century came in a losing cause as Jos Buttler’s unbeaten sixth IPL ton – achieved off the last ball of the chase – and Sanju Samson breezy half-century helped Royals over the line with five balls to spare at the Sawai Mansingh Stadium in Jaipur on Saturday.
There have been better and more fluent centuries Kohli has scored in the IPL. His innings was littered with shots that he couldn’t time as well as he would’ve liked partly down to the slightly tacky nature of the pitch in the first half of the match. There was ample intent to attack, but not every shot proved as effective as he would’ve liked. It took him 67 balls to reach the three-figure mark, the joint-slowest by anyone in IPL history.He got going smoothly early on though, dictating terms in the powerplay.
The acceleration began in the second over when he hit Nandre Burger over the mid on region for a boundary and then flicked another four through square leg. The region between deep square leg and deep mid wicket proved to be his most productive area from where he picked up nearly three-fourth of his runs. He even pulled Burger for a six in the pacer’s next over and provided RCB a strong start.
However, while he got off to a strong start and maintained their scoring rate, Kohli mentioned after his innings that it was decided that the pitch wasn’t as flat as it seemed from the outside and that they were forced to recalibrate the attempted total from 190 to 180 with one of the set openers batting till the end. Royals were also clever with their tactics. The pacers took the pace off consistently and bowled the short of good length, while the spinners also varied their pace and forced the batters to hit towards the longer boundary.
Every now and then, Kohli did manage to hit a few boundaries. He was particularly good against Avesh Khan in the death overs, slicing his yorker square of the wicket, flicking him through mid wicket, hitting straight down the ground and even through the cover region – all for boundaries. However, he didn’t get similar success against Burger in the end overs and the refusal to pick the extra runs while nearing his century ensured that RCB were restricted to 183 for 3 eventhough Kohli registered his joint-highest T20 score.
Brief Scores:Royal Challengers Bengaluru 183/3 in 20 overs (Virat Kohli 119*, Faf du Plessis 44; Yuzvendra Chahal 2-32, Nandre Burger 1-33) lost to Rajasthan Royals 189/6 in 19.1 overs (Jos Buttler 100*, Sanju Samson 69; Reece Topley 2-27, Mohammed Siraj 1-35) by 6 wickets
