Salt, Patidar help RCB back on wining track

The toss is crucial in night matches at Wankhede Stadium with a true flat pitch and dew giving the chasing side a significant advantage. Defending champions Royal Challengers Bengaluru lost that toss. Then went ahead and did what you need to do: score the highest IPL score at the ground, 240, and defended it with considerable ease. Phil Salt and Rajat Patidar set RCB up with knocks of 78 off 36 and 53 off 20, Patidar's fastest fifty. The duo hit a hat-trick of sixes once each with Salt also taking three fours in a row. At Mumbai Indians' home ground, there were RCB chants as a result of their 11 sixes and 10 fours. Between them they compensated for Virat Kohli, who himself didn't seem too pleased with his 50 off 38 even as the other end kept producing big runs. Kohli didn't have to worry much from the sidelines during the second half of the match because the spinners Krunal Pandya and Suyash Sharma skillfully stopped the chase. Suyash did so with the wickets of the rampaging Ryan Rickelton and Tilak Varma in his first over while Krunal bowled four overs for just 26 runs, signing off with just reward in form of Suryakumar Yadav's scalp. The RCB spinners bowled eight overs for 73 runs and three big wickets as against MI's two spinners conceding 83 in six overs. Kohli registered the first boundary of the innings with a six in the first over, but it was Salt who kept on the assault, scoring 47 off 22 in the powerplay. This involved welcoming Mitchell Santner, a reluctant powerplay bowler, with three sixes and a four. MI were forced to bowl Jasprit Bumrah for two overs inside the powerplay; still RCB got to 71. The next key moment for RCB was the introduction of legspin with a right-hand heavy batting line-up, but that didn't matter at all with Mayank Markande extracting little turn in either direction. Salt stayed back to hit three consecutive fours off his flatter lengths, and was waiting to hit a six the moment he gave it a hint of air. Shardul Thakur, bowling for the first time as late as the eleventh over, executed wide yorkers to bind Kohli and capture Salt caught at extra cover when all else failed for MI. When RCB captain Patidar left, MI were hoping to get back into the game with 25 and a wicket off the last 17 balls. Thakur gave up his death bowling and went looking, letting Patidar get off with a chipped four off the first ball over the middle. The return of Markande proved disastrous for MI as Patidar toyed around with him, hitting three back-to-back sixes, including one reverse-sweep. Patidar made sure that the likely direction in which his strike rate could move was not very far from 22 off 4. With his wide yorkers failing to land and slower short balls traveling over the head on a red-soil bouncy surface in his second over, Thakur completely collapsed. The 10-ball over ended with 23 runs, putting RCB at 167 for 1 in 13 overs. RCB had a big chance to beat any reasonable chase, but Kohli couldn't get the boundaries, even though he tried hard. He was unable to stop the clever Santner, who eventually took Patidar's wicket due to his lack of the reverse sweep. Even though Bumrah's two overs at the death were excellent, keeping him at just 35 in four overs, he has now gone five straight IPL matches without a wicket if you count the Qualifier that MI lost last year. Tim David was successful in keeping them at an even two a ball with his 34 off 16 shots. The chase got off to a great start for Rickelton, MI scoring 39 for 0 in three overs and 48 for 0 in four, indicating a close contest. However, Krunal's introduction began to raise the asking rate. Only eight came off his first over with Impact Player Rasikh Dar conceding just 15 in his two overs inside the powerplay. After Rohit Sharma left with what appeared to be a hamstring injury, MI were already looking at 13 runs per over to win at 72 for 0 in seven overs. Rickelton had no time to get a sighter at Suyash, who started off with a wide wrong'un and a top edge on the slog sweep. Later in the over, he went outside leg with a wrong'un to Tilak, getting him caught at short fine leg. Hardik walked in and hit a six first ball, but the asking rate went higher than it was at the start of the over. At the first sight of Hardik, Krunal came on to bowl and fired balls in, bowling bouncers as well. He made the match even more favorable by bowling his brother 32 out of 35 balls. In addition, he combined it with a slower delivery to get Suryakumar caught at long leg; his 150 strike rate only hurt MI. When Suryakumar threw out, MI needed 120 out of 46 balls. Soon, the asking rate was above three per ball, and Sherfane Rutherford's 71 off 31 was ineffective in limiting MI's net run-rate damage.