It was a night when record after record was created as the Royal Challengers Bangalore took on Kolkata Knight Riders in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday.
The coin fell in KKR’s favour but that was about the only thing that went their way on the night.
Electing to bat first, Kolkata were ripped apart by Bangalore’s Mohammed Siraj.
He had Rahul Tripathi caught behind in the second over. A ball later he had dismissed Nitish Rana. His first over a double wicket maiden.
If Kolkata thought they might find some reprieve at the other end, they were in for a rude shock.
The third over of the match saw Navdeep Saini send back Shubman Gill. KKR tottering at 3/3.
Siraj once again found success in the next over, dismissing Tom Banton and then giving away just one run in that over.
Kolkata was 17/4 at the end of the powerplay and there was simply no recovery for them from there on.
Eoin Morgan was the highest scorer for KKR with 30 off 34 balls as the Knight Riders crawled to 84/8 in 20 overs.
Siraj finished with figures of 4 overs for 8 runs, 3 wickets and 2 maidens.
The record books were rewritten many times over on the night:
- 84 runs is the lowest total by a team batting first without being bowled out
- Siraj became the first bowler in IPL history to bowl two maidens
- RCB became the first team in IPL history to bowl four maidens
- KKR had 72 dot balls in their innings – just 3 dots shy of the IPL record
With such a low total on the board, a win for RCB was almost a given.
They lost Aaron Finch (16 off 21 balls) and Devdutt Padikkal (25 off 17 balls) in the same over but by then Bangalore needed just 39 runs to win.
Virat Kohli (18* off 17 balls) an Gurkeerat Singh (21* off 26 balls) closed out the match in 13.3 overs with 8 wickets in hand.
RCB is now in second place on the points table.
