RCB remain in race with thumping win

Royal Challengers Bangalore 92 for 0 (Kohli 48*, Parthiv 40) beat Kings XI Punjab 88 (Finch 26, Umesh 3-23) by 10 wickets

Indore: Royal Challengers Bangalore thrashed Kings XI Punjab by 10 wickets to take home their fifth win of the season at the Holkar Stadium in Indore on Monday.

But this wasn’t the first time that they finished a chase without losing a wicket.

This was the third time that the Bangalore outfit managed to make a clinical finish in the cash-rich league, the most by any team in the history of the tournament.

This is in fact the first 10-wicket win in this edition of the IPL.

Chasing 89 to win the game, Kohli made his intentions very clear from the word go as he opened the innings with Parthiv Patel.

And the captain took the attack to the KXIP bowlers from the beginning as Kohli looked in a hurry. He took 16 runs from the third over off the innings from Ankit Rajpoot and there was clearly no looking back after KXIP could only manage 88.

And while Parthiv showed that he was looking to hit the boundaries in the powerplay, Kohli was more than happy to take the aerial route at every given opportunity as the score read 66/0 after the powerplay with RCB needing just 23 more runs in the remaining 14 overs with 10 wickets in the hand.

In fact, Kohli and Parthiv were in such a hurry that KXIP managed to somehow squeeze in a strategic timeout at the end of the 7th over with the score reading 79/0 and RCB needing just 10 more runs to romp home.

Kohli finished it off in style, hitting a free hit for a boundary as he remained unbeaten on 48 with Parthiv unbeaten on 40.

Earlier, it was the worst possible display from the KXIP batsmen after Kohli won the toss and asked R Ashwin’s team to take first strike.

Kohli made no bones about the fact that it would be extremely difficult to defend a total on this ground with the lush wicket looking good for a batting feast.

And KXIP started on the exact same note as KL Rahul and Chris Gayle looked to deal in boundaries.

It looked to be smooth sailing as the score read 36 in the 5th over with both Rahul and Gayle in fine flow. But that was the beginning of the end for KXIP as Umesh Yadav bowled one short and Rahul (21) ended up hitting that straight down the throat of Colin de Grandhomme and the fielder wasn’t dropping that one.