IPL 2021: RCB vs KKR Review: AB de Villiers and Maxwell pulverise Kolkata

Royal Challengers Bangalore turned their good start in the Indian Premier League 2021 to a brilliant one, when they won their third successive match of the season, beating Kolkata Knight Riders at the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai. It was some fantastic display of batting from AB de Villiers and Glenn Maxwell followed by some intelligent bowling which helped RCB get a win over Kolkata in this afternoon match.

Earlier in the day, Virat Kohli won the toss and elected to bat first. Kolkata struck early when Varun Chakravarthy dismissed Kohli and Rajat Patidar in the second over of the match. Maxwell arrived on the crease and put the pressure back on the KKR bowlers with some counter-attacking stuff. For the third wicket, he had a partnership of 86 runs with Devdutt Padikkal, who made 25 runs.

Maxwell batted beautifully scoring 78 runs from 49 balls. He later had another good partnership of 53 runs with AB de Villiers. When Maxwell got out, de Villiers took it upon himself to score quickly. He played a knock of 76 runs from 34 balls to take RCB’s total to 204 for 4. The score was going to be difficult for KKR and with no substantial batting performance, it turned out to be impossible in the end.

KKR fell short by 38 runs as Bangalore bowlers delivered another good performance to restrict their opposition. Kyle Jamieson picked up three wickets while Yuzvendra Chahal and Harshal Patel accounted for two each. For Kolkata, Andre Russell top-scored with a cameo of 31 from 20 balls at the end. With this, KKR lost two of three matches in this season.

Turning points:

AB de Villiers-Maxwell knocks: On a pitch where the batsmen have struggled throughout the Chennai leg of the IPL 2021, the two batsmen batted in a fashion which no one expected them to. AB de Villiers strike rate was 223 while for Maxwell it was close to 160. Their knocks took the match completely away from KKR.

Morgan run-out: The KKR captain’s dismissal really put the team on the back foot. He was batting quite well for his 29 before he got out to Harshal Patel. In this match, his wicket turned the match in Bangalore’s favour completely.

Personal records/Achievements:

For the first time in IPL history, RCB won their first three games of a season.

Shubman Gill completed 1000 IPL runs.

Shubman reaches a 1️⃣0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣ IPL runs before perishing to a stunner of a catch by Dan Christian pic.twitter.com/Z1kDM8aDy5

— 100MB (@100MasterBlastr) April 18, 2021

Way ahead:

RCB will now face Rajasthan Royals on April 22 while KKR will meet Chennai on April 21. Both the games will be played in Mumbai