Royal Challengers defeats Rajasthan Royal by 75 runs
CAPE TOWN, April 19: Shane Warne’s magical spell could not prevent Rajasthan Royal’s from crumbling to a 75-run defeat against a Rahul Dravid-inspired Bangalore Royal Challengers here today. The defending champions looked like sure shot winners when they restricted Bangalore to a total of 133 in the stipulated 20 overs but eventually failed to make an impact in their DLF-IPL 2009 opener.
The toss was won by the Royal Challengers who chose to bat first. However, they couldn’t have had a worse start when local star Dimitri Mascarenhas sent the Kiwi duo of opener Jessie Ryder and one-drop batsman Ross Talyor back without a run on the board. Things looked like settling down with England’s Kevin Pietersen joining Robin Uthappa but Mascarenhas struck again having Uthappa caught behind for three. Old war-horse Rahul Dravid walked in with the score-board reading three for 17.
Dravid and Pietersen strung together 35 runs before the latter fell to Tim Henderson for 32. Thereafter Dravid took center-stage and despite virtually no support from the other end stroked his way to 66 runs off 48 deliveries. Other than Mascarenhas’ spell of three for 20 in four overs, there was Munaf Patel who chipped in with two wickets and of course Shane Warne, who spun a web around the inexperienced Virat Kohli and B Akhil to pocket two of his own.
Rajasthan's reply began shakily when they lost opener Asnodkar with just two on the board. Things started to look grim when Graeme Smith returned to the pavilion. Praveen Kumar was the bowler who did the damage on both occasions. Neeraj Patel was next to follow snared by Jessie Ryder and the score-board read three for 14.
Tyron Herderson and Yusuf Pathan put up some sort of a challenge but both were dismissed for identical scores of 11. While Ryder bagged Henderson’s wicket, legendary Indian spinner Anil Kumble bagged Pathan’s. Thereafter Kumble went on a rampage bagging four more wickets for unbelievable match figures of five for five in 3.1 overs. Rajasthan fumbled to a total of 58 all out.
Rahul Dravid was declared the man of the match.
