The Royal Challengers Bangalore openers Faf du Plessis (73 runs) and Virat Kohli (82 not out) were quiet for only one over, Jason Behrendorff’s first, when he came in as a pace bowler for the Mumbai Indians.
With a nice flick of Arshad Khan’s in-swinging ball, Kohli started an attack that confused the Mumbai bowlers. The home team’s eight-wicket win on Sunday night at a packed M. Chinnaswamy Stadium was a dream start to the season. Even though the bowling at the end was still a worry, RCB will take heart from how hard their starters hit.
In Behrendorff’s third over, Du Plessis found his flow and hit him for a boundary and two maximums in a row that looked easy. The experienced players were able to do many different things during their 148-run opening partnership. Kohli took a while to get his bearings before he took charge.
“It was a straightforward win, and we wanted to win by a lot because it would help our NRR.” The new ball was hard to hit, but that was where we changed the game’s direction. They could have used the energy from their last two overs of batting, but the way we started made all that useless. “We put pressure on the bowlers,” Kohli said at the presentation ceremony.
Since Du Plessis stopped playing red-ball cricket two years ago, he hasn’t played for his country. But since then, he has played franchise cricket in the Pakistan Super League, Caribbean Premier League, T10 League, Lanka Premier League, Bangladesh Premier League, The Hundred, Big Bash, and SA20 events. On Sunday, the 38-year-old’s play showed that he had previously played in different circumstances and against other bowlers.
Du Plessis, who was named the player of the match, said, “It was nice to start the way we did.” Look at that second inning if you want to know how to chase a goal. If you took the speed off the ball, it wasn’t too easy to play, and there was something in it for the spinners, but if you got into good positions as a batter, you could score runs.
“It was my first time playing here as a home player,” the South African said. “I still have to work hard to get around like I did when I was younger.”
Shane Bond, the bowling coach for the Mumbai Indians, talked about his team’s problems at the press conference after the game. It’s not great that they got 170 runs on such a small field. We had a chance if we went over 190. “Then we weren’t as good as we needed to be with the ball,” he said.
