Faf du Plessis, with the bat, and Josh Hazlewood, with the ball, played stellar roles for Royal Challengers Bangalore who defeated Lucknow Super Giants by 18 runs at the DY Patil Stadium on Tuesday night to zoom to the second spot on the 10-team table with 10 points in hand.
Du Plessis batted with a lot of composure in making 96, his highest score this season having made 88 in the season opener against Punjab Kings here, in 64 balls. He struck two sixes and 11 fours.
The South African was out only in the penultimate ball of the innings by holing out in the deep off Jason Holder.
RCB scored 181-6 and then stopped the Super Giants’ run chase at 163-8 with Hazlewood picking up 4-25 and Harshal Patel grabbing 2-47, which included the all-important wicket of rival captain and man-in-form KL Rahul (30).
Mike Hesson, head coach of RCB, said Rahul’s dismissal by Harshal to a leg-side collection by wicketkeeper Dinesh Kartik was not a pre-planned one.
“He’s obviously in fine touch. We were happy to get that dismissal. It was a little bit fortunate. But we had created enough scoring rate pressure before that dismissal. I would be pushing the boundaries if I say it was a planned move,” said Hesson in the post-match presser.
Rahul had gone into the match on the back of a superb, match-winning knock of 103 not out off 60 balls against Mumbai Indians on April 16. His was a crucial wicket for RCB as LSG slumped to 64-3 at the end of eight overs and couldn’t recover fully from the blow.
“If the spinners hit the hard lengths there was like a tennis ball bounce. It was hard to hit the spinners down the ground until a little bit of sheen came on the wicket and made things a bit easy,” explained Hesson about the way Du Plessis had constructed his innings.
KL fined for code of conduct breach
Lucknow Super Giants captain KL Rahul has been fined 20% of his match-fee for an unspecified breach of code of conduct during his side’s match against RCB. Rahul admitted to the “Level 1 offence” of the IPL code of conduct and “accepted the sanction,” the IPL said in a release. Rahul’s teammate Marcus Stoinis has also been reprimanded for breaching an the IPL code of conduct.
