Punjab lose Marsh early in chase of 175

NEW DELHI: Playing his first match of the season, Zaheer Khan struck to give Royal Challengers Bangalore first breakthrough as he dismissed Kings XI Punjab's Shaun Marsh in IPL match at M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore.

Scorecard | Watch IPL Videos

Earlier, Chris Gayle and Virat Kohli came back strongly after slow start to stitch 137-run stand and helped Royal Challengers Bangalore to post a stiff 175-run target for Kings XI Punjab.

Gayle back with a bang as he slammed three sixes in a row to reach his half-century off 40 balls.

Punjab pacer Parvinder Awana ended Gayle's onslaught in the 19th over. The explosive southpaw' swashbuckling 77 runs knock was studded with six massive sixes and four boundaries.

Gayle and Kohli reached their 100-run stand in just 68 balls to turn the momentum in RCB's way after the hosts toiled hard against Punjab bowlers.

Kohli also continued his red hot form in the tournament as he slammed yet another fifty to put Kings XI on backfoot.

Gayle was not in his elements earlier in the innings as he had tough time negotiating Kings XI bowlers and not scored and a single boundary in the mandatory powerplay.

Kings XI pacer Parvinder Awana struck in his first over to dismiss RCB's Cheteshwar Pujara. Pujara dominated his partner Gayle as he scored 19 runs out of 22 in the opening stand.

Earlier, Kings XI Punjab skipper Adam Gilchrist won the toss and opted to bowl against Royal Challengers Bangalore.

RCB have made four changes bringing in Muttiah Muralitharan, Zaheer Khan, KL Rahul and Arun Karthik in place of Murali Karthik, Saurabh Tiwary, Ravi Rampaul and Abhimanyu Mithun.

For Kings XI, Praveen Kumar has made the way for Manpreet Gony.

After leading the table midway through the tournament with six straight home wins, RCB faltered on the road with just two wins from eight outings.

Slipping to a tricky fourth position with 16 points, Bangalore now find themselves in a do-or-die situation needing to win the remaining two matches to make the cut for the playoffs.

Teams:

Royal Challengers Bangalore: Cheteshwar Pujara, Chris Gayle, Virat Kohli, AB de Villiers, Moises Henriques, Arun Karthik, Lokesh Rahul, Vinay Kumar, Muttiah Muralidaran, Zaheer Khan, Jaydev Unadkat

Kings XI Punjab: Mandeep Singh, Adam Gilchrist, Shaun Marsh, Manan Vohra, David Miller, Azhar Mahmood, Rajagopal Sathish, Manpreet Gony, Piyush Chawla, Parvinder Awana, Sandeep Sharma

Share it Please

Tweet

Shweta Pandey

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation.