What a match we witnessed at the Chinnaswamy Stadium. It is true that no target is safe here, and the Royal Challengers Bangalore’s bowling curse has come back to haunt them again.
On a pitch that is favourable to batsmen with shorter boundaries, Lucknow Super Giants won the toss and invited Royal Challengers Bangalore to bat first.
In the first innings, Virat Kohli showed his aggressive striking in the powerplay. He scored 61 runs before getting dismissed off Amit Mishra. Faf Du Plessis then took charge, including a 115-metre-long six off Ravi Bishnoi. This is the longest six in IPL 2023. He finished unbeaten 79 off 46 balls. Glenn Maxwell also came back to form. He thrashed the Lucknow bowlers and scored 59 runs off just 29 balls. RCB scored 108 runs off the last 7 overs. They put up a solid score of 212 in front of the LSG.
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But that was just the beginning. In the chase, Mayers, the inform batsman for LSG, was eliminated by Siraj for a duck after a brilliant first over. After that, Wayne Parnell, the RCB debutant, dismissed Deepak Hooda and Krunal Pandya cheaply. Marcus Stoinis’ big-boy strength was needed to pull LSG back into the game as they were struggling at the end of the powerplay.
In order to reach his maiden fifty of the season, the big Australian took on Harshal Patel and Karn Sharma, hitting massive sixes down the ground. The outcome of the game remained uncertain. After Stoinis left, KL Rahul followed him soon. But Nicholas Pooran, who LSG bought for 16 crores at the IPL 2023 Auction, entered and demonstrated to the world why so many clubs are willing to spend a fortune on him. He hammered practically anything off his pads during his innings, smoking seven sixes and four fours to record the fastest fifty of IPL 2023. He took just 15 balls to reach this feat. Pooran was unable to finish the match, but by the time he left, the asking rate had decreased to less than 7 runs per over. The hosts continued to put up a fight, cheaply getting rid of two of their tailenders. But Dinesh Kartik fumbled on the last ball, and that allowed the LSG batsmen to take a bye run and hand LSG their third victory of the season.
Lucknow now sits at the top of the IPL Points Table 2023, while RCB is in the seventh position.
