Mumbai: They had all come to watch Virat Kohli. They went away admiring Vaibhav Sooryavanshi. The predominantly Royal Challengers Bengaluru-leaning Guwahati crowd shifted loyalties almost organically towards the home side, as soon as the pocket dynamo from Bihar began putting on a show during Rajasthan Royals’ chase of 202.
He showed scant respect to the league’s highest wicket-taking pace bowler to begin with. The speed at which Sooryavanshi slammed a Bhuvneshwar Kumar full length ball with his high back lift straight past the bowler was just a teaser. A battle against Josh Hazlewood, one of the great seam bowlers of our time, should have been a sterner test for the youngster but that’s not how it panned out.
Sooryavanshi offered the returning-from-injury Hazlewood the same welcome to the crease as he did to Jasprit Bumrah the other day. A maximum over deep point. Play the ball, not the bowler… Sooryavanshi had internalized the cricketing maxim.
His fourth over takedown of Hazlewood where he spanked the Australian fast bowler to all corners of the Baraspara Cricket stadium for three fours and a six was a conclusive reminder, if one was even needed, that Sooryavanshi was one among equals, belying his baby face and age.
Sooryavanshi went on to equal his season-fastest half-century when he got there in 15 balls. And by the time he holed out to Kohli’s hands at long on off Krunal Pandya, his 26-ball 78 with 8 fours and 7 sixes had gone a long way to swing the match in RR’s favour. They were 129/2 in 8.1 overs when the left-hander left. They lost a few wickets in a cluster but Dhruv Jurel (81 off 43 balls) saw them home to a six-wicket win.
Rain showers delayed the start of the match by an hour. Buoyed by a freshened pitch, Jofra Archer bent his back and let it rip. His first-ball dismissal of Phil Salt (0) was straight out of a Test match playbook: a lifter that got the batter ducking and sent him packing.
It didn’t seem to matter to the Guwahati crowd, who had come out in big numbers wearing RCB No.18. Kohli did not disappoint them in the early overs. It was trial by fire for him, facing good lengths with the ball deviating off the surface. An inside edge for four, an outside edge for a boundary. In between all that, he played some silken strokes and flowing boundaries. But the crowd favourite would soon have to leave after his 16-ball 32, when he fell to Ravi Bishnoi’s cunning angles and change of pace.
After starting with high pace and hard lengths, RR bowlers soon shifted to mix-ups and fingers rolling over the ball. Between Sandeep Sharma, Brijesh Sharma, spinners Bishnoi and Ravindra Jadeja, they chained down RCB with constant flow of wickets.
At 125/7 after 14 overs, RCB decided for themselves, 160 was not going to be enough. They activated Impact Sub Venkatesh Iyer at No.9. At the same time Rajat Patidar, who had been looking to take the match deep, was asked to switch gears.
With the in-form skipper leading, the Patidar-Iyer partnership produced 41 runs of 19 balls to keep the defending champions in the match. Iyer 29 (15*) finished the innings with a late dash in the last over to take RCB past 200.
