Royal Challengers Bengaluru 206 for 7 (Kohli 51, Patidar 50, Unadkat 3-30, Natarajan 2-39) beat Sunrisers Hyderabad 171 for 8 (Shahbaz 40, Green 2-12, Karn 2-29, Swapnil 2-40) by 35 runs

Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) rode on the success of their spinners - considered the team's least-fancied department - to force big-hitting Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) into submission in Hyderabad. Their 35-run victory on Thursday, the season's second for RCB, also ended their six-game losing streak and kept them alive for playoff contention.

Favourites to chase 207 down, SRH lost their way right from the opening over when part-time offspinner Will Jacks won the tactical battle against left-hand batter Travis Head. Making his debut for RCB, Swapnil Singh and experienced wristspinner Karn Sharma then caused further damage. By the time the tenth over rolled along, SRH were 85 for 6, and the result was pretty much decided.

RCB also had a strong day with the bat, banking on Rajat Patidar's 19-ball half-century and quick-fire cameos from Cameron Green and Faf du Plessis. Virat Kohli also scored his 53rd IPL fifty, but his 51 in 43 balls came at a strike rate of 118.60, following a big slowdown.

RCB expose SRH's weaker suit

SRH's record-breaking totals in IPL 2024 have all come batting first. So RCB robbed them of that opportunity when du Plessis chose to set a target instead. He said he wanted to put SRH under scoreboard pressure, although 206 could have well been within SRH's territory.

But that changed in the first half of the chase as SRH crumbled to RCB's use of spin. Jacks' offspin, turning away from the two SRH openers, had Head top-edge for 1 in the first over. Abhishek Sharma counterattacked with 31 in 13 balls, but in his bid to keep going hard, he fell to Yash Dayal in the fourth.

Even though the openers fell unusually early for SRH, Aiden Markram and Heinrich Klaasen showed that they were in no mood to slow down. Together they struck 19 off Swapnil's first over, but their aggression caused their downfall as the left-arm spinner removed both in the same over. Markram was lbw off a full toss coming down the track while Klaasen holed out attempting a big shot.

Du Plessis soon brought on legspinner Karn to attack SRH further, and in consecutive overs he removed Nitish Kumar Reddy and Abdul Samad. Pat Cummins hammered 31 off 15 and Shahbaz Ahmed remained unbeaten on 40, but by then SRH were basically looking to protect their net run rate.

Patidar makes up for Kohli's slowdown

With big overs against Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Cummins with the new ball, the pair of du Plessis and Kohli had given RCB a rollicking start at 43 for no loss after three overs. But the dismissals of du Plessis for a 12-ball 25 and Jacks for 6, along with some tidy overs from T Natarajan and Shahbaz saw Kohli losing his fluency. From racing away to 23 in his first 11 balls, Kohli laboured to score his next 28 runs in 32 deliveries. The squeeze was provided by Shahbaz after the powerplay, and by the left-arm seam-bowling pair of Jaydev Unadkat and Natarajan with both relying on their assortment of slower balls.

But the presence of Patidar did not let RCB's scoring rate drop. He came into the game with a strike rate of 125 against pacers and 197 against spinners in this IPL, and banked on his strength to score the joint second-fastest fifty in RCB's history.

He picked on Mayank Markande from the get-go, first clubbing him for a six in the ninth over, and then ransacking the legspinner for four back-to-back sixes to take 27 off the 11th over. Soon enough, he had overtaken Kohli and reached his fifty well before the opener, but fell to Unadkat in pursuit of another big shot.

Unadkat, playing his 100th IPL game, then dismissed Kohli in the 15th over and Mahipal Lomror in the 17th, but from the other end Green ensured RCB got the strong finish they needed. He was particularly lethal against his Australia captain Cummins, drilling him for four fours across two overs in the last five to finish unbeaten on a 20-ball 37. The success of left-arm spinner Shahbaz (0 for 14 in three overs) may have prompted RCB to bring in spin-bowling allrounder Swapnil as an Impact Player in the 19th over of the first innings, and before his bowling jolts in the chase, he contributed with a six-ball 12 in the 20th over to help RCB past 200.