RR bowled out for 59 by RCB

Royal Challengers Bangalore notched up a comprehensive 112-run win over Rajasthan Royals to strengthen their IPL play-off chances, here on Sunday. Opting to bat, skipper Faf du Plessis (55 off 44) and Glenn Maxwell (54 of 33) scored half-centuries to help RCB post a competitive 171 for five. Their bowlers, led Wayne Parnell (3/10) then put up scintillating display to bowl out Rajasthan for a paltry 59 in 10.3 overs. Michael Bracewell (2/16)and Karn Sharma (2/19) picked two wickets each. Earlier, du Plessis and Maxwell stitched a 69-run partnership for the second wicket to set the platform for the total. But the middle order once again failed to fire as RCB lost four wickets for just 18 runs. Spinner Adam Zampa and medium pacer KM Asif picked two wickets apiece for Rajasthan. Wayne Parnell, Player of the Match: Obviously, credit to our batters. The last over gave us momentum. We could execute well. The message was to take pace off the ball. Bowl it at the sticks. We were able to execute everything. The surface was low, slow and skiddy. Was trying to make them play across the line. When I wasn’t playing, I was preparing. It is a long tournament and you need to be switched on every game. Faf du Plessis: Really good for our NRR. Tough pitch. We batted first and assessed the conditions. We batted in the powerplay and thought 160 will be a good score. We have had a good set up till the 15th over. But we managed to capitalize on the momentum shift at the end. Great job. Bracewell would want to bowl on this every day of the week. We needed a left-arm spinner. May be Shahbaz could have been an option. Wrist spin could have been an attacking option. Hopefully, we can set it up for the last game at the Chinnaswamy. Today was a good one for the team. They needed this confidence to go into the last two games.