A belligerent Virat Kohli, in the form of his life, raced past all odds to post yet another scintillating hundred, as the Royal Challengers Bangalore beat Kings Eleven Punjab by 81 runs here on Thursday.
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Kohli’s idol Tendulkar has scored 18,426 runs and 49 hundreds in his 463 One-Day-Internationals and 15,921 runs with 51 centuries in 200 Test matches.
Kings XI Punjab can not make it to the Playoffs as they have four wins from 12 matches and will be playing for pride. The top four batsman such as Murali Vijay, Hashim Amla, Wriddhiman Saha and David Miller walked back to the pavilion without disturbing the scoreboard.
RCB keep their hopes to reach the Playoffs by emerging winners in a must-win match.
Yuzvendra Chahal (4-25) caused most of the chaos with his leg spin as he collected four wickets in the match, two of them caught by De Villiers to take his tally to 16 – the most by any fielder in an IPL season. Only rain came to their rescue in the end as it stopped the game with KXIP on 120/9 in 14 overs.
In the third ball of the 14th over, Kohli flicked Sharma between deep midwicket and long-on to reach his three-figure landmark and then gestured at his left hand, indicating the pain that he endured through the innings. RCB won the match by 82 runs through Duckworth-Lewis-Stern Method. Kohli was ultimately dismissed for a 50-ball 113 and walked off to a standing ovation. In 3 overs, RCB were able to make only 17 runs.
Lokesh Rahul, who opened the batting in Gayle’s absence has also been among the runs while veteran Aussie Shane Watson and Sachin Baby have contributed in the limited opportunities they got.
Spectators compare Virat Kohli, Chris Gayle and AB de Villiers with Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Zinedine Zidane in Bengaluru on Wednesday. Gayle scored 73 of those runs off just 32 balls, including eight sixes. This was the joint second quickest fifty by Kohli in IPL.
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Virat is also the only batsman to smash four centuries in a single IPL season. The game was ended there, with RCB registering a dominating win.
