Put into bat, Deccan Chargers set 144 runs—a victory target for Royal Challenger Bangalore in the Indian Premier League final at Johannesburg on Sunday but fail to create the history and lost the match.
Earlier, Royal Challengers Bangalore captain Anil Kumble’s four-wicket haul restricted Deccan Chargers to 143 for six.
The Chargers lost their captain Adam Gilchrist in the first over and never really recovered from the setback. Herschelle Gibbs topscored for them with a 48-ball 53, while Andrew Symonds scored a brisk 33 off 21 balls.
Kumble (4/16) was in the thick of things right from the start and was quick to win the individual battle against his opposite number Gilchrist.
Kumble called it correct at toss, inserted the Chargers, opened the attack and his third delivery castled the scoreless Gilchrist to send groans across the Hyderabad dug-out.
Having achieved the target of removing the dangerous Australian early, Kumble then paved way for R Vinay Kumar and the right-arm pacer responded by removing T Suman (10) in his first over.
Symonds too would have been back in the hut soon with just five runs against his name but Rahul Dravid, statistically the safest pair of hands in international cricket, dropped a sitter off Vinay Kumar at slip.
Symonds decided he would made Bangalore pay the price for the lapse. So Vinay Kumar was dispatched across the ropes, Jacques Kallis copped back-to-back boundaries and Roelof van der Merwe was hit out of the park in his first over.
But just when things threatened to go out of control, Bangalore once again found their messiah in their skipper as Kumble returned to remove Symonds in the ninth over to cut short his 21-ball stay in the middle.
Gibbs and Rohit Sharma (24) guided the side past the 100-mark but boundaries had dried up by then.
Kumble went on to claim Rohit and Venugopal Rao (0) in his last over and the Chargers never got the late charge they needed so badly.
Teams:
Royal Challengers Bangalore: Anil Kumble, Mark Boucher, Rahul Dravid, Jacques Kallis, Virat Kohli, Praveen Kumar, Manish Pandey, Ross Taylor, Robin Uthappa, RE van der Merwe, R Vinay Kumar.
Deccan Chargers: Adam Gilchrist, Azhar Bilakhia, Herschelle Gibbs, Harmeet Singh, Ryan Harris, Pragyan Ojha, Rohit Sharma, RP Singh, Tirumalsetti Suman, Andrew Symonds, Y Venugopal Rao.
