'Raining champs' seal wet and wild win

Even before the umpires had asked the ground staff to take the covers off one last time and set Royal Challengers Bangalore a revised target, Virat Kohli was not just padded up but was sitting in the dugout wearing his helmet. The Royal Challengers captain was desperate for what he later described as "two most important points for RCB in the last three years".

He let Chris Gayle sizzle but once Gayle and AB de Villers perished off successive balls in the third over, it was up to him to see his team home and Kohli wrote the script to perfection. Just when the game had looked like it was starting to get away from RCB, Kohli hit a six off Karn Sharma to end the fourth over in style and pull the target down to two runs a ball.

With 13 required off the last over, Dinesh Karthik took an easy single to long leg off the first ball from Bhuvneshwar Kumar but Kohli declined the second run to get himself on strike. On the next ball, Kohli's full-blooded straight drive smashed into Karthik's pads and as Karthik ran for a single, Kohli yet again turned his back on him to leave the wicketkeeper stranded in no man's land when Bhuvneshwar flicked the bails at the non-striker's end.

Twelve required off four and he had to do it on his own. A perfect yorker, slightly outside off, but Kohli somehow managed to slide it to the point boundary. Eight off three, seeing Kohli premeditating a glide over short fine leg, Bhuvneshwar bowled it wide of off stump and to his bemusement, Kohli adjusted the stroke at the last minute and bisected point and short third man. Then he sealed the deal, albeit with a bit of help from David Warner on the boundary line, with a straight six off the penultimate ball of the match.

While Kohli's graph went upwards as the match progressed, Warner's moved in reverse gear. The Sunrisers captain hardly put a foot wrong in the first half, blazing his way to an astonishing seventh fifty of the season, hitting a trademark switch hit six during his unbeaten 52.

But when it came to defending a target in a shorter second innings, Warner appeared to have been found out in terms of tactics. The first five overs he appeared to have followed the plan of revolving each of his five main bowlers. But when it came to the last over, Warner preferred to go with Bhuvneshwar over Moises Henriques.

No doubt Bhuvneshwar has been the tried and tested death bowler for Sunrisers this season. But with Henriques having picked two wickets for just three runs in his solitary over, perhaps Warner could have thrown the ball to the in-form Australian.

To make matters worse, Warner completed Royal Challengers' victory by stepping onto the boundary cushion after catching Virat Kohli. With four required off two balls, Kohli lofted Bhuvneshwar back over his head. It wasn't a well-timed stroke so the ball earned more of high trajectory arc than distance.

Warner seemed to have settled below the ball comfortably and pouched it but didn't realise how close he was to the rope. As Warner started to celebrate the catch, he took one extra step back that put his foot in contact with the boundary. Agony turned to ecstasy in no time for RCB as the game, not Kohli's innings, was over.

The 28-year-old Australian has been a revelation ever since being promoted in the batting order and he continued his dream run by making short work of the Royal Challengers bowlers soon after the fielding restrictions were lifted. Had it not been for three lives in eight balls, Henriques wouldn't have been able to raise his bat for the second time this season.

Mandeep Singh dropped a straightforward chance at long-off off Harshal Patel on the first ball of the seventh over that turned into a boundary. On the last ball of the over, the bowler couldn't hit the stumps when Henriques had attempted a single that was never there. Two balls into the next over, it was Sarfaraz Khan's turn to show butterfingers as he dropped a regulation catch at point.

Despite the chances, nothing can be taken away from Henriques' clean hitting. His awesome form with the bat trickled into his bowling as well as he brought Sunrisers back into the game by getting rid of Chris Gayle and AB de Villiers off consecutive balls.

So pumped up with the win was Chris Gayle that he had a prolonged set of push-ups on the Uppal wicket after Kohli finished the game off. Those push-ups didn't really push Royal Challengers into the play-offs. What played a vital role in it was Gayle's burst at the top.

In a six-over chase of 81, the first two overs of fielding restrictions were going to be crucial and Gayle tormented Dale Steyn and Bhuvneshwar to get Royal Challengers on top. The nine balls he faced against them - the first three to Steyn and then the entire second over from Bhuvneshwar - went for 4, 6, 1, 4, 4, 0, 6, 4, 6. Even though he picked out Shikhar Dhawan deep on the onside off his tenth ball from Henriques, the first nine balls had done enough damage.

IPL television presenter Gaurav Kapur tweeted sometime before the delayed start of the match that Royal Challengers Bangalore are the "raining champions" of this IPL. Of the five rain-affected games this season, Royal Challengers have been involved in four.

Their three previous rain-affected matches had ended up with a different result on every occasion. While the game against Rajasthan Royals didn't produce a result, Mandeep Singh's cameo helped them chase down a difficult target against Kolkata Knight Riders. Two nights ago, they didn't find any saviour while chasing an equally difficult ask versus Kings XI Punjab.

In neither of the two shortened games did the heavens open back up once the game had started. That wasn't the case on Friday in Hyderabad. A drizzle started soon after toss, then progressed into a downpour before clearing up suddenly. Just as a full game was set to begin 50 minutes after the scheduled start, the drizzle returned.

After playing the first nine overs uninterrupted, showers resumed during the last two overs of Sunrisers' essay and lasted for more than 20 minutes to force Royal Challengers into having a go at a revised target of 81 in six overs.