Staff Reporter.
Australia’s Glenn Maxwell powered an unbeaten 50 as Royal Challengers Bangalore took a huge step towards the Indian Premier League play-offs with a seven-wicket win over Rajasthan Royals.
He shared 69 with Srikar Bharat for the third wicket, before blasting 22 off Chris Morris to take the scores level.
AB de Villiers hit the winning run to wrap up the win with 17 balls to spare.
Earlier, Rajasthan slipped from 77-0 after 8.1 overs to 149-9 from their 20 overs, with Evin Lewis making 58.
The win takes Royal Challengers Bangalore to 14 points – four clear of Kolkata and Mumbai in fourth and fifth, and crucially six clear of Punjab and Rajasthan, with each side having three group games remaining.
Victory was built on a superb comeback with the ball after Lewis and Yashasvi Jaiswal got Rajasthan off to a flier before both fell, and a loss of nine wickets for 72 runs followed in the final 12 overs of the innings.,
England’s Liam Livingstone was among those to fall cheaply, adding just six, which means he has now only scored 36 runs in four innings since the resumption of the tournament.
Sussex’s George Garton made his Bangalore debut, and picked up the crucial wicket of Lewis to finish with figures of 1-30 from three overs. He was ably supported by Harshal Patel, who continued his superb form in taking 3-34 to move to 26 wickets for the season.
Bangalore were always in charge of the chase with Devdutt Padikkal (22) and Virat Kohli (25) putting on 48 for the first wicket before the former was bowled, and Kohli – who will stand down as RCB captain at the end of the season – was run out for the first time in the competition since 2015.
Maxwell, who is in his debut season at Bangalore, started slowly but demonstrated his trademark power to guide RCB home and significantly boost their net run-rate.
Meanwhile Wasim Khan has resigned as chief executive of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) after just over two years in the role.
Khan is the third high-profile exit from the PCB this month following the departures of head coach Misbah-ul-Haq and bowling coach Waqar Younis.
Ex-Pakistan captain Ramiz Raja became chairman of the PCB in September.
England recently withdrew their men’s and women’s teams from their tours of Pakistan in October.