Gayle did it again for RCB

DELHI: Rampant Gayle guides Royal Challengers Bangalore to victory and enhances chances to qualify for playoffs. Gayle was superb, brutal in his hitting.

He thrashed all the bowlers of Delhi in all parts of the ground. His innings of 128 runs came in only 62 balls with 13 huge sixes. He was very well supported by Kohli who scored 73 runs in 53 balls.

Gayle and Kohli produced the second best partnership of 204 runs in T20 cricket. RCB made a huge total of 215 runs with the loss of only wicket.

Delhi produced a good chase with some good batting from Taylor, Russel and Venugopal Rao. But the target proved too much for them and they fall short by 21 runs.

Zaheer and Parameswaran bowled well and pick three wickets each.

Brief Scores: Royal Challengers Bangalore 215 for 1 (Gayle 128*, Kohli 73*) beat Delhi Daredevils 194 for 9 (Taylor 55, Zaheer 3-38) by 21 runs

Kohli: “Exciting game of cricket, good pitch to bat on. Batting with Chris is a wonderful experience, lot of them could have taken my head off at the non-striker’s end, we need to win the last game to make it to the playoffs.”

Jayawardene: “He is in tremendous form, especially on a small ground like this, it was always going to be difficult to contain them. Still we could chase it down, unfortunately we could not. Morne was the only player rested, Viru was sick, we needed to give Russell a chance. We have played enough T20 cricket to realise this happens and we need to just try and improve from here.”

Gayle, man of the match: “Secret behind those sixes, good balance and it helps to have a pitch where the ball comes up to the bat, it is natural, trying not to move around, couple of innings have me moving around which does not help. Thanks to Virat Kohli for his support at the other end. Maiden over is okay, as long as I am there till the end, it helps to get the runs.”