There was good news for Royal Challengers Bangalore already with the return of Virat Kohli in the team and at the helm of affairs. Virat Kohli walked out for the toss and there was a huge cheer across the stadium, but Mumbai Indians won the toss and elected to field first. There were no surprises at the top of the order as Virat Kohli and Chris Gayle walked out to bat and they got off to a very sedate start. One good thing was that they did not lose wickets. They tried their best to break the shackles but Mumbai Indians kept a lid on the scoring till Chris Gayle finally departed for 22, falling 3 short of 1000 IPL runs.
AB de Villiers joined the two and got things started. Virat Kohli was unflustered as he went about his elements. It never seemed that Virat Kohli was in a problem when he was batting. After 13 overs they were 87 for 1 which is never a great score in T20. Virat Kohli’s scored a classy 62 off 45 balls. His innings was laced with 5 fours and 2 sixes. AB de Villiers tried but did not get going, he scored 19 off 21 balls. Tim Southee and Jasprit Bumrah were expensive, they gave away in excess of 10 runs per over. Pawan Negi and Mandeep Singh fell in quick succession and that set back the hosts further.
Royal Challengers Bangalore: Virat Kohli(c), Chris Gayle, AB de Villiers, Kedar Jadhav(wk), Mandeep Singh, Stuart Binny, Pawan Negi, Tymal Mills, Sreenath Aravind, Samuel Badree, Yuzvendra Chahal
Mumbai Indians: Parthiv Patel(wk), Jos Buttler, Rohit Sharma(c), Nitish Rana, Kieron Pollard, Krunal Pandya, Hardik Pandya, Harbhajan Singh, Tim Southee, Mitchell McClenaghan, Jasprit Bumrah
