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RCB’s David pulverises Chennai with brilliant 70 in 25 balls

rugby05 April 2026 18:17| © MWP
By:Patrick Compton
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RCB © @IPL (X)

Aussie Tim David struck a brutal unbeaten 70 in just 25 balls to lead Royal Challengers Bengaluru to a comfortable 43-run victory over the Chennai Super Kings in their Tata IPL match at a tumultuous M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru on Sunday night.

The super-powerful David, who belted eight sixes and three fours in his innings, was helped by his captain, Rajat Patidar (48* in 19 balls), to strike a barely believable 97 runs off the last five overs to take RCB to the biggest total to date of this year’s IPL, 250-3, in their designated 20 overs.

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That was always going to be a tough proposition for the visitors and the loss of their top three batters, Sanju Samson and Ruturaj Gaikwad to Kiwi Jacob Duffy, and Ayush Mhatre to give Bhuvneshwar Kumar his 200th IPL wicket (the most for a pace bowler in the competition) in the power play, made their task almost hopeless.

The fact that Chennai kept up with the required run-rate for three-quarters of their innings was due to a bright 50 from Sarfaraz Khan as well as breezy cameos from Prashant Veer (43 in 29 balls) and Jamie Overton (37 in 16 balls).

But though they finally ended with a decent 207 in 19.3 overs, victory was almost guaranteed for the home side after David and Patidar’s violent assault.

The win gives RCB their second consecutive win in the competition and Chennai their third loss in a row to leave them rooted to the bottom of the table.

This match was something of a horror show for the bowlers.

Altogether there were 30 sixes and 35 fours struck and very few bowlers were able to keep their personal run-rates below 10 an over.

For RCB, Kumar’s 3-41 in his spell was impressive while Abhinandan Singh (2-30 in 3.4) and Krunal Pandya (2-36 in in three overs) all picked up valuable wickets with Pandya accounting for Sarfaraz with his first ball, smartly stumped by Jitesh Sharma who also took a magnificent diving catch to get rid of Shivam Dube.

Ironically, RCB’s huge total was not immediately obvious. The home team struggled for early runs against some good bowling from Chennai pacemen Khaleel Ahmed and Matt Henry.

The Chinnaswamy pitch usually offers a feast of runs but the pitch was tacky early on and the bowlers hit a hard length, and it took Virat Kohli until the fourth over before the first boundary was struck as he drove Henry for a sumptuous six over long-on.

He followed that with a straight drive for four but perished in the next over, caught by Dube for 28, making up for an earlier drop when Kohli was on 7.

At the end of the power play, RCB had scored a moderate – for them – 51-1 and at the halfway mark the score was a relatively modest 91-1.

But the solid start enabled Phil Salt (46 off 30 balls) and Devdutt Padikkal (50 off 29 balls) to set the innings up for David and Patidar’s explosive finish that effectively took the game away from Chennai.

ROYAL CHALLENGERS BENGALURU: Virat Kohli, Phil Salt, Devdutt Padikkal, Rajat Patidar (capt), Jitesh Sharma (wk), Tim David, Romario Shepherd, Krunal Pandya, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Abhinandan Singh, Jacob Duffy

CHENNAI SUPER KINGS: Sanju Samson (wk), Ruturaj Gaikwad (capt), Ayush Mhatre, Sarfaraz Khan, Shivam Dube, Prashant Veer, Jamie Overton, Matt Henry, Noor Ahmad, Anshul Kamboj, Khaleel Ahmed

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