Relieved Bangalore register first away win in IPL6

Batting might gives the Royal Challengers a 17-run win over Pune Warriors.

Yahoo! Cricket 

There was no stopping AB de Villiers as he powered to a 23-ball 50 on Thursday.

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PUNE: It was Bangalore's first away win of the season. And once again it was the hand of Chris Gayle that proved to be the turning point. Having struck three monstrous sixes, all-rounder Angelo Mathews was making a fist of Pune’s chase of Bangalore’s 187 when the hulking West Indian snatched a sharp chance of the batsman at point.

Mathews fall was followed in quick succession by the dismissal of Robin Uthappa for a superb 45-ball 75, and the pursuit was all but over after that, as Bangalore emerged victors by 17 runs. This was a result Bangalore can safely credit to their batters, who posted a mammoth score after Virat Kohli elected to bat.

AB de Villiers starred in the first essay with a breakneck fifty - and Saurabh Tiwary contributed a rather more sedate half-century – followed by which all the visitors had to do was chip away at the wickets in the face of an escalating asking rate. It was always going to be tough for the home side once Aaron Finch (15), Tirumalasetti Suman (11), Yuvraj Singh (16) and Steve Smith (4) went early.

Only briefly, when Mathews and Uthappa added 63 in 5.3 overs  - including 21 in a Muthiah Muralitharan over – did Pune looked up to the task. But Gayle’s catch of Mathews off the bowling of the perennially lucky R. Vinay Kumar began the team’s irrevocable slide into another defeat.

Run riot
Pune were wrong if they thought getting Gayle for a run-a ball 21 meant lasting success against a strong line-up. Tiwary played his part opening the innings with a methodical 45-ball 52 that featured prominently in partnerships with Gayle and Kohli (25).

It was after Tiwary was out in the 16th over, with the score on 119, that the carnage really began. Sixty-eight came in just 29 balls as Moises Henriques and the magnificent de Villiers tore apart whatever Pune had to offer.

Henriques spanked Rohit Sharma for boundaries before murdering Dinda for six over long-off. De Villiers took over in the last over as a sequence of 6, 4, 6, 4, 4, 2 came off the South African’s bat, giving him an express half-century in just 23 deliveries and boosting Bangalore to a massive 187.