While Mumbai Indians climbed to the third spot in the points table, as the five-time champions now have 12 points from 11 games, RCB slipped to the seventh spot with 10 points from 11 matches
Virat Kohli (Pic: AFP)
Suryakumar Yadav's 35-ball 83 batting carnage and Nehal Wadhera's quickfire 52* handed resurgent Mumbai Indians a comprehensive six-wicket win over shaky Royal Challengers Bangalore on Tuesday. RCB were cruising towards a big total at one stage when MI fought back to apply brakes, and the visitors' failure to put on even 200 came back to hurt them.
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Although Hasaranga struck twice inside the fifth over to halt Mumbai's charge, getting Ishan Kishan caught behind after a rapid 21-ball 42 and Rohit Sharma (7), it did not bear the fruit as Kohli and Co. would have liked. Having been rocked early by Jason Behrendorff (4-0-36-3) who struck twice in the powerplay, Du Plessis (65 off 41) and Maxwell (68 off 33) teamed up to expose MI's bowling troubles once again while making the most of the perfect batting conditions. But the duo's batting heroics went in vain as Mumbai's middle-order chased down 200+ total for the third successive time. While the victory lifted Mumbai Indians to the third spot in the points table, as the five-time champions now have 12 points from 11 games, RCB slipped to the seventh spot with 10 points from 11 matches.
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Virat Kohli himself failed to deliver as he was dismissed for only one run. Now, days after the online feud between Virat Kohli and Naveen-ul-Haq, the controversy continues to surface on social media in bits and parts. IPL 2023 saw its biggest controversy when RCB and India legend Kohli and Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) pacer had a go at each other twice during and after their match. Naveen and Kohli had a verbal spat during the match after LSG pacer and Mohammed Siraj exchanged heated words. Later, Naveen refused to shake hands with Kohli which rattled the former RCB captain. Gautam Gambhir, seeing Kohli charging at Naveen, decided to intervene only to lose cool himself.
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Amid the ongoing furore over his strike rate as well as his on-field banters, the former RCB skipper took to Twitter and posted a motivational post captioning it, 'The competition is all in your head. In reality, it's always you vs you'. Kohli, in a recent conversation with Robin Uthappa on JioCinema, said: "Yeah for sure (important anchor role). I completely agree with that, there are many people who because they have not been in that situation themselves, look at the game differently. Suddenly when the powerplay is done, they will be like 'Oh, they have started rotating the strike'. When you haven't lost a wicket in the powerplay, usually the best player comes on to bowl, you are trying to figure out what to do against him in the first two overs so that you can get big ones in the last two overs of that guy and then rest of the innings become much easier."
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