Royal Challengers Bangalore won the toss and choose to bat first, they are playing with the same side. Punjab Kings made 3 changes, Harpreet, Sarfaraz, and Henriques comes in. Lucky Royal challengers had a good start, Kohli (25) and Padikkal (38) gave RCB a good opening partnership. Three quick wickets by Henriques and RCB were under pressure despite the openers gave 68 runs. Vintage Maxwell counter attacks and scored 57 runs off just 33 balls and put Royal Challengers in a dominant position. RCB scored 164-7 in a slow Sharjah pitch where 140 runs seem like a big score.
Dropped catches, missed stumping chances, Punjab would be very disappointed with their performance.
Punjab Kings must chase down this target (165) if they can’t, the chances of their qualification will be very low. The kings had a tremendous start of 91 runs before skipper Rahul (39) gets out. The Kings were looking comfortable chasing this target before Chahal gave nightmares to Punjab. Chahal’s 2 wickets in an over and Punjab were on the back foot. Punjab choked again and at this point, they may be out of the tournament as well. Punjab scored just 66 runs and lost 5 wickets in the last 9 overs.
Aiden Markram and Shahrukh Khan tried to get back the game but eventually, they lost this match by 6 runs. With this victory Royal Challengers Bangalore qualifies for the playoffs of IPL 2021.
Glenn Maxwell gets the player of the match award for his outstanding 57 runs.
