IPL 2020: Sunrisers Hyderabad beat Royal Challengers Bangalore by 6 wickets

Royal Challengers Bangalore and Virat Kohli's wait for an Indian Premier League title continues as the former finalists were knocked out of the tournament following their 6-wicket loss to Sunrisers Hyderabad in the Eliminator at the Zayed Stadium in Abu Dhabi on Friday.

Two of their most experienced campaigners, Kane Williamson and Jason Holder, shone as they held their nerves in a tense 131-run chase.

Earlier in the day, Sunrisers Hyderabad came up with a disciplined effort with the ball as they restricted a power-packed Royal Challengers Bangalore batting unit to 131 for 7 in 20 overs. Familiar problems returned to haunt RCB as they were once again over-reliant on their South African superman AB de Villiers.

Virat Kohli, in a bid to solve the problems at the top, promoted himself to open the batting. The RCB captain looked busy and confident but he got out in an unfortunate manner by getting a faint nick to a ball that was going down the leg. Jason Holder's bounce played a part but, on another day, Kohli wouldn't have got that edge.

Aaron Finch



walked in at No. 3 but Holder struck again to remove in-form opener Devdutt Padikkal for 1. Finch and AB de Villiers stitched a 41-run stand but Rashid Khan and Shahbaz Nadeem kept the two top-quality batsmen quiet in the middle overs. The pressure was building up and Finch fell for it as he departed for 32 in the 11th over.

All-rounder Moeen Ali got out in the worst possible manner as he was run out for 0 of a free hit. Following Ali's dismissal, Shivam Dube joined de Villiers. Dube was doing a good job despite not getting runs as he kept giving the strike to de Villiers.

However, Holder came back to get Dube out.

AB de Villiers got to his fifth fifty of the season and was looking set to cut loose in the last three overs. However, Mr. 360 got an unplayable yorker from T Natajaran that saw the middle-stump doing a cartwheel in the 18th over.

Barring AB de Villiers, Aaron Finch and tail-ender Mohammed Siraj, none of the other batsmen got to double-digit scores for RCB. That summed up their struggle with the bat in the latter stages of the tournament.