Gujarat Lions and Royal Challengers Bangalore locked horns in the first encounter of the day. With Gujarat Lions suffering their first loss and losing their tag of being the unbeaten team, were eager to get back to their winning ways when they hosted RCB. RCB won their first toss of this IPL and made a surprising decision when they chose to bat first against the usual trend of this season, which is to bowl first.

Shane Watson took the crease alongside Virat Kohli in the absence of Chris Gayle. Watson was dismissed in the second over by Dhawal Kulkarni off a slower ball. Kohli was joined by his favourite partner in RCB and it felt as if it would be another Kohli – De Villiers show but much to the disappointment of plenty, De Villiers was dismissed against the run off play by Pravin Tambe on 20(16).

Kohli and Rahul put a partnership of 121 off just 74 balls with captain Kohli scoring a century of only 63 balls with 11 fours and 1 six. His maiden IPL century gives him a lead of 73 runs from the second placed David Warner, on the orange cap table! Rahul provided his skipper with ample support as he scored 51(35). With this partnership, they propelled RCB’s score to 180.

Gujarat Lions had reinforced their batting by including the explosive West Indian opener Dwayne Smith who opened the batting alongside Brendon McCullum. Dwayne Smith started explosively but perished after an opening partnership off 47 runs when he chipped a slower delivery to De Villiers at the long-on boundary. Even after the departure of Smith, McCullum did not let the momentum slip, as GL scored 25 runs of the same over. Raina came in and played the patient game while McCullum was accelerating. McCullum lost his wicket when he hit a wrong one straight back to the bowler. Raina was joined by Dinesh Karthik and not by Aaron Finch who is in great form currently. Maybe they wanted more stability in their middle order, which Finch would provide. The right-hand left-hand combination got boundaries at regular intervals and did not take any undue risks. Skipper got out trying to go for an unnecessary shot as they were chasing pretty well. Karthik played a responsible innings as he finished the game for GL along with Jadeja and Bravo. With this win, Lion’s campaign is back on track as they are once again at the top of the table. RCB have some thinking to do because even after a brilliant batting performance in every match they are not able to convert it into victory.