RCB win thriller to stay alive

Royal Challengers Bangalore's Yuzvendra Chahal celebrates the wicket of Kings XI Punjab David Miller.

Royal Challengers Bangalore pulled off a one run victory over Kings XI Punjab to stay in the fray in a thrilling Indian Premier League T20 match which went down the wire on Monday.
Kings XI chasing an imposing target of 176 managed to score 174 for four wickets at the end of their allotted 20 overs.
Kings XI skipper Murali Vijay, who opened the innings top scored with 89 runs off 57 balls. Marcus Stonis, who remained unbeaten on 34 off 22 balls, tried in vain but his efforts went in vain.
Earlier, Virat Kohli had one of his rarest failures in recent times as Royal Challengers Bangalore scored an impressive 175 for 6 riding on AB de Villiers' stroke-filled 64 off 35 balls.
Skipper Kohli, who has been fastest to reach 500 runs in an IPL season, was out for 20 but it was De Villiers' late surge that saw RCB's total gain momentum on a track which was getting slower with passage of time.
De Villiers' innings had five boundaries and two sixes off Sandeep Sharma. The sixes included a sweep shot and a pull over mid-wicket off Sandeep while he also played another audacious sweep shot off KXIP's best bowler Mohit Sharma for a boundary.
He also hit Mohit's slower ball over his head for a boundary. Once he reached his half-century off 30 balls, De Villiers started hammering the bowlers with great disdain.
In the 18th over bowled by a hapless medium pace bowler Sandeep, he got a six and four but while trying to dig a full delivery gave a regulation catch to KC Cariappa at cover. De Villiers found an able ally in Kerala left-hander Sachin Baby (33, 29 balls) as the duo added 88 runs in 9.1 overs for the fourth wicket after RCB were reduced to 67 for 3 due to a mini-collapse.
It was KL Rahul (42, 25 balls), who continued his good show with the bat, adding 63 for the opening wicket with Kohli (20) before leg-break bowler KC Cariappa (2 for 16 in 3 overs) got both the batsmen within a space of two deliveries.
Rahul after having hit six delightful boundaries and a six, was bowled round his legs trying to play sweep shot. A ball later, he had the prized scalp of Kohli, who gave a simple catch to his opposite number Murali Vijay at short cover. From 63 for 2, it soon became 67 for three when Shane Watson (1) missed a slow half-tracker from Axar Patel to be clean bowled. But De Villiers played one of the more significant of knocks in this edition of the tournament.