RCB’s Badree claims hat-trick against Mumbai Indians

A match that looked destined to be remembered for Royal Challengers Bangalore spinner Samuel Badree’s magnificent debut hat-trick was methodically turned on its head as Mumbai Indians chased with objective and belief to register a four-wicket win at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium on Friday. Kohli. the skipper didn’t let anyone feel that he was ever out injured and secured a half-century easily. Coming back to this game, Rohit and Buttler will likely start at around the [4.0] mark while Nitish Rana, who has delivered the profits in the previous two matches, may shorten to [5.5] or possibly longer. The West Indian opener would fall just three runs short of becoming the first man to the 10,000-run mark in T20 cricket. The only concern for MI would be the lack of form of their most valuable player and captain Rohit Sharma. In the end, RCB managed just 32 runs in the last five overs, without a single boundary, as what looked like a prospective fighting total turned out to be completely under-par.

Head to Head Overall: Matches – 19, RCB Won – 8, MI Won – 11 In Bengaluru: Matches – 7, RCB Won – 1, MI Won – 6 Trivia Virat Kohli was the top run-getter in IPL 2016; he scored 973 runs in 16 matches.

Chasing 143 runs to win, MI were reduced to 10-4 as Badree, who was playing his first game for RCB, scalped a hat-trick in the 3 over. Watson too hasn’t had the greatest of starts, unable to make it count while opening the batting twice and has only one wicket from three matches. Facing the hat-trick ball, Mumbai captain Rohit Sharma couldn’t tackle a googly which destroyed the stumps to mark Badree registering the 15th hat-trick in IPL history. He ended his spell with a wicket, sending back the in-form Nitish Rana to leave Mumbai at 33 for five in eight overs.

Asked what went wrong with RCB’s batting, Badree said the team was a bit under par with the bat as 160 to 170-odd runs would have been a better score on a pitch which was slow.

Badree first dismissed Parthiv Patel before the move to send Mitchell McClenaghan up the order failed as the Kiwi fell for a first-ball duck. “In IPL, you can’t take any team for granted, but Mumbai is anyway one of the stronger sides in the tournament and we certainly need to respect that and focus on our strength of what can we achieve as a side but at the same time we want to be wary of the fact what Mumbai can bring on the table”, he said. They have also found reliable performers in the form of the Pandya brothers – Hardik and Krunal, who have made major contributions with ball and bat respectively. It was also Kohli’s first series as India captain in the limited-overs version. The bowler was Pawan Negi and Mumbai needed 52 more from 30 balls. His partner Stuart Binny scored six runs.

Kohli is keen to get back in action but has enjoyed being aware from the spotlight for a period.