IPL 2021 MI VS RCB: The Royal Challengers Bangalore Beat Mumbai Indians By Two Wickets, with the help of Ab De Villiers and Harshal Patel

On a very hot and humid evening in Chennai, we saw Harshal Patel pulled five wickets for the Royal Challengers Bangalore, The young lad put the last cheery in the pie by even hitting the last run for RCB to win by chasing 159 runs.

The opening game of the IPL 2021 (14th edition) started on a hectic note, which it has become famous for, it went all the way to the last ball to finish the game where Mumbai Indians lost by two wickets in the opening game.

At the Chidambaram Stadium, it was the two-paced wicket that expects both teams at the stadium, much in contrast to the caretaker’s prediction, where he has spoken about putting black soil instead of red soil, that will not help to give the spinners the proper support.

Mumbai Indian’s were seen struggling against medium pacers, especially Harshal Patel who took 5 wickets to haul, and Mohammed Siraj’s no wickets but very economical over’s. Harshal Patel did not let MI get away in the end with clever and brilliant Change of Pace and Yorkers.

It was also at the other end when Royal Challengers Batted and Marco Jansen and Jasprit Bumrah were bowling very tight lengths to keep Virat’s team in check. However it was the brilliance of Ab de Villier's 27-balls 48 runs that kept the RCB side in the chase, even Virat Kohli’s 33 runs and Glen Maxwell’s 39 runs had set the game. 

The Mumbai Indians batting line up still had work in progress in freeing their arms after RCB won the toss and choose to field first, Kohli who used a total of seven bowlers, and the worst part was poor fielding and dropping catches, even after some surprising decisions during the power play over’s, allowed Mumbai to cross the 150 runs mark.

The decision to start Yuzvendra Chahal instead of Washington Sundar during the power play appeared to be a big mistake move in the early half of the innings.

Mumbai Indians started the innings by batting first with the openers like Rohit Sharma and Chris Lynn, because of the South African wicket-keeper -batsman Quinton de Kock not having arrived from his native country due to him being quarantined gave the Australian Cricketer who found himself part of the starting eleven.

It was really a great first match of the IPL 2021, which lasted right till the very last ball, which could have gone anyway, we really expect great entertainment and fun for the next few weeks ahead.