Royal Challengers Bangalore began the Indian Premier League 2021 with a number of dropped catches. In the tournament’s opening match between RCB and Mumbai Indians, RCB dropped thrice as the Rohit Sharma-led side made 159/9 in 20 overs.
RCB captain Virat Kohli won the toss and elected to bowl against the defending champions on Friday but repeated dropped catches became the talk on Twitter as the new season kickstarted.
It started in the 17th over when Mohammed Siraj in the attack with Ishan Kishan batting. Washington Sundar was at deep backward square leg, a few yards away from the rope and despite the jump could not help the ball from bouncing inside the rope. Siraj did not look happy, staring at his teammate for the blunder.
However, an over later, Siraj himself dropped a sitter off Harshal Patel’s bowling. Mumbai’s Kishan pulled one and got a top edge, straight around hip height for Siraj at deep backward square leg but he was too soft on the hands and it popped out.
It became a comedy of errors when the captain himself dropped a catch and looked to have hurt himself. Krunal Pandya smashed it hard, Kohli moved to the left, tried to go reverse cup style and spilled the catch. The ball burst through his hands and hit him on the face, just under his right eye. RCB fans must be relieved to see Kohli continuing to play, even though he shifted his position.
https://twitter.com/amanrao38772603/status/1380547316440915968
Medium pacer Patel was the wrecker-in-chief for RCB, finishing with the excellent figures of 5/27. Opener Chris Lynn top-scored for defending champions MI with a 35-ball 49 at the MA Chidambaram Stadium.
Suryakumar Yadav contributed 31 off 23 balls while Kishan made 28 in only 19 deliveries. Mohammed Siraj gave away just 22 runs in his quota of four overs.
MI: Rohit Sharma (captain), Chris Lynn, Suryakumar Yadav, Ishan Kishan (wk), Hardik Pandya, Kieron Pollard, Krunal Pandya, Marco Jansen, Jayant Yadav, Trent Boult, Jasprit Bumrah
RCB: Virat Kohli (captain), Rajat Patidar, AB de Villiers (wk), Glenn Maxwell, Daniel Christian, Washington Sundar, Kyle Jamieson, Shahbaz Ahmed Harshal Patel, Mohammed Siraj, Yuzvendra Chahal.
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