Bangalore, May 14 (IANS) In a repeat of his audacious batting style, Chris Gayle late Saturday turned into a nightmare for Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) as he rattled up 38 runs in 12 balls to help Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) win their seventh game on the trot in the Indian Premier League at the Chinnaswamy stadium here.
Set to score 102 runs in 13 overs under the Duckworth Lewis method in a rain-marred league match, the RCB made 105 in 12.3 overs.
Opening the innings, Gayle unleashed batting fury hitting four 4s in the first over of speedster Brett Lee and followed it up in the second over of Jaidev Unadkat with 17 runs with two over the fence.
Though Gayle’s blitzkrieg was cut short in the third over when a top-edge skier was caught by Jacques Kallis of a Lee ball, he put KKR on notice with 44 runs in 2.4 overs and made it easier for other batters to chase the target.
With 38 runs, Gayle became the top scorer in this fourth edition of IPL, piling up 436 runs in seven innings and dons the Orange Cap.
Gayle also set a new record in scoring maximum sixes in a IPL tournament with 32 hits over the fence, surpassing 31 sixes of Sri Lankan southpaw Sanath Jaisurya, who played for Mumbai Indians in the 2008 IPL edition.
In spite of RCB losing two quick wickets after Gayle departed when his opening partner Luke Pomersbach and stand-in skipper Virat Kohli got out after putting up 21 runs in 19 balls, A.B. de Villiers and Mohammed Kaif took the team closer to the target with a 23-run partnership.
Though RCB again lost two quick wickets when K.B. Arun Karthik and Saurabh Tiwary were out in quick succession, Abhimanyu Mithun hit the winning run with a four when the scores were tied at 101.
With two wickets in three overs for 16, Kallis was the most successful bowler for KKR, while Lee, Unadkat and Iqbal Abdulla shared one wicket each.
With seven wins, three loses and one point from an earlier rain-hit match against Rajasthan Royals, RCB has 17 points from 12 matches, while KKR has 14 points from 12 matches with seven wins and five losses.
Earlier, though KKR scored 89 runs for the loss of four wickets in 13 overs, match referee Andrew Pycroft set 102 runs for RCB in 13 overs as per the Duckworth Lewis method, according to which, KKR’s par score is 101 runs.
Kohli, who won the toss when the sun was still blazing, chose to bowl, betting on chasing a target than setting one.
After KKR’s Kallis opened the innings with two fours in the first over, RCB’s speedsters Zaheer Khan, Charl Langeveldt and S. Aravind ran through the top order to reduce the Knight Riders to 30 for three wickets in six overs, packing off both the openers (Kallis and Eoin Morgan) and their skipper Gautam Gambhir.
Even before dark clouds threatened to let loose, Manish Tiwary and Yusuf Pathan consolidated the innings to post 69 in 11 overs when rains played spoilsport for over two hours.
When play resumed, Pathan accelerated the score with a six and a four in the 12th over to hit a quick fire 36 in 24 balls, containing three mighty sixes and two fours when he was caught by Abhimanyu Mithun of Langeveldt ball.
With two wickets, Langeveldt was the most successful bowler for RCB, with Zaheer and Aravind sharing the other two wickets.
