After Tillakaratne Dilshan set the stage with a 54-ball 71, AB de Villiers ensured that the Royal Challengers Bangalore got home thanks to his 17-ball 47-run blitzkrieg. Chasing 182 to win, they beat the Deccan Chargers by five wickets at the M Chinnaswamy stadium here.

Both sides came into this game with quite a few changes in their playing XI. While Muttiah Muralitharan replaced RCB skipper Daniel Vettori, Tillakaratne Dilshan came in place of Andrew McDonald. Apart from that, J Syed Mohammad, Abhimanyu Mithun and seamer Prasanth Parameswaran replaced Saurabh Tiwary, KP Appanna and R Vinay Kumar. In the DC squad, Abhishek Jhunjhunwala and Ankit Sharma made way for Akshath Reddy and Anand Rajan, whereas Daniel Harris replaced Daniel Christain.

Upon winning the toss, stand-in RCB skipper, Virat Kohli, opted to field first. Daniel Harris opened the DC innings with Shikhar Dhawan, and the duo charged against the RCB bowlers from the word go. The opening pair added 86 runs, before a direct hit from Kohli saw the back of Harris (47 off 41 balls). However, this brought no relief to the hosts as Cameron White (45 off 24 balls) picked up where the opener had left off. Dhawan was on song and reached his fifty with a boundary off Parameswaran through mid-wicket. With no bowler being spared, RCB tried as many as seven options to stem the flow of runs, albeit unsuccessfully. Dhawan (73* off 52 balls) and White added 82 runs until the latter top-edged Parameswaran to give the bowler a return catch. Skipper Kumar Sangakkara, who then came in to bat with five balls left in the innings, added 10 off three deliveries including a six off the last ball to take his team’s score to 181 for two in 20 overs.

When RCB came out to bat, there was a role reversal of sorts as Dilshan took on the DC bowlers, while Chris Gayle played the patient partner. The West Indian hit his first boundary in the sixth over of the innings and was batting on 10 off 15 balls when his opening partner was on 35 off 21. However, Gayle (26 off 22 balls) looked like getting back to his usual self with a six off Amit Mishra in the tenth over, which was also his hundredth in the IPL. He then hit Anand Rajan over long-on for a big hit, but the young pacer yorked him the next ball, before he could cause any further damage.

Kohli (9), who was the next man in, soon returned to the dugout as Dale Steyn plucked a brilliant diving catch off Amit Mishra at the long-off boundary. The pacer took another running catch in the same over to dismiss Asad Khan Pathan (4). This brought AB de Villiers to the crease. However, a while later, Dilshan (71 off 54 balls) was castled by Veer Pratap Singh. With RCB at 117 for four, the visitors were in the driver’s seat. However, Mayank Agarwal and de Villiers decided to take the attack to the opposition. Though Agarwal (18 off six balls) was trapped lbw by Anand Rajan, de Villiers continued to score freely.

With 39 required off 18 balls, Steyn came into the attack. But de Villiers hit his compatriot for 23 runs in the 18th over to bring RCB within sniffing distance of victory. In the next over, de Villiers (47 off 17 balls) slammed Anand Rajan for two boundaries, a six and a single to level the scores. Finally, Syed Mohammad sealed the win for RCB with a boundary over mid-wicket.

Scorecard

Man-of-the-Match: AB de Villiers for his match-winning knock of 47 off 17 balls, which included five fours and three sixes