Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) won their 3rd Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024 match on the bounce, beating last year's runners-up Gujarat Titans in a comprehensive manner. After Virat Kohli and Faf du Plessis gave the team a 92-run stand for the first wicket, while chasing the target of 148 runs, RCB incurred a dramatic middle-order collapse to go from 92/0 to 117/6. It was Virat who kept the team in the fight while Dinesh Karthik and Swapnil Singh gave the finishing touch. But, the chase might not have been possible had Virat not survived a run-out on the first ball of his innings.
During the course of his stay on the crease, Virat also had a big scare that saw him almost get run-out. It was Gujarat Titans star David Miller who made a brilliant stop and threw the ball towards the keeper's end. Kohli lost his bat and wasn't even in the frame when the ball passed the stumps.
Virat could've been dismissed on the very first ball of his innings had the throw hit the stumps. His wife Anushka Sharma, who was in the stands for the match, was snapped by the shutterbugs while reacting to the incident.
Though RCB won the match by a fair margin, with plenty of overs to spare, skipper Faf du Plessis admitted that he was nervous after the team lost a plethora of wickets in the middle.
"We've been really good in the last few games, with both bat and ball. We've been unbelievable in the field as well. The wicket was a bit different, there was a bit more bounce. Wanted to make sure we take that information from the pitch and give it to the bowlers. Yes there was a dropped catch but it's the effort that we look for and that was there throughout," said Du Plessis in the post-match presentation.
"The games we've played here have all been high-scoring, anything around 180-190 would've been par. Was important we didn't look at the scoreboard when we went out to bat and try and play the way we play. Was a bit nervous. Probably not the best assessment from us there. Yes we wanted to go out there and get the total quickly to boost the NRR but probably when we were 4 down, we had to calm down a little bit," he added.