After winning the toss and opting to bat first, RCB’s innings had disaster written all over it after they lost three wickets inside the first powerplay and at one stage, at 45/5, it looked like they were going to fold under a score of 80. A 38-run stand between Shivam Dube and Chris Morris was the only shining light in the entire innings, but even that wasn’t enough as the Reds succumbed to the pace of Taylor and the spin of Zahir to fold for just 112 in under 20 overs.

The Tallawahs got off to the worst start possible, in response, losing Gayle off the very first delivery, but brisk contributions from the trio of Glenn Phillips, Dwayne Smith and Liton Das meant that they swayed out of harm’s way within the blink of an eye. Once they weathered the early storm, a chase of 113 was going to be a cakewalk and Chadwick Walton provided the finishing touch to guide the Caribbean side to a comfortable six-wicket victory.

Losing Virat Kohli on the first ball post the powerplay turned out to be a body blow that RCB never really recovered from. Despite losing three wickets inside the first six overs, they were quietly confident of posting a fighting total with Kohli still around, but all hope was shattered within a matter of seconds as Zahir Khan out-foxed the RCB skipper to get him stumped on the very first ball after the field restrictions were lifted.

RCB boast of one of the strongest batting line-ups in the world on paper, but reputation is of no use if you cannot justify it on the field. The top 5 RCB batters - Kohli and ABD included - combinedly scored 25 runs today, which was one less than the tally of Chadwick Walton. Let’s just say that if I had a dollar for every time the RCB batsmen disappointed me, I’d be a millionaire by now.

Losing early wickets in a T20 match is equivalent to conceding two goals inside the first 10 mins of play and by losing three wickets inside the first six overs, RCB sealed their own fate within minutes of the commencement of the match. It was an appalling display of batsmanship and incredibly, 12 of the 34 runs RCB scored in the powerplay were extras. I mean, could it get any worse than this?

RCB lost Virat Kohli on the very first ball of their ‘middle overs’ - guess that should give you a hint of how overs 7-15 went for them. Either way, despite losing both Kohli and Moeen Ali inside the 9th over, the duo of Dube and Morris batted out the majority of the middle-overs without losing a wicket and ensured that the side did not get bowled out for an embarrassingly low total. 53-3 was what they managed in this phase; not great, but not too terrible when you look at the kind of powerplay they ended up having. 

With both Chris Morris and Washington Sundar threatening to go berserk, the Jamaican bowlers did a ridiculously good job to concede just 25 runs off the final five. Interestingly, a wicket fell exactly on the third ball of the 16th, 17th and 18th over and at one point, it looked like someone had cast some kind of a spell on the RCB batters. Two boundaries were all that the Tallawahs bowlers gave away in the entirety of the death overs. A perfect display of death bowling.

At the end of the powerplay of RCBs innings, the match had CJ saying “Oh s***, here we go again” written all over it and unfortunately,  it exactly panned out the way every neutral feared. Definitely not a game worthy of taking place in a ‘Champions League’ tournament.