Just like their previous clash earlier this month, Royal Challengers Bangalore once again collapsed against Kolkata Knight Riders's spinners to suffer their second defeat of the season against the Knights.
After being put into bat, KKR raked up a huge 200/5 before they unleashed their spin trio, who came up trumps against RCB's powerful batting line-up on a good batting wicket at the M Chinnaswamy stadium.
It was a brave call from KKR Captain Nitish Rana to bring in Impact Player Suyash Sharma to bowl the third over. And Suyash made a telling difference with the key wicket of the in-form Faf du Plessis (17) in his very first over, before he got Shahbaz Ahmed leg before wicket in his next.
Varun Chakravarthy continued his good form as he dismissed dangerman Glenn Maxwell for five, to leave RCB reeling on 58/3 in six overs.
Mahipal Lomror stroked a quickfire 34 from 18 balls adding 55 runs for the fourth wicket with Virat Kohli, who found it tough to get the boundaries in the middle overs.
Kohli hit five boundaries to score 33 from 19 balls in the Powerplay, but hit just one four from his next 18 balls.
Lomror and Kohli's dismissal within the space of five balls dented RCB big time in the run chase.
Chakravarthy ran through the RCB middle order with the wickets of Maxwell, Lomror and the experienced Dinesh Karthik to finish with 3/27 to bounce back after the thrashing at the hands of CSK, while young leggie Suyash bagged 2/30.
The two spinners combined claimed five wickets for 56 runs in eight overs to rip apart the RCB batting line-up as Sunil Narine's expensive figures of 41 runs from four overs hardly bothered KKR.
Andre Russell, who failed with the bat, finished off RCB's hopes with Kohli's wicket, brilliantly caught by Venkatesh Iyer at deep midwicket for 54.
KKR's busy recent schedule -- 3 matches in the last seven days -- has meant Chakravarthy hasn't still been able to see his new born. But the spinner surely won't complain as he is going through a dream season, with 13 wickets in eight games.
Having lost five matches so far, KKR will need to continue this winning momentum to keep themselves in the hunt for the play-offs.
