IPL 4 Match 35: Royal Challengers' Virat Kohli, Chris Gayle Push Pune Warriors to Defeat

The manner in which Virat Kohli and Chris Gayle batted for the Royal Challengers Bangalore in the IPL 4, the Pune Warriors were always going to play catch up at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru. And the latter did exactly that as the Pune Warriors was yet again bite the dust.

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Chris Gayle's forty-nine runs from only twenty-six balls included four sixes that set the Pune Warriors back early. With Virat Kohli providing the sizable bulk of the runs later in an assault that the visitors never quite recovered from, the Royal Challengers Bangalore were forcing more pressure on the Pune Warriors who have been struggling to get a win on board in their last three matches.

Chris Gayle's addition has been a huge impetus at the top while Virat Kohli has been the RCB's mainstay. His sixty-seven runs from forty-seven balls matched Gayle's sixes for numbers, but it was the manner in which he carried for the innings that gave the Royal Challengers Bangalore more than aura of being the team to beat on the day.

182 runs was a huge target for the Pune Warriors who have lost four wickets for forty runs or thereabouts in all their past three matches. However, with Jesse Ryder finally getting momentum again, his half century certainly kept the match interesting, even though the win continued to remain out of reach.

If the Pune Warriors needed another stable hand, they had it in the Pune Warriors captain. Yuvraj Singh shored up forty-one runs off twenty-three runs which kept matters interesting. But the wicket of Yuvraj Singh, the fourth one to fall in the seventeen over with the PW score on 131 left too much to do which even Robin Uthappa could not manage in his unbeaten knock of twenty-three runs as Pune Warriors lost to the Royal Challengers Bangalore by twenty-six runs.