RCB bury PBKS beneath a wave of intensity

Two and a half hours of hell! ©BCCI/IPL
There were two distinct Ricky Ponting reactions that typified the horror-riddled night of cricket in Mullanpur which he and his team would want to wipe out from memory without trace. The first came early, tinged in irony. Ponting, long the poster boy for intensity, stood beyond the fence with his elbow propped against the dugout, a helpless expression on his face, as Virat Kohli orchestrated the hellish experience for his batters.

It's fair to say that erratic Chandigarh conditions lent a helping hand. Before Punjab Kings were skittled for 101, three out of four matches at the venue this season had been won by teams batting first. "I think the conditions were great to bowl first, although we saw swing and seam throughout the whole game," Josh Hazlewood summarised. "I think whenever the new ball was bowled, there was a bit happening... so I think you've just got to utilise that. Probably from a batting point, from Kings XI [PBKS]... they probably just had to pull back a little bit and try and get a score on the board, you know 150, 160 would have been a difficult chase potentially."

'Pulling back' though, has not featured in PBKS' batting copybook this season. If anything, they've only doubled down on their lofty ideas at the faintest sight of a setback. But RCB came at that psyche full throttle, refusing to let the fire catch even for a moment.

Prabhsimran Singh responded to Priyansh Arya's exit in the second over by giving Bhuvneshwar Kumar the charge in the third. It was still the PowerPlay and the Punjab opener was able to hit over mid-off and mid-on off successive deliveries even as Rajat Patidar swapped his two fielders around. But the third attempt, against a ball that shaped away slightly, found the edge, and Jitesh Sharma's gloves. At first slip, Kohli erupted. It was the opening act of a spellbindingly intense passage of play that saw PBKS swallowed whole.

RCB had arrived in Chandigarh just a day after a bruising bowling experience, salvaged only by a late Jitesh Sharma surge. They came with an injured Tim David and the looming risk of their campaign imploding if Josh Hazlewood wasn't ready. But more than a month and two continents of shoulder rehab later, Hazlewood turned up in mint condition. Despite a 32-day break from competitive cricket, the accuracy of length seamlessly accompanied him. Shreyas Iyer paid an early price for ignoring Hazlewood's credentials as the best PowerPlay bowler this season by every possible metric, when a wild slog sent him packing.

From there, the PBKS batters found no room to breathe, no window to calm nerves on a high-pressure night. A combative RCB created a claustrophobic experience - chirping, snarling and celebrating with the kind of intensity that snuffed out the flamboyance PBKS have flaunted all season. Kohli was at the heart of this performance - puppeteering fields behind square on both sides, getting under the skin of new batters and diving around to cut out easy runs.

After the wonders of the new ball in helpful conditions stripped PBKS off their top-order, Suyash Sharma's googlies became impossible to read. Marcus Stoinis and Shashank Singh fell playing the wrong line against Suyash's back-of-the-hand wrong 'un that he has voluminously used this season. Even amidst this continued freefall, the proverbial noose around PBKS' necks stayed tightly wound. Not until the ninth-wicket stand between Azmatullah Omarzai and Harpreet Brar, did a partnership last beyond 11 balls.

This was by no means like the surface where PBKS folded for 111 and still defended it by 16 runs. On that dramatic evening, the pitch had it in for the batters all game, offering variable bounce and prodigious turn across both innings. On Thursday, RCB simply made the most of the early assistance and then pressed on by slapping together their bowling smarts and unrelenting intensity.

After the eighth over of the chase, the second Ponting moment arrived. His purposeful stride out to the middle at the strategic timeout was reduced to offering an appreciative pat to Kyle Jamieson and Musheer Khan, who picked a wicket each and gave Punjab two fleeting moments of joy on an otherwise dismal night. Twelve balls later, PBKS were put out of their two-and-a-half-hour-long ordeal through a Rajat Patidar six.

On a night filled with dramatic gestures, Kohli finished with one more - a symbolic wag of the finger, held high in the direction of the stands above the dugout. RCB afterall, are now just one more night like this away from their long-elusive destiny.