LUC­KNOW – The Roy­al Chal­lengers Ben­galu­ru (RCB) pulled off a stun­ning chase, scor­ing 230 against Luc­know Su­per Gi­ants (LSG) in a dra­mat­ic fi­nal group-stage clash, se­cur­ing a top-two spot in the In­di­an Pre­mier League (IPL) stand­ings and boost­ing their ti­tle hopes.

Vi­rat Kohli laid the foun­da­tion with his eighth half-cen­tu­ry of the sea­son, steady­ing the in­nings af­ter RCB lost two quick wick­ets to New Zealand pac­er Will O’Rourke.

Kohli fell for 54, but a blis­ter­ing 107-run part­ner­ship off just 45 balls be­tween skip­per Jitesh Shar­ma, 85 not out from 33 balls, and Mayank Agar­w­al, 41 not out, sealed a six-wick­et win with eight balls to spare.

The match took a con­tro­ver­sial turn in the 17th over when LSG spin­ner Digvesh Singh Rathi near­ly dis­missed Shar­ma via a no-ball, then at­tempt­ed a ‘Mankad’ run-out at the non-strik­er’s end.

Shar­ma was out of his crease, but LSG cap­tain Rishabh Pant with­drew the ap­peal, keep­ing RCB’s chase alive. Shar­ma cap­i­talised on the re­prieve, smash­ing two fours and three six­es, in­clud­ing the win­ning runs.

Ear­li­er, Pant’s hero­ic 118 not out off 61 balls with 11 fours, 8 six­es and a 152-run stand with Mitchell Marsh 67 off 37, pow­ered LSG to 227-3.

Nicholas Pooran could on­ly man­age to get 13 from 10 de­liv­er­ies with one four be­fore he fell to Ro­mario Shep­herd, who claimed the one wick­et for 51 runs from his four overs.

With this win, RCB now have two shots at reach­ing the IPL fi­nal. They will face ta­ble-top­pers Pun­jab Kings in Qual­i­fi­er 1, with the win­ner ad­vanc­ing di­rect­ly to the June 3 fi­nal.

The los­er gets an­oth­er chance in Qual­i­fi­er 2 against the win­ner of the Elim­i­na­tor, where Gu­jarat Ti­tans take on Mum­bai In­di­ans on May 30.

CMC