SurRisers Hyderabad were once again let down by their batters on Wednesday.
RCB won the toss and put SRH in to bat. They lost an early wicket in Abhishek Sharma and although the track was slow, once Captain Kane Williamson joined opener Jason Roy, the runs flowed.
Williamson was at his brilliant best, striking well-timed boundaries through both sides of the wicket while Roy played his able ally.
But the batsmen struggled and wickets tumbled in a heap and from 107 for 5 in the 16th over, SRH managed to post 141 for 7 in their 20 overs.
With their batsmen in form, RCB were always favourites to chase down the total.
But with the nature of the wicket being what it was and SRH having the firepower in their bowling, it was only time before they would make inroads.
Sure enough, RCB had a horrendous start as Captain Virat Kohli and Dan Christian were dismissed in the first powerplay. Bhuvneshwar Kumar trapped Kohli in the very first over of the innings while Christian was removed by Siddarth Kaul in the 4th over. After the first six overs, RCB's score read 37/2.
Although the SRH bowlers were occasionally hammered for a few big runs, it was their guile and understanding of conditions that helped Sunrisers throughout the match.
The pitch was slow and it demanded that bowlers making it tougher for batsmen by bowling cutters and slower deliveries and that is what Bhuvi, Kaul, Umran Malik and Jason Holder did consistently.
That opener Devdutt Padikkal found the going tough and Glenn Maxwell was forced to use his feet to counter the slowness of the pitch only showed how well SRH's bowlers did to keep RCB's big hitters at bay.
Till the very end, SRH kept it tight and even the likes of A B de Villiers managed just one four and one six and was not allowed any freedom to score big runs consistently.
In the end, Bhuvi kept on bowling wide and full and even though de Villiers did get a six in the final over to keep the equation six off two balls, he was on the money. He staved off more attack from the veteran South African and help SRH beat RCB by 4 runs.
