Lucknow Super Giants' dream run in their inaugural season of IPL came to an end after Royal Challengers Bangalore won the Eliminator by 14 runs at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata on Wednesday night. Bangalore will now lock horns with Rajasthan Royals in Qualifier 2 on May 27.
Chasing a mammoth 208-run target, Lucknow lost Quinton de Kock early but KL Rahul and Manan Vohra steadied the innings but the latter went back to the pavilion against the run of play. Rahul then stitched a 96-run stand with Deepak Hooda as Bangalore failed to take wickets in the middle overs.
After Hooda's dismissal, Marcus Stoinis and Rahul played big shots and it seemed LSG would have the last laugh but Josh Hazlewood and Harshal Patel bowled with great line and length in the last three overs, thus stopping Lucknow 14 runs short of the target
Earlier, Faf du Plessis again failed with the bat as he was dismissed for a golden duck. Rajat Patidar then unleashed his power-hitting skills as Virat Kohli played a sheet anchor role at the other end. Lucknow pulled back things in the middle over and removed Kohli and Glenn Maxwell cheaply. But a shoddy fielding effort from LSG at the start of slog overs allowed Patidar and Dinesh Karthik to go for big hits. Patidar slammed his first IPL century in 49 balls and he remained unbeaten on 112. Meanwhile, Karthik smashed 37 runs off 23 balls as RCB scored 84 runs in the last five overs to reach 207-4 in 20 overs.