By IANS,
Bangalore : Bangalore Royal Challengers’ three-run win over Deccan Chargers here Saturday night was the narrowest victory margin in the Indian Premier League (IPL) so far, bettering Chennai Super Kings’s six-run win over Mumbai Indians.
Royal Challengers also registered their second victory out of six games in the Twenty20 tournament.
The other statistical highlights of the day are:
# Deccan Chargers became the first team to lose five games in the competition.
# Deccan Chargers’ Rudra Pratap Singh (3/41) produced his best bowling figures in IPL.
# R.P. Singh has now claimed eight wickets at 22.25 runs apiece in six IPL matches – the most by any bowler for Deccan Chargers.
# Royal Challengers’ Virat Kohli (38) registered his highest score in the competition. He has averaged 17.60 in six games – 88 runs at a strike rate of 125.71.
# After six games, Royal Challengers’ skipper Rahul Dravid is two short of completing hundred runs in the competition – 98 runs at an average of 16.33 at a strike rate of 12.64.
# Royal Challengers’ Jacques Kallis’ average is also below 20 after six games – 118 runs at an average of 19.66 at a strike rate of 118.00.
# Deccan Chargers’ Rohit Sharma became the third batsman after Matthew Hayden and Gautam Gambhir to hit back-to-back fifties in the IPL. Sharma and Delhi Daredevils’Gambhir are the only batsmen to post three fifties each in the competition.
# Sharma, with 235 runs at an average of 58.75 in six matches, is the leading run-getter in the IPL, eclipsing Gambhir’s aggregate of 224 (ave.56.00) in five games.
# With Scott Styris’ wicket, Zaheer became the first bowler to bag 10 wickets (ave.18.30) in the IPL, bettering Kings XI Punjab’s Irfan Pathan’s tally of nine wickets at 15.88 runs apiece.
# Deccan Chargers’ captain V.V.S. Laxman (52 off 44 balls) posted his first fifty in Twenty20 cricket.
# Praveen Kumar (3/23) produced his career-best bowling performance in Twenty20 cricket, winning the man-of-the-match award.
# Deccan Chargers’ Shahid Afridi has averaged 6.50 so far in the competition – 26 runs in four innings at a strike rate of 130.00.