Lucknow: Royal Challengers Bengaluru pulled off a stunning six-wicket win over Lucknow Super Giants to seal a place in Qualifier-1 of the IPL match here on Tuesday. Set an imposing target of 228, Virat Kohli blazed away to a 30-ball 54 before Jitesh Sharma (85 off 33 balls) and Mayank Agarawal (41 off 23) added 107 runs for the fifth wicket to seal a terrific result for the side heading into the Playoffs.RCB completed the chase with eight balls to spare. As captain, Rishabh Pant also withdrew a ‘Mankad’ appeal after Lucknow leg-spinner Digvesh Rathi ran Jitesh Sharma out at the non-striker’s end before delivering the ball, on the last ball of the 17th over with RCB cruising. That was quite a sporting gesture. Asked to bat first, Pant’s delayed rediscovery of form through an exceptional hundred and Mitchell Marsh’s continued excellence guided LSG to a massive 227 for 3 against RCB. Pant (118 not out, 61b, 11×4, 8×6) and Marsh (67, 37b) added 152 runs for an impressive second wicket stand as the Super Giants made the most of a fine pitch and some wayward bowling by RCB. Throughout this season, Pant struggled to find his range, striking at a mere 107 and the skipper’s underwhelming efforts with the bat had a huge impact on the fortunes of the Lucknow side. But Pant rewrote the script on the night, hitting the ball with the required amount of power and his strike-rate was hovering around 200. Once he refrained from over-hitting the ball, timing too returned to Pant’s batting automatically.The left-hander started the carnage by clattering Yash Dayal for 18 runs in the fourth over that included a sequence of 6, 4,4 Pant only grew in confidence from that point, and it rubbed on his partner Marsh as well. The Aussie batter started a bit slow, reaching 19 off his first 16 balls but from there ’Bison’ took his batting to a different level, starting with a pulled six off Romario Shepherd. Pant soon reached his fifty, second of the season for him, off 29 balls, hitting leg-spinner Suyash Sharma for two successive fours.Marsh, who crossed 600 runs for his finest IPL season in a decade, went past his fifty in 31 balls with a six off Suyash. However, Marsh could not go further as he snicked Bhuvneshwar Kumar to stumper Jitesh Sharma, who once again stood as stand-in skipper as Rajat Patidar was used was an Impact Sub. But that had not much effect on Pant as he motored on and brought up his first hundred of the season, and second overall in seven years, in 54 balls with a boundary off Bhuvneshwar Kumar.It was a special way to get to a landmark too, carving an outside off-stump delivery over covers for a four. Pant celebrated in style too ? a beaming style followed by an acrobatic somersault.It was the quintessential Pant shot that carried all his idiosyncrasies in an innings in which he generally stuck to conventional ways of batting, as he later added 49 runs for the third wicket with Nicholas Pooran.The legion of Pant and LSG fans now would have been hoping to see more of it early in the season, but at least it has filled with some hope for a better season.
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