AHMEDABAD: Watching Jos Buttler take the Rajasthan Royals into the IPL final after 14 years with his latest special, a devastating 60-ball, unbeaten 106 which was studded with 10 fours and six sixes, a certain Shane Warne would be smiling no end from the heavens.
With his murderous blade, Buttler is paying the leg-Spin legend, who led the Royals to their sole title in 2008, the perfect tribute. Smashing his fourth hundred of IPL 2022, Buttler, who crossed 800 runs in the tournament, helped the Royals chase down 158 on a canter, as they outclassed Royal Challengers Bangalore by seven wickets at the imposing Narendra Modi Stadium in the second qualifier.
He has now earned the Royals a second crack at the Gujarat Titans-and a chance to avenge their defeat to the hosts in the first qualifier, in the summit clash at same venue on Sunday night.
With the world’s most destructive batsman, currently enjoying the form of his life-he has scored four fifties in IPL-15 too- the last thing RCB would’ve hoped for was Buttler exploding. However, their worst fears came true as the Englishman knocked them out of the tournament with yet another devastating knock.
Buttler is now the only batsman apart from Virat Kohli, who did it in 2016, to crack four hundreds in one edition of the IPL. Ironically, on a night which saw the 31-year-old dazzle, Kohli suffered yet another failure, as he was caught behind off the highly impressive Prasidh Krishna for just seven.
For a while he had lost his golden touch, but Buttler rediscovered it at the perfect time. His 56-ball 89 in the first qualifier went in vain, but in this match, it was more than enough.
While Buttler played the innings that decided the fate of the match, it was Prasidh Krishna (3-22 in four overs) and Obed McCoy (3-23) who set up the win for the Royals with their incisive spells.
Exploiting the generous bounce on an Australian type of a wicket, both the pacers bowled superbly, taking six wickets between them to enable the Royals to restrict RCB to 157 for eight.
Taking off from his match-winning, hurricane innings of 112 not out against Lucknow Super Giants at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata, Rajat Patidar again turned out to be RCB’s saviour, top-scoring with an impressive 58 (42b, 4x4, 3x6), as he adjusted quickly to the demands of a pitch on which strokeplay didn’t appear to be easy.
Despite another outstanding knock by Patidar, yet another poor outing by Kohli and a bad collapse in the end, which saw them collect just 34 runs in the last five overs, while losing five wickets, caused RCB to finish at least 20 runs short of safe total.
