Ab de Villiers
Ab de Villiers gave away his Man of the Match award to the RCB spectator.

It does not matter whether he has a bat in his hand or not, AB de Villiers just keeps on fascinating people with his scarcely believable exploits on the cricket field. On Thursday (May 17) against Sunrisers Hyderabad, the Royal Challengers Bangalore took a catch that had left one and all gasping for breath.

In the eighth over of the innings, Sunrisers Hyderabad opener Alex Hales would have thought that he had hit his compatriot Moeen Ali for a maximum. However, a freaky air-borne stunner from de Villiers at deep mid-wicket converted the certain six into a catch.

Moeen bowled a tossed up delivery just outside the off stump, inviting Hales to go for the big hit. Hales duly obliged by getting down the wicket and hitting the ball towards deep mid-wicket. The ball looked destined to cross the boundary till the last moment until de Villiers produced a moment of brilliance as he plucked the ball out of thin air. The Proteas star leapt and grabbed the ball one-handed to stun Hales.  His right foot was extremely close to the rope but he somehow managed to land it well inside the boundary.

The catch has been receiving rave reviews across social media but one can say that the best compliment came from none other than Royal Challengers skipper Virat Kohli.

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Kohli took to Twitter to hail de Villiers, calling him Spiderman as he tweeted:

“Saw #SpiderMan Live today! ?@abdevilliers17”

Coming to the game, Royal Challengers beat the Sunrisers by 14 runs to stay in contention for  a playoff spot. Whirlwind fifties from AB de Villiers and Moeen Ali propelled the hosts to a daunting 218 for 6 in the allotted 20 overs.

RCB SRH
RCB beat SRH by 14 runs in Bengaluru. Image Courtesy: BCCI

The Royal Challengers were off to a poor start. Sandeep Sharma accounted for Parthiv Patel for just 1 before Rashid Khan sent back Virat Kohli for 12. However, de Villiers and Moeen Ali added 107 runs for the third wicket to help Royal Challengers recover from the shaky start. Rashid broke the stand by dismissing de Villiers. The South Africa star scored 69 off 39 with the help of 12 fours and a six. 4 runs later, Moeen departed after scoring 65 off 34. Colin de Grandhomme then blasted 40 off just 17 while Sarfraz Khan slammed 22 off 8 to finish proceedings strongly.

In reply, Sunrisers put up a good fight courtesy of fifties from Kane Williamson and Manish Pandey but eventually managed to put up 204.

 

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An avid cricket lover, I just love this game more than anything. Writing about cricket keeps me closer to the game.