After Gujarat Lions (GL) bowling gave back to back blows to Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) while they were chasing the target of 159 put on board by GL earlier, and lowered doen the score to 29 for the loss of 5 wickets with the big guns like Shane Watson, Virat Kohli and Chris Gayle already in the pavilion, it was the day of GL in qualifier 1 of IPL playoffs at M Chinnaswamy stadium, Bengaluru on Tuesday.

But the South African batsmen AB de Villiers had something different in his mind. His 79 off 47 deliveries not only won the match for RCB but he took the team in the IPL final of this season, making the third such entry of the team off all the IPL seasons.

None of the batsmen, except de Villiers, Stuart Binny and Iqbal Abdullah for that matter, could play well on Tuesday while chasing down the target to win and take the team into the final. Consistent performer in the tournament and the RCB skipper Virat Kohli, could not open his account and went to pavilion on the delivery from Dhawal Kulkarni. Soon, Chris Gayle and KL Rahul, too fell pray to Kulkarni. Ravindra Jadeja attacked and got the wicket of the Australian opener Shane Watson and things got worse when Kulkarni came and attacked again taking the wicket of Sachin Baby.

After the wickets fell at the regular intervals, AB de Villers with the help of Stuat Binny (21 off 15) and Iqbal Abdullah (33 of 25) fought hard and brought the team to the shore.

Earlier, GL openers, too failed to give a nice start to the team as Brendon McCullum and Aaron Finch could not perform. Skipper Suresh Raina too got out only on 1 run. With the help of Dinesh Karthik (26 off 30) and Dwayne Smith (73 off 41) GL could reach to a decent total with Eklavya Dwivedi and Dhawal Kulkarni’s little knock at the end confirmed Gujarat’s score of 158.

Now with the result, RCB has cemented their spot at the finals and GL will now have to play at the qualifier 2 against the winner of the eliminator between Kolkata Knight Riders and Sunrisers Hyderabad.

By Prajakt K.