Latest News

IPL 2025: Dayal trumps Chennai Super Kings in last over again to take Royal Challengers Bengaluru to the top

Published

11 months ago

2025/05/4

Priyan

Yash Dayal did it again in the last over against CSK [Cricinfo]

Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) outgunned Chennai Super Kings (CSK) at the Chinnaswamy yet again, defending 213 on a flat pitch in a wildly see-sawing classic.

It came down to Yash Dayal vs MS Dhoni and Ravindra Jadeja once again. In 2024, the left-arm seamer had bested Dhoni and put RCB in the playoffs. A year on, he denied Dhoni and CSK once again, defending 14 off the last over with a dew-slicked ball. Dayal this time put RCB on top of the IPL 2025 points table, with 16 points and a step closer to the playoffs.

CSK were left needing 35 off the last three overs with Jadeja, who was batting with attacking intent that was missing earlier in the season, and Dhoni in the middle. It was anybody’s game, but Suvash Sharma tipped it RCB’s way with an 18th over that went for only six runs.

It then swung CSK’s way when Virat Kohli dropped a regular catch – of Jadeja – at long-on and saw the first ball of the 19th over go through him to the boundary. Dhoni soon scythed a legcutter from Bhuvneshwar Kumar over cover for six, and followed with a single to make it 15 required off the last over.

Dayal’s plan in the final over was to shut Dhoni and Jadeja down with yorkers. With dew around, he was not able to nail his yorkers, but his low full tosses were still hard to put away, leading two singles and Dhoni’s wicket off the third ball. His fourth full toss in a row ended up going over Shivam Dube’s waist and well beyond the midwicket boundary for six, but Dayal didn’t veer away from his original plan when CSK needed six off three with a free hit in hand. With five needed off two, Dayal bowled a near yorker and Jadeja could only inside-edge it onto his pad for a single. Dube couldn’t get the last ball away to the boundary as Dayal pulled off another heist at the Chinnaswamy, sending the crowd into raptures.

Jacob Bethell and Kohli had laid the base for RCB’s win by adding 71 for 0, their highest powerplay score at home this season. Romairo Shephed then launched from there, muscling a 14-ball half-century, the joint second fastest in IPL history.

Bethell might not have even played had Phil Salt recovered from his illness, which had kept him out of RCB’s previous game as well. Bethell dashed out of the blocks on Saturday, picking off Khaleel Ahmed for three successive fours in the opening over. He went on to score three more fours and two sixes in the powerplay.

He was the first to bring up his fifty, off 28 balls, in his second IPL innings after getting a life on 27 when Matheesha Pathirana collided with Jadeja, grassing the catch. After having recovered from that blow, Pathirana had Bethell holing out for 55, with Dewald Brevis pulling off a screamer at deep square leg.

As for Kohli, he went onto raise his own fifty off 29 balls. It was his seventh half-century in 11 innings this season. He looked good for a whole lot more until Sam Curran had him popping a catch to point with a slower bouncer for 62 off 33 balls.

Shepherd walked out to bat when RCB were 157 for 5 with 14 balls left in the innings. After the big opening stand, they ran out of gas in the middle – between overs 11 and 18 they had managed only 45 runs for four wickets.

Shepherd then helped RCB plunder 54 off the last two overs, the most scored off the 19th and 20th overs in an IPL innings. In the 19th over, he smoked Khaleel for four sixes and two fours which cost CSK 33 runs. In the next over, he took Pathirana for two fours and two sixes to give RCB a blockbuster finish.

Fittingly, Shepherd stormed to his fifty by launching a six into the top tier off the final ball of the innings.

The joy, however, was short-lived for RCB as Ayush Mhatre dominated the powerplay in the chase. He claimed 39 of the 58 runs CSK scored in the first six, including a sequence of 4, 4, 4, 6,4, 4 in a 26-run over bowled by Bhuvneshwar. The pick of the sequence was a dabbed four between point and short third.

Krunal Pandya snared Shaik Rasheed for 14 and Lungi Ngidi, who got a game in place of Josh Hazlewood, dragged CSK back further when he had No. 3 Sam Curran top-edging a catch to the keeper for a run-a-ball 5.

Mhatre, 17, CSK’s youngest-ever player, then combined with Jadeja for a rollicking 114-run partnership off 64 balls. The stand ended when Ngidi tricked Mhatre with a slower ball, denying him the chance to become the second-youngest centurion in the IPL after his Under-19 opening partner Vaibhav Suryavanshi. He was dismissed for 94 off 48 balls.

Jadeja, though, continued to bat with a refreshingly positive approach, especially against spin. He faced only one dot ball out of 16 balls from Krunal and Suyash.

Brevis, though, was dismissed in a slightly contentious fashion. He was given out lbw but the ball was projected to slide down the leg side. The umpire’s finger had gone up midway through Brevis and Jadeja crossing over for an attempted leg-bye. The two batters then decided to talk it out and by the time Brevis had called for a review, the 15-second time limit had elapsed. In the end, CSK were left with another case of what might have been.

Brief scores:
Royal Challengers Bengaluru 213 for 5 in 20 overs (Virat Kohli 62, Jacob Bethell 55, Romairo Shepherd 53*, Devdutt Padikkal 17, Rajat Patidar 11; Noor Ahmad 1-26, Sam Curran Matheesha Pathirana 3-36) beat Chennai Super Kings 211 for 5 in 20 overs (Ayush Mhatre 94, Ravindra Jadeja 77*, Shaik Rasheed 14, MS Dhoni 12; Krunal Pandya 1-24, Lungi Ngidi 3-30) by two runs

Matheesha Pathirana struck thrice in his first three overs [Cricinfo]

[Cricinfo]

All News Advertisement

Latest News

Trump says US will ‘obliterate’ Iran’s power plants if Strait of Hormuz not open before 48-hour deadline

Published

23 hours ago

2026/03/22

Priyan

President Donald Trump says the US will “obliterate” Iranian power plants if the Strait of Hormuz is not open within 48 hours – the waterway is vital for global oil shipping.

Iran warns it will retaliate against all US-linked energy infrastructure in the Middle East if its power plants are attacked.

Trump also says he has achieved his war aims “weeks ahead of schedule”, adding: “Iran wants to make a deal. I don’t”

More than 100 people have been injured after strikes on southern Israel. The target appears to have been a nuclear facility 13km away from the city of Dimona

Meanwhile, Israel says it launched a wave of strikes on the Iranian capital. It follows an attack on Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility, Tehran says

An attempted Iranian strike on the joint UK-US base on Diego Gracia happened late on Thursday night into Friday morning, the BBC understands. Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper says the UK won’t be drawn into wider conflict

[BBC]

Latest News

Trump at a crossroad in US-Israel war with Iran

Published

1 day ago

2026/03/22

Priyan

Three weeks after the joint US-Israeli war against Iran began, the conflict has reached a fuzzy state of mixed messages and uncertainty, with Donald Trump’s public comments often seemingly contradicted by realities on the ground.

The war is “very complete, pretty much”, Trump has said, but new American ground forces – including a Marine expeditionary unit – are moving into the region. It is “winding down”, but US and Israeli bombing and missile strikes on Iranian targets continue unabated.

Opening the Strait of Hormuz, the geographic choke point through which 20% of the world’s oil export travels, is a “simple military manoeuvre”, but for now only Iranian-approved ships are transiting the waters.

The Iranian military is “gone”, but drones and missiles are still striking targets in the region and targets have extended as far as the joint US-UK base on Diego Garcia.

In a Friday evening Truth Social post published while he was flying from Washington to his Florida resort for the weekend, the US president provided a numbered list of American military objectives for the Iran war, which he said the US was “getting really close” to fulfilling.

The items, comprising his most detailed statement on the subject since the war began, included degrading or destroying Iran’s military, its defence infrastructure and its nuclear weapons programme, as well as protecting American allies in the region.

Not included was the goal of securing the Strait of Hormuz, which Trump said should be the responsibility of other nations that are more dependent on oil exports from the Gulf. The president has frequently noted that the US is a net exporter of energy and does not rely on oil from the Middle East – although such a view glosses over the global nature of the fossil fuel market, where price fluctuations directly impact the price at American gas pumps.

Trump’s Truth Social post also made no call for Iranian regime change. Gone are any references to approving the nation’s next leader or “unconditional surrender”, which Trump had insisted on in the early days of the war.

In Trump’s latest outline of his objectives, it is possible that the US could end its operation with Iran’s current anti-American leadership in power, its oil exports still flowing and its ability to assert some measure of control over the Strait of Hormuz intact.

If that is an unappealing resolution to a war that the president and his aides have said began with the 1979 Iran Revolution and that they would finish, there is an alternative route that involves the US ground forces presently on the way to the Middle East region.

Just over a week ago, US media reported that a Marine expeditionary unit, with about 2,500 combat soldiers and supporting ships and aircraft, had been dispatched from Japan to the Middle East, which it should reach in the coming days. Another Marine force of similar size recently departed its base in California with its arrival expected in mid-April.

Military analysts have suggested that the US could be planning to capture Kharg Island. an 3-sq-km (8-sq-mile) slice of land that contains Iran’s primary oil export terminal. Doing so could, in theory, cut off the nation’s oil shipments, depriving the nation of much-needed revenue and forcing it to make greater concessions to the Americans in exchange for an end to hostilities.

Trump on Friday said that he wasn’t sending ground troops to Iran, but added: “If I were, I certainly wouldn’t tell you”. Clarity, it seems, is not his intention.

The threat of such a move prompted Iran’s state media to report on Saturday that any attack on Kharg Island would lead Iran to cause “insecurity” in the Red Sea, another key global shipping transit point, and “set fire” to energy facilities throughout the region.

Iran’s warning underscores the dangers that would accompany a US escalation that further exposes American military forces to Iranian reprisals.

Earlier this week, US media reported that the Trump administration was preparing to ask Congress for $200bn (£150bn) in emergency funding for the ongoing Iranian military operation. Such a request would suggest that, far from winding down, the White House is preparing for a long, expensive fight.

The initial reaction from Congress, including from Trump’s Republican allies, was cautious at best.

“We’re talking about boots on the ground. We’re talking about that kind of extended activity,” said Republican Congressman Chip Roy of Texas.

“They have got a whole lot more briefing and a whole lot more explaining to do on how we’re going to pay for it, and what’s the mission here.”

The so-called “fog of war” doesn’t just cloud the thinking of military planners, it also affects the perception of politicians and the public.

The Iran war, it seems, is at a pivot. But which direction it takes from here is a puzzle.

(BBC)

Latest News

Heat Index likely to increase up to ‘Caution level’ at some places in the Western, Sabaragamuwa, Southern and North-western provinces and in Anuradhapura, Monaragala, Mannar and Vavuniya districts

Published

1 day ago

2026/03/22

Priyan

Warm Weather Advisory
Issued by the Natural Hazards Early Warning Centre of the Department of Meteorology
at 3.30 p.m. on 21 March 2026, valid for 22 March 2026.

Heat index, the temperature felt on human body is likely to increase up to ‘Caution level’ at some places in the Western, Sabaragamuwa, Southern and North-western provinces and in
Anuradhapura, Monaragala, Mannar and Vavuniya districts.

The Heat Index Forecast is calculated by using relative humidity and maximum temperature and this is the condition that is felt on your body. This is not the forecast of maximum temperature. It is generated by the Department of Meteorology for the next day period and prepared by using global numerical weather prediction model data.

Effect of the heat index on human body is mentioned in the above table and it is prepared on the advice of the Ministry of Health and Indigenous Medical Services.

ACTION REQUIRED
Job sites: Stay hydrated and takes breaks in the shade as often as possible.
Indoors: Check up on the elderly and the sick.
Vehicles: Never leave children unattended.
Outdoors: Limit strenuous outdoor activities, find shade and stay hydrated.
Dress: Wear lightweight and white or light-colored clothing.

Note:
In addition, please refer to advisories issued by the Disaster Preparedness & Response Division, Ministry of Health in this regard as well. For further clarifications please contact 011-7446491.