Shreyas Gopal bagged his maiden hat-trick in the Indian Premier League (IPL) on Tuesday against Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) at the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru. The leg-spinner picked up important wickets of AB de Villiers, Virat Kohli and Marcus Stoinis to halt RCB’s rampaging start after the hosts were off to a flyer with Kohli and AB garnering 23 runs off the first over. Kohli and AB got off to a sensational start as the RCB skipper went after Varun Aaron right from the first delivery tonking him for a six. He slammed another six of the next delivery before AB got two boundaries to finish the over with 23 runs from it.
Kohli continued his blitzkrieg against Gopal in the second over as he lofted a flighted first delivery into the stands for a six before getting a boundary off the next ball. Kohli then took a couple of the next ball before Gopal got him caught by Liam Livingstone trying to hit a six. Gopal dismissed Kohli for the second time in this season.
On the next delivery, AB was caught by Riyan Parag before Marcus Stoinis was caught on a duck by Steve Smith as Gopal became the fourth Rajasthan Royals bowler to bag a hat-trick in the IPL.
In the end, rain played spoilsport once again as the match was abandoned with the two teams getting 1 point each. With no result, RCB were officially ousted from the playoffs race.
