The first doubleheader of the tournament proved out to be everything we all wanted as both the matches RCB vs KKR and PBKS vs DC became the high scoring affairs. After a series of low scoring matches, the fans were waiting to see some fireworks from the bats of players and boy were they cherished with batsman ship of the highest order by all four teams as Royal Challengers Bangalore scored 204-4 courtesy the Magic from Maxwell and AB “Superhuman” De Villiers in the first match, during the chase we saw glimpses of extraordinary shot-making from Shubhman Gill and Nitish Rana and Eion Morgan and Andre Russel showed some power hitting towards the end but eventually Kolkata Knight Riders fell short by a big margin of 38 runs in the end.
In the other game, we saw some of the crispest hitting by all four openers as Punjab Kings set a massive total of 196 runs for Delhi to chase, in reply courtesy of Orange cap winning knock of 92 in 49 balls by Shikhar Dhawan, Delhi Capitals chased the total down with 10 balls to spare.
With this much action in a day Twitter flooded with reactions from fans across the globe, here are some interesting ones.
#DelhiCapitals fans, have you pledged your ⚔️ yet?#DCvPBKS #VIVOIPL #IPL2021 #YehHaiNayiDilli pic.twitter.com/Erw2R5FFpo
— Star Sports (@StarSportsIndia) April 18, 2021
Leading run scorers in IPL history with the pull shot against pace:
1. D Warner – 648 runs
2. MS Dhoni – 609
3. C Gayle – 574
4. R Sharma – 554
5. S Dhawan – 528#IPL2021 #PBKSvDC— The CricViz Analyst (@cricvizanalyst) April 18, 2021
Loving the way ‘Punjabis’ are batting??? @klrahul11 @mayankcricket #DCvsPBKS @PunjabKingsIPL
— Vikrant Gupta (@vikrantgupta73) April 18, 2021
In the last three IPLs, KL Rahul has made 15 scores of 50+. Six of those innings have had a negative Batting Impact.
Peak, 2018 KL was phenomenal. But whether it's expectation, extra responsibility, or reverting to the mean, his recent approach is simply not working. #IPL2021
— Ben Jones (@benjonescricket) April 18, 2021
Most Man of the Match awards in IPL since 2018:
9 – ABD
8 – Dhawan
7 – Rahul
6 – Rashid Khan
6 – Watson#DelhiCapitals #DCvPBKS #IPL2021— Bharath Seervi (@SeerviBharath) April 18, 2021
We’ve TAKEN all 6️⃣ available points from our 3️⃣ games in Chennai. 💯
Over to Mumbai now! ✈️ #PlayBold #WeAreChallengers #IPL2021 #DareToDream #RCBvKKR pic.twitter.com/0ZgGQcTxkj
— Royal Challengers Bangalore (@RCBTweets) April 18, 2021
Death bowling. Cough cough. Death bowling.
1⃣ run off the 1⃣9⃣th over to Dre Russ!
If you didn't believe in Miyan Magic before…#PlayBold #WeAreChallengers #IPL2021 #DareToDream #RCBvKKR pic.twitter.com/bwYpJZB84J
— Royal Challengers Bangalore (@RCBTweets) April 18, 2021
Directions in which AB de Villiers can hit a ball : #RCBvKKR pic.twitter.com/bS5Oi7kxpg
— Gayatri Ganguly 🇮🇳 (@gayatriganguly) April 18, 2021