Rangpur Riders 189 for 2 (De Villiers 100*, Hales 85*, Russell 2-30) beat Dhaka Dynamites 186 for 6 (Talukdar 52, Pollard 37*, Reza 2-32) by eight wickets
How the game played out
Rangpur Riders runaway train whistled past Dhaka Dynamites at breakneck speed in a thumping eight-wicket win with 10 balls to spare. AB de Villiers and Alex Hales were joint conductors during a rollicking 184-run partnership, the highest of BPL 2018. De Villiers had simmered in his first two innings of BPL 2018 before finally exploding for a 50-ball unbeaten century while Hales clubbed 85 not out off 53 balls, including the winning runs.
Rangpur’s rampaging Powerplay, in which they ended on 63, made the Dynamites effort look tame by comparison, especially considering that the Dynamites took until their 21st ball to score a boundary after choosing to bat first at the toss. The early crawl cost them on a batting paradise that produced two centuries on the day, first with Evin Lewis of Comilla Victorians in the afternoon before de Villiers capped off the night with his match-winning ton for the Riders.
Turning points
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Shakib Al Hasan was scoring at over 200 but went too far across his stumps attempting to scoop Farhad Reza in the 12th over to be bowled for 25
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Reza pulled off his second dramatic catch of the day in the 14th, running 20 yards left at deep midwicket before hurling his body full extension to clutch onto a skier from Andre Russell just inside the boundary
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After Russell dismissed Chris Gayle and Rilee Rossouw in the second, de Villiers hooked the hat-trick ball for six, then proceeded to torch Shakib, Russell and Sunil Narine for 22 more off his next seven balls, all boundaries
Star of the day
De Villiers showed why he’s a modern great with a typically audacious counterattack. He didn’t flinch in hooking Russell first up and never looked back. He took 24 balls to reach his half-century, then another 26 to reach three figures in a chanceless effort all while the Chattogram crowd chanted “A-B! A-B!”
The big miss
Perhaps sensing the need to have a big finish on a flat pitch, Dynamites allrounder Kieron Pollard decided before the start of the 20th over that he would face everything. While he hit two boundaries against Shafiul Islam, he also turned down three singles before chipping a last-ball yorker for one failing to provide a desired boom at the end of the Dynamites innings.
Where the teams stand
Riders moved into a three-way tie for first place on 12 points with Comilla Victorians and Chittagong Vikings, though Riders hold the edge over both on net run rate. Dynamites remain tied for fourth with Rajshahi Kings on 10 points, but Dynamites have a game in hand as well as a massive net run rate advantage.
Source: ESPN Crickinfo