KL Rahul has been in fine form in IPL 2019
KL Rahul on Wednesday became the fastest Indian to score 3000 T20 runs during his 27-ball 42 against Royal Challengers Bangalore at the M. Chinnaswamy.
Rahul, who has continued his form from last year, took just 93 innings to reach the milestone during Kings XI Punjab's game against RCB in Bengaluru. Australia's Shaun Marsh leads the overall list as he just needed 85 innings to complete it.
The Karnataka dasher so far has scored 3029 runs from 105 at an average of 39.85 and his hit three centuries. Virat Kohli is the highest run-scorer in T20 cricket for India with 8305 runs at 40.91 and is followed by Rohit Sharma, who has scored 8023 runs. MS Dhoni stands third in this list as he has scored 6519 runs in T20s in 311 matches at an average of 39.82.
Rahul is also one of the three Indians to have a century across all the formats of the game in international cricket with Suresh Raina and Rohit Sharma being the other two.
However, despite Rahul's fine knock, Punjab couldn't chase down the target of 203 against Bangalore and lost their second match in a row.
Kings XI Punjab started the chase in earnest as Rahul (42 off 27 balls) and Chris Gayle (23 off 10 balls) added 42 in less than four overs to set the ball rolling. Mayank Agarwal (35 off 21 balls) continued the flurry of fours during his 59-run stand with Rahul.
Rahul and Mayank were out in quick succession before Pooran and David Miller (24) took charge with some lusty hitting added 68 off 8 overs as it boiled down to 30 off the final two overs. However, both Saini and Umesh did well to get another two points for the RCB.
Earlier, AB de Villiers' scintillating half-century and a 121-run stand with Marcus Stoinis propelled Royal Challengers Bangalore to 202 for four after being put into bat.
Sent into bat, De Villiers scored a brilliant unbeaten 82 off 44 balls with three fours and seven sixes, while Stoinis hammered 46 off 34 balls with two fours and three sixes.
In the last two overs, both Stonis and De Villiers hammered 45 runs off Mohammad Shami and Hardus Viljoen.
After reaching his 50 off 35 balls, De Villiers, smashed Shami for three sixes, plundering 18 runs in the penultimate over.
In the last over, both Stoinis and De Villiers hammered 27 runs off Viljoen, which helped the hosts to race past 200 runs mark.
