Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) opener Jacob Bethell expressed his feelings after witnessing disastrous hitting from right-hand batter Romario Shepherd in the final few overs of the first innings against the five-time champions Chennai Super Kings (CSK) in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 clash at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium on Saturday. With two overs left, Romario Shepherd muscled the ball away for back-to-back maximums with brute power. Fortune was indeed on his side as the third ball took the top edge and flew to the fence for a four.
The explosive Caribbean batter tormented Khaleel and Chennai by smacking the ball with two sixes on the trot. The no-ball on the fourth delivery made Khaleel run out of ideas, but he came back with a dot on the fifth one. Khaleel tried to get out of jail, but a four on the final ball saw RCB take away 33 runs from the penultimate over.
Pathirana tried to contain Shepherd in the final over, but the West Indies hard-hitter drilled the ball for a four and then shovelled it for a six to bring up the 50-run partnership in just 15 deliveries. He sent the final ball into the third tier to finish with an unbeaten 53 from 14 as RCB blazed to 213/5.
Speaking about Shepherd’s knock, Bethell said in the mid-innings interview, “It was pretty incredible to watch (Shepherd’s knock). I don’t think he middled many balls there, but he was still smacking it two tiers out, which shows the power of the man, and it was nice for him to do that. And for TD (Tim David) to be at the other end…to have that much power is pretty cool. The chats were just making sure we keep hitting the ground and react to everything else. The pitch felt it wasn’t bouncing as much, I have not batted on it this season.”
The left-hand batter further spoke about the talks between him and Cirat Kohli while they were in the middle during the first innings. Both players built a marvellous opening partnership of 97 runs from 59 balls where Bethell (55) and Kohli (62) both of them scored half centuries.
“The feedback from Virat was it was a slightly better wicket with the new ball. It was pretty nice, there wasn’t much swing and that made it (batting) easier. It (batting with Kohli) is pretty cool, even in Delhi. Just to match his intensity, and today was lovely to spend some more time with him. When I walked off I said 210, I am happy with 3 more than that, there was a stumble in the middle and hopefully our spinners can enforce a bit of that on them in the middle overs, but for Romario to come out and strike like that has put us on a great total,” the southpaw added.
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