Royal Challengers don’t challenge (IPL 12th Match Rajasthan Royals inning's Highlights)

Rahul Dravid’s Bangalore Royal Challengers came into their match against the Rajasthan Royals knowing they were in for a tough test, after the Shane Warne led side from Jaipur recovered from losing their first game to win the last two on the trot.

Now that Bangalore’s victory over the Mumbai Indians has been put into perspective, with the Mumbai side emerging as the tournament’s whipping boys, the southern team had some pressure to put another two points on the board.

Their first innings score of 135 from 20 overs did not inspire a great deal of confidence that they would be able to do so.

Dravid himself, as captain and opening batsman, must shoulder some of the blame for that eventuality. He and Shiv Chaderpaul needed to score first up, and even though the world known that Dravid was not exactly created for Twenty20 cricket, seeing him perish to an ill-judged pull to his first, and the match’s second, ball was painful for the home fans.

The Kiwi Ross Taylor came in for Dravid, and has scored 12 runs off his first three balls when Chanderpaul went, similarly to Dravid but off the bowling of Watson, having scored two of nine balls.

If these two international maestros made the going look tough, young Taylor exacted precisely the opposite effect. He hit six fours and three sixes, to score 44 off 20 balls, when he was dismissed in the eighth over. Jacques Kallis had come and gone in the meantime, and what followed was succession of promising innings Shane Warne for another captain’s performance with the ball.