‘RCB will give this IPL a red-hot crack, they could win it this year’: Former Australian speedster makes bold prediction

Royal Challengers Bangalore took a step forward in their bid to qualify for the IPL playoffs with a convincing eight-wicket win over the Sunrisers Hyderabad on Thursday.
Batting first, the Sunrisers set a target of 187 runs for RCB with Heinrich Klaasen leading the way with a spectacular 104 runs. However, Kohli spoiled the party for the home team as he scored his first century in this edition of the IPL.
The victory helped RCB climb to the fourth position in the points table.
“It keeps getting better and better. Those two guys went out with the right intent. Klaasen was A-grade and then Kohli came in and just went bang,” said Brett Lee on Jio Cinema.
“Some of those shots that Kohli played, the way I liked how he places things was, he gave himself a chance to talk. He wasn’t moving around a lot… When he’s playing shots like these, you know he’s on… They gave themselves a chance, both those guys, and you also have to give credit also to Faf du Plessis, who was a great ally and allowed Kohli to steal the game,” he added.
Brett Lee also made a bold prediction that Bangalore has a genuine shot of seeing the city’s first IPL title since the tournament’s inception.
“RCB, they will give this IPL a red-hot crack. I have got them in my top four and watch out, they could win it this year,” said Lee.
This was an important win for RCB, as a loss would have increased the Mumbai Indians’ chances of qualifying over them.
Former India pacer Zaheer Khan was happy to see that RCB and Kohli managed to rise up to the occasion.
“All other teams in the points table were waiting for RCB to lose tonight, so there was pressure. We’ve seen this team crumble under pressure in previous seasons. From that lens, this inning is even more meaningful given how Klaasen batted for Hyderabad. After that, it seemed like this pitch wouldn’t be helpful to batters.
“It didn’t seem like that with Virat and that elevates the value of it. Whenever Virat gets to hitting fours early, he hit four to five fours in his first two overs. He scored 22 runs and 20 of them were through fours. He built a strong platform and then took it into the zone. It seemed like we were going to see something special, and we got to see something special,” said Zaheer.