Date – 18 April 2009

It was a perfect start for Royal Challengers Banglore at Newlands, Cape Town where they beat last time IPL Champions Rajasthan Royals by 75 runs. New captain of Royal Challengers, Kevin Pietersen won the toss and elected to bat first. It was not the good start for Royal Challengers as Rajasthan all-rounder Dimitri Mascarenhas give early double blow to them by sending Jesse Ryder and Kiwi Ross Taylor back to pavilion. After that Robin Uthappa too joined company of Taylor and Ryder by scoring just 3 runs. But it was Pietersen and Dravid who started a fightback. Pieterson made 32 runs but the ‘Wall’ Dravid scored 66 runs from just 48 balls with eight fours and a six and put a total of 133 for 8 in 20 overs. In reply to this Rajasthan Royals opening batsman Asnodkar and Smith were bowled out by Praveen Kumar in first his two overs. Veteran leg spinner legend Anil Kumble helped Royal Challengers to win the match as he took 5 wickets in his 3.1 over by giving just 5 runs. No batsman of Rajasthan Royals scored more than 11 runs and whole time was bowled out for just 58 runs

Man Of The Match – Rahul Dravid

Playing XI –

RR – Graeme Smith, Swapnil Asnodkar, Niraj Patel, Ravindra Jadeja, Dimitri Mascarenhas, Mahesh Rawat (W), Tyron Henderson, Yusuf Pathan, Shane Warne (C), Munaf Patel, Kamran Khan
RCB – Robin Uthappa (W), Jesse Ryder, Ross Taylor, Kevin Pietersen (C), Rahul Dravid, Virat Kohli, Balachandra Akhil, Vinay Kumar, Praveen Kumar, Dale Steyn, Anil Kumble