Gayle steals show in RC victory

Chris Gayle smashed a thrilling, unbeaten 128 as Royal Challengers Bangalore beat Indian Premier League leaders Delhi Daredevils by 21 runs.

On the day the West Indies toiled in Test action at Lord's, former captain Gayle was at his imperious best in the IPL.

Gayle's knock occupied 62 balls, 13 of which he hit for six with seven more going to the boundary.

He shared a stand worth 204 with Virat Kohli, who played second fiddle despite scoring 73 not out in 53 balls.

That saw play-off chasing RCB to 215 for one, the highest total of this year's tournament to date.

Delhi made a decent fist of chasing such an imposing target but lost too many wickets to set up a truly exciting finale.

Venugopal Rao, with 36 in 24 balls, and Ross Taylor, who bludgeoned 55 in just 26 deliveries, did their bit in chipping away at a formidable required-rate, while Andre Russell hit three of his 15 deliveries for six.

But Zaheer Khan struck three times, as did Prasanth Parameswaran, to sufficiently disrupt the momentum.

In the day's other match, Kings XI Punjab eased to a six-wicket victory over Chennai Super Kings at Dharmasala to keep their play-off prospects afloat.

Praveen Kumar, Azhar Mahmood and Parvinder Awana each took two wickets as Kings XI kept their opponents down to a modest 120 for seven in the first innings before skipper Adam Gilchrist eased them over the line with 21 balls remaining.