Gayle ensured the party began early on Thursday here in the Garden city.

Match 12 of the season, turned out to be a good home game for the team in red and gold.  RCB bowlers first set the tone by restricting the KKR to 154 with good medium pace bowling and the next half was the Gayle show in Chinnaswamy, Bangalore.

Couple of changes by both the teams getting into the match. KKR leaving out Brett Lee for Ryan Mcleran was an interesting swap. RCB winning the toss and put KKR in to bat. RCB medium pacers were right on the money, hitting the right lengths. Henriques and Vinay Kumar got the breakthroughs required and put KKR on the back foot. However we saw a promotion up the batting order for Yusuf Pathan and was clearly given the license to cut loose. It looked a good move till he hit one straight down the throat of the long on fielder  to a slower ball by Henriques. Manoj Tiwary joined the captain who was living dangerously and also was looking fidgety at the crease. He eventually gifted his wicket to Vinay kumar trying to slog one over mid-wicket not before scoring his 17^th 50 in IPL, most by any batsmen in the history of IPL. Tiwary tried to score some quick runs but the RCB death bowling was on display, hitting the Yorker length more often than not. Venky, the RCB bowling coach will be proud of his boys. KKR finally had to settle down to 154, at least  20 runs  short on this batting beauty at  Bangalore.

It was no brainier that when KKR came back to bowl had to get Gayle early. Narine was deployed  early  to bowl against Gayle. But the big man played him out instead of taking him on. It was clear that there is a lot of method to this batting madness of his. Narine did not leak runs but did not cause any damage either. Mayank Agarwal once again was disappointing. Captain Kohli joined Gayle and scored more than run a bowl before he got out to Balaji. The two Delhi boys Gambhir and Kohli got involved in the battle of words and had to be  separated by players. Anyone who has followed them in the past, would expect this from 2 hot headed passionate men. With Gayle there in the middle, it was matter of time before the action moved back to cricket, hitting those big sixes he is known for and he scored 9 of them. He literally murdered the bowling, so much so that KKR's dibley dobly successful bowler Rajat Bhatia was brought into the attack when the opposition needed 20 of 24 balls. His selection on lively wickets is then questionable.  ABD did not look at his best but was good enough to accompany Gayle to get RCB home with 15 balls remaining. Gayle was awarded man of the match yet again for his 85 of 50 balls. This victory puts RCB right on top of the table for the moment. KKR clearly need to get their team combination and strategy right for their away matches.