Kolkata, April 19 -- Maybe Royal Challengers Bengaluru need to stay on the road. At home, maybe they need to practise on a turf soaked in water. If playing at the Chinnaswamy was an alien experience all this while, Friday must have felt like running an obstacle course on the moon. Variable bounce, range hitting going awry, ball stopping in the outfield, basically every nightmare came true for RCB as Punjab Kings restricted them to 95/9 in a rain-truncated match at Bengaluru. For a while 49, IPL's lowest total, also scored by RCB (against KKR in 2017) looked in peril. But Tim David saved those blushes by muscling a boundary through deep backward square-leg while racing to a 26-ball 50.

As long as Josh Hazlewood was bowling, nothing was impo...