Bengaluru, Apr 24 (IANS): In Royal Challengers Bangalore's seven-run win over Rajasthan Royals at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium on Sunday, fast bowler Harshal Patel was used as an impact player as he was unable to bat due to an injury and came in during bowling innings when Faf du Plessis, after striking 62 with the bat, did not feature as a fielder.

Harshal believes the impact player rule has been helpful for Bangalore in using him and du Plessis in their primary roles in the playing eleven. "The way we've been able to use Faf as a batter and myself as a bowler in this game has been really good for us."

"Both of us are carrying injuries which don't allow us to execute one of our skills: for him, it's fielding; for me, it's batting. The Impact (player) rule allows us to just go out and take care of our primary skills," he said after the game ended.

In a successful defence of 189, Bangalore were able to enforce a slowdown from overs 10-16, giving away only 37 runs as Rajasthan could make only 182/6. Harshal led Bangalore's charge in the middle overs, picking 3/32 while left-arm pacer David Willey shone with 1/26 in his four overs.

"I think the trend that we've seen here in the last few games is when the ball is hard and new it is a little easier to score runs but when the ball loses its shine and hardness, it becomes difficult to get the ball away."

"So even before we went into the field, the conversation was, even if they have a very good partnership up front, we're going to try and bowl back-to-back dot balls and be as aggressive as we can because we know how difficult it becomes in the latter half of the innings," added Harshal.

Bangalore's next game in IPL 2023 will be at home against Kolkata Knight Riders on Wednesday evening.