Hazlewood four-for and a Bhuvneshwar three rip Delhi for 75 as RCB cruise home in 6.3 overs
Royal Challengers Bengaluru bowled Delhi Capitals out for 75 in 16.3 overs at the Arun Jaitley Stadium on Monday night and ran the chase down inside the powerplay. Nine wickets in hand. 81 balls to spare. The 39th match of IPL 2026 lasted just under two hours of cricket, and almost all of it belonged to Josh Hazlewood and Bhuvneshwar Kumar.
Hazlewood finished with 4 for 12. Bhuvneshwar bowled his three overs for 5 runs and three wickets. Between them they reduced Delhi to 8 for 6 in 3.5 overs, which is also where the night was decided. The Capitals' 13 for 6 in the powerplay is the lowest in IPL powerplay history.
A new-ball spell that decided everything
Rajat Patidar won the toss and bowled, and the swing he asked for arrived almost immediately. Bhuvneshwar bowled debutant Sahil Parakh for a duck with a yorker in the first over. Hazlewood took out KL Rahul with a short ball that Rahul top-edged on the pull, then had Sameer Rizvi nick a drive to slip on the very next delivery, and the dressing room then watched Nitish Rana pop a catch to Padikkal at wide slip. Inside three and a half overs, Delhi were 8 for 6 and the chase was already a formality.
Abhishek Porel kept the Capitals from a sub-50 total with 30 off 33 balls, the only DC batter to pass 20. Hazlewood came back to bowl him with a yorker that did not need to swing. The match scorecard shows 75 all out, but the night was effectively over before the powerplay closed.
Bethell, Padikkal and a Kohli finish
RCB's chase took 6.3 overs. Jacob Bethell opened with Virat Kohli and went hard from ball one, hitting two sixes in a 20 that ended on a sharp running catch by T Natarajan. Devdutt Padikkal then took over with 34 not out off 13, and Kohli finished things with back-to-back sixes off Natarajan to bring up his unbeaten 23 and the win at the same time.
The other thing that finished was a long wait for a milestone. Kohli walked in 11 short of 9,000 IPL runs and became the first batter in the league's history to clear it. The Arun Jaitley Stadium is the ground where he played his Ranji Trophy cricket. The crowd, on a night when the home side never really had one, gave him a long ovation.
Where this leaves the table
RCB move clear in the top half on net run rate alone, given the manner of the chase. Punjab Kings still lead the standings, but the gap behind them is bunched. Delhi, who had felt within reach of a top-four spot last week, are now back to looking at their fixture list with a calculator. They have lost top-order match-ups in three of their last five, and Axar Patel has not had a single new-ball pairing pick up wickets the way RCB's did on Monday.
Patidar, asked at the presentation about the powerplay, kept it simple. The ball had moved, his bowlers had pitched it up, and the rest had followed. It is not always more complicated than that.
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