From back-to-back ducks to a record-setting 105: Kohli's IPL 2026 reset in six days
Six days separated Virat Kohli's worst run in the IPL since 2023 from the night he became the fastest player to 14,000 runs in T20 cricket. That is roughly how long the panic was allowed to last.
The two ducks came in successive games. On 7 May at the Ekana Stadium, Lucknow Super Giants pacer Prince Yadav slid a 140.4 kph nip-backer between bat and pad and into Kohli's off stump for a two-ball nought, in a rain-shortened 19-over chase that several outlets tagged as the ball of the tournament. It was Kohli's first IPL duck since 2023 and his first while chasing in nine years, and it added Prince Yadav to the select group of bowlers ever to dismiss Kohli for zero in the league. On 10 May in Raipur, Mumbai Indians' Deepak Chahar coaxed a first-ball loft to mid-off, where Raj Angad Bawa held the catch comfortably and Kohli walked back for a golden duck. Back-to-back IPL ducks for the second time in his career.
Three days, one chase, five records
The response came against Kolkata Knight Riders at the same Raipur venue on 13 May. Chasing KKR's 192 for 4, Kohli walked in and built his ninth IPL century, an unbeaten 105 off 60 balls at a strike rate of 175 with eleven fours and three sixes, closing the chase out with five balls to spare. Until that knock he had not scored an IPL hundred since 2024.
The records came in a stack. He became the first batter in IPL history to make a century after consecutive ducks, the fastest player to 14,000 runs in T20 cricket at 409 innings, fourteen innings inside Chris Gayle's previous mark of 423, the first Indian to that landmark, and the first Indian to ten T20 hundreds across all formats of the shortest format. RCB went to the top of the IPL 2026 table on the win.
The story is the speed of the recovery
It is tempting to read the arc as a 37-year-old reminding everyone, again, that the noise around his form lives almost entirely outside his own head. The flatter, more accurate read is about how short the bad spell was. The whole sequence, from Ekana to Raipur, lasted six days. Between the second duck and the century was 72 hours.
That is the part that should make the rest of the league uncomfortable. Sai Sudharsan has been the most prolific opener of the season for Gujarat, Bhuvneshwar Kumar has run away with the Purple Cap, and Kohli still walked into the Orange Cap conversation with a single innings. RCB had been a couple of bad sessions away from a top-two slip when he walked out at Raipur. Six overs into the chase, the conversation flipped back to whether anyone can catch them.
The two ducks are also useful for what they show about how the rest of the league is bowling at him. Prince Yadav's nip-backer and Chahar's awkward early-overs length both attacked the inside of the stumps with a hard new ball, and the dismissals looked planned, not lucky. Teams have a blueprint, which means Kohli will get the same shape again in the playoff weeks. The 105 says only that the blueprint did not survive the first time he saw it again.
Cricket Updates
