Kohli's 81 and a Padikkal blitz get RCB home as Sudharsan's hundred is not enough in Bengaluru
Royal Challengers Bengaluru pulled off the chase of the night to beat Gujarat Titans by five wickets at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium on Friday, running down 206 with seven balls in hand in match 34 of IPL 2026. Virat Kohli made 81 off 44. Devdutt Padikkal blazed 55 off 27. Sai Sudharsan's 58-ball hundred up the other end, his third in the IPL, ended up on the losing side.
Rajat Patidar won the toss and bowled, which was always the call at Chinnaswamy. Shubman Gill must have wondered about that decision for the first forty minutes of his own innings.
Sudharsan and Gill lay the platform
Gujarat batted like a side that knew what this ground can do. Sudharsan and Gill went at the top in the way good opening partnerships do, picking the bowlers apart without ever looking rushed. Gill fell for 32, but by then the pair had put on 128 for the first wicket and the innings had a life of its own.
Sudharsan kept going through eleven fours and five sixes and reached his hundred off 58 balls. The innings also took him past Chris Gayle on the all-time list of fastest batters to 2,000 IPL runs, the Gujarat opener getting there in 47 innings to Gayle's 48. Jason Holder added a brisk 23 not out off ten with two sixes in the last over. Gujarat closed on 205 for 3.
Kohli gets a life, and takes everything it offers
The chase had a moment early that shaped the rest. Kohli was dropped on nought by Washington Sundar, and the rest of his 44-ball stay read like a reminder of how little margin there is when he is set. He and Padikkal took the second-wicket stand past 100, and Padikkal did most of the punishing. Six sixes in a 20-ball fifty, and the required rate never got a chance to climb.
Holder eventually came back on and bowled Kohli for 81, a ball short of a first IPL century this season. Rashid Khan bowled Padikkal on 55. Neither dismissal mattered by then. RCB were close enough that the finishing was almost an afterthought, and they got home with seven deliveries to spare.
Where this leaves the table
RCB move to ten points from this run of results, with Punjab Kings still out in front of the pack. Gujarat will look back at the chase, at the dropped catch, and at Sudharsan's hundred and know they deserved more from a night that started so well. The Chinnaswamy dew is a hard problem for a visiting captain, and Gill was not the first one to find that out this season.
Patidar had said at the toss that chasing was the plan and that Bengaluru under lights would come to RCB. It did. Kohli, dropped on zero, used every one of the next 44 balls like he knew the second chance might not come again.
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