Kohli's unbeaten 105 ends the duck streak and pushes RCB back to the IPL 2026 top spot
Virat Kohli walked out at Raipur with two ducks behind him and 193 to chase. He walked off ninety-something minutes later unbeaten on 105, with Royal Challengers Bengaluru sitting back on top of IPL 2026 and Kolkata Knight Riders' season properly on the line.
Chasing 193 at the Shaheed Veer Narayan Singh International Stadium, RCB got there in 19.1 overs for the loss of four wickets. KKR had posted 192 for 4 in their twenty, built around Angkrish Raghuvanshi's 71 off 46 and a 49 not out from Rinku Singh. It looked competitive on a slow Raipur surface that had just sat through a 75-minute rain delay. It did not look enough once Kohli settled in.
The duck streak is over
Two innings, two first-ball dismissals. Kohli had not strung first-ball ducks together in the IPL since 2022, and the noise around it had got loud enough that Harsh Goenka's four-captains tweet earlier on Wednesday was being read as a partial shot at the RCB top order. The answer was 105 not out off 60, with eleven fours and three sixes at a strike rate of 175.
The shape of the innings was familiar in a way Kohli's last fortnight had not been. Quiet start. A few uncomplicated boundaries through point and cover. Then the lift between overs eight and fifteen when he and Devdutt Padikkal put on 92, with Padikkal contributing 39 before holing out and Kohli moving from the mid-thirties to ninety inside roughly six overs. Jitesh Sharma finished it off with a boundary, but the chase was decided long before that.
KKR ran out of overs, not ideas
This was not a poor Kolkata effort. Raghuvanshi played the best innings of his short IPL career, refusing to slow down through the middle overs and pacing the innings into the back ten. Rinku Singh did what Rinku Singh does at the death. Manish Pandey threw himself sideways to take a one-handed catch to remove Tim David that, in a tighter game, would have been the picture of the night.
The problem was that 192 on a used Raipur pitch with dew creeping in was always going to look small once the chase had a partnership. RCB's death bowlers Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Rasikh Salam and Josh Hazlewood had bowled tight yorkers to peg the total there, and KKR's own bowlers needed something similar in return. They did not get it.
RCB go top, KKR slide further
The win moves Bengaluru to twelve matches, eight wins, sixteen points and a net run rate of plus 1.053, ahead of Gujarat Titans on NRR with both teams tied on points. Three months ago RCB were being written off after a sluggish opening fortnight. They now have first place to defend with two league games left.
Kolkata's position is harder. The loss takes them to eleven matches, four wins, six losses, nine points, eighth in the table. Their playoff math was already tight before the toss; it is now closer to a long-shot calculation than a live race. The Chakaravarthy injury makes the next must-win look even taller.
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