Vaibhav Arora gave up the sitter completely as Devdutt Padikkal got a lease of life after missing a pull shot off Cameron Green.
Royal Challengers Bangalore have had a great start to the season and have continued their good form. With Virat Kohli still showing good form this season, the Bengaluru team was far from a flyer. They started with a great partnership.
RCB got off to a good start after restricting Kolkata Knight Riders to less than 200 runs. Although it looked very possible at one point, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Rasikh Salam and Josh Hazlewood prevented Rinku Singh and Angkrish Raghuvanshi from going past the 200-run total.
Devdutt Padikkal was dismissed by Vaibhav Arora.
Kolkata’s bowlers could not control the situation much after their fast bowlers gave away a lot of runs. However, Karthik Tyagi controlled the innings with a slower run rate than his teammates and dismissed Jacob Bettall in his very first over.
However, when Cameron Green was brought into the attack, he created a chance for a wicket in the first over. Devdutt Padikkal tries to pull one, and it goes straight into the hands of Vaibhav Arora at the square leg region. The fast bowler faltered and the missed chance gave life to the RCB batsman.
Padikkal has been in great form this season and has scored important runs for them throughout the season. He has scored at crucial junctures of the game and contributed to many important chases for the Challengers.
Devdutt Padikkal added 92 runs with Virat Kohli for the second wicket.
The left-handed batsman added 92 runs in the second wicket partnership with great Indian batsman Virat Kohli. After a great start of 37 runs for the first wicket, the opening partnership of Virat Kohli and Jacob Bethel fell apart.
With the arrival of Devdutt Padikkal in the powerplay, they got off to a great start with the experienced batsman. Kohli scored another half-century for the Challengers during the chase and aided the run chase for his team in Raipur.
Padikkal added a crucial 37 runs in a big partnership and faced the spinners well, almost taking Sunil Narine’s three overs into account. After the off-spinner was out in the power play, the left-handed batsman also hit a boundary on Narine.
Karthik Tyagi returned with another spell to dismiss Padikkal.
Bowler Karthik Tyagi, who took the only wicket in the game, returned to the match with his second spell today. He first dismissed Jacob Bethel with a sharp bouncer that almost took the English batsman’s head off.
He dismissed Devdutt Padikkal with a slow ball on the very first ball of his returning spell. He bowled it outside the off-stump, and the batsman, trying to slash it on the off-side, failed to gain proper height after Ajinkya Rahane caught it over the head.
This was the fifth half-century partnership for RCB between Padikkal and Kohli, while they also made two big century partnerships in this season of IPL 2026.
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