By Prakash Nair 
Bengaluru, April 24: For about four overs in the middle of this chase, it genuinely felt like GT might pull it off. Virat Kohli was back in the pavilion. Devdutt Padikkal had been bowled through the gate. Rajat Patidar lasted eight balls. Jitesh Sharma caught at the boundary. Four wickets gone, 65 needed, Chinnaswamy holding its breath.
And then Tim David and Krunal Pandya just sorted it.
Royal Challengers Bengaluru won by 5 wickets with 7 balls to spare. RCB 206 for 5 in 18.5 overs, chasing GT’s 205 for 3.
They go second on the points table. They close out their last home league game at Chinnaswamy with a win. Four from five at this ground this season. The crowd got what it came for, even if it took a few nervous overs to get there.
The Drop That Changed Everything
The chase started with a moment that Washington Sundar will want to forget for a long time.
Mohammed Siraj went full on the pads first over, Kohli clipped it in the air, and it went straight to Sundar at short midwicket a regulation catch at a comfortable height, one he would hold nine times out of ten. He dropped it. Clean drop. No hesitation, just the ball going straight through.
Kohli survived, RCB breathed easy, and GT missed the kind of chance that, in a chase of 206, can absolutely swing a game.
It swung this one. From that moment, Kohli looked like a man playing with house money. The dropped catch gave him the licence to go after the bowling without that tight feeling in the chest that an early scare usually leaves behind. He used it fully.
Jacob Bethell, coming in as Impact Player at the top, found two fours off Siraj in the third over one on each side of the wicket, both deliberate, both good shots. He looked settled. And then, going for the same option on the last ball of the over, he found Shahrukh Khan at backward point and was gone. Short stay. Big enough contribution to get things moving.
Padikkal was already in the middle. And Padikkal had a different kind of evening in mind.
Padikkal Takes Rashid Apart
There is a particular quality to Devdutt Padikkal when he is in this kind of mood. He does not look rushed. He does not look like he is taking risks. He reads the ball early, decides quickly, and executes with a cleanness that makes it look easier than it has any right to be.
He read Rashid Khan’s wrong’un early and launched it over the ropes with authority. Then he did it again inside-out over extra cover for a clean maximum off the very next delivery. Two sixes off the best spinner in the competition, in the same over, at the stage of a chase where most batters are still working out their plan against him. The crowd reacted to both. The second one brought the house down.
By the end of the powerplay, RCB were 58 for 1. Kohli was on 22 off 15. Padikkal on 20 off 11. The required rate was under control, the dew was doing what dew does at Chinnaswamy under lights, and the chase was starting to look less like a challenge and more like a procession.
The hundred came up in the ninth over. By the 11th, they were 131 for 1. GT needed something. What they got instead was Kohli hitting Rashid Khan over deep mid-wicket for a six the one the crowd had specifically been waiting for all evening.
The Records Inside the Innings
While the chase was unfolding, Kohli was quietly rewriting the record books. Again.
Chasing 206 on a big night at home, he reached his fifty in just 30 balls a blend of precision and game awareness that has defined his IPL batting for the better part of a decade.
During his stay at the crease, he became the first player in IPL history to hit 800 career fours. He also reached 300 sixes for a single franchise punishing Rashid Khan and Prasidh Krishna with his trademark flicks and straight lofts.
He entered tonight with 8,908 career IPL runs. He needs 92 more to become the first player to reach 9,000. That will happen somewhere else, in some other city, in some other game. Tonight was about winning this one.
His final score was 81 off 44 balls 8 fours, 4 sixes. He was furious when he got out. Played Jason Holder onto his own stumps and stood there for a second with that expression he gets, the one that says he knows exactly what he left behind. He walked off to a standing ovation that lasted a full minute. The crowd at Chinnaswamy does not do things quietly for Kohli. They never have.
GT Strike Back Briefly
The middle phase of the chase was genuinely tense. Rashid Khan bowled Padikkal through the gate for 55 off 27 balls 2 fours and 6 sixes a dismissal that came right when RCB were building nicely and GT desperately needed something to hold onto.
Then Holder got Kohli ball hit bat, hit stumps, end of story. Kohli was furious with himself walking back.
GT then took the wickets of Jitesh Sharma caught by Rashid and Patidar for just 8. Four wickets down, 173 on the board, 33 still needed with five overs left.
The crowd went from celebration mode to that specific Chinnaswamy tension that anyone who has sat in those stands will recognise. Not panic. Just a held breath, a refusal to exhale until the thing is done.
David and Krunal Close It Out
Tim David is not a complicated batter at this stage of a chase. He knows what he needs. He finds it. He hit cleanly, rotated when he had to, and kept Krunal Pandya on strike as often as possible because Krunal was timing the ball beautifully.
With 7 needed off the final 11 balls, Krunal was swinging freely, hitting big shots, taking RCB to the edge of the line. The winning runs came with 7 balls to spare. Not comfortable exactly, but controlled. The kind of win that a team chasing 206 should be pleased with when they lose five wickets doing it.
Chinnaswamy released everything it had been holding for those four nervous overs in the middle. The noise was extraordinary.
What This Win Actually Means
It means RCB are second. Ten points from seven games. They close out their Chinnaswamy chapter for the league stage the remaining home fixtures move to Raipur with a record of four wins from five at this ground. That is a number that speaks to a team that knows exactly how to play here.
More broadly, it speaks to a batting lineup that can absorb pressure and still find a way. They lost Kohli, Padikkal, Patidar, and Jitesh inside 15 overs of a 206-run chase. David and Krunal came in and knocked off the rest without drama. That is depth. That is confidence. That is a defending champion that has not forgotten what it means to win tight games.
For GT, it is a painful one. Sudharsan’s century had put them in a position to post something genuinely challenging. But they could not quite find that extra gear in the death overs they left somewhere between 15 and 20 runs out there. In a chase of 206 that RCB got with 7 balls remaining, those runs mattered.
Mohammed Siraj returned to Chinnaswamy and took one wicket Bethell’s early on but the game got away from his team before he could do the damage he was hoping for on his former home ground.
The Goodbye Chinnaswamy Has Earned
Before the chase started, before Kohli walked in, before the dropped catch and the Padikkal sixes and the Rashid breakthrough, there was a crowd that had shown up tonight knowing this was the last time this season they would watch their team at this ground.
They got four hours of cricket that had virtually everything. A century that broke a decade-old record in the first innings. A chase that swung multiple times in the second. Milestones, drama, nerves, release. Kohli hitting his 300th franchise six in front of 35,000 people who will tell someone about it tomorrow.
The Chinnaswamy did not get shortchanged on its farewell. It never really does.
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- Prakash Nair
- Prakash Nair
- Prakash Nair
- Prakash Nair
