By Prakash Nair 
New Delhi, April 27: Seventy five runs. That is what DC managed tonight at their home ground. In front of their own crowd. On a pitch where teams regularly post 185 plus. Against a side they had already beaten once this season.
Seventy five.
Let that sit for a second.
Royal Challengers Bengaluru knocked those runs off in 6.3 overs. Nine wickets in hand. 81 balls not even bowled. The match was done so fast that people in the stands were probably still figuring out the parking situation when Virat Kohli hit the winning runs. Two back to back sixes off Natarajan and it was over. Just like that.
This was not a cricket match. By the time the first ten overs were done, it was already a post mortem.
Nobody Was Ready For What Happened in the First Three Overs
Here is the thing about DC coming into tonight. Five days ago this same team posted 264 against Punjab Kings. KL Rahul made 152 not out off 67 balls. The batting was supposed to be the identity of this side. The one thing nobody questioned.
Josh Hazlewood and Bhuvneshwar Kumar took that identity and completely shredded it inside the first three overs.
Young Sahil Parakh was making his IPL debut tonight. Eighteen years old, from Maharashtra, got his cap from Rahul before the game. He faced Bhuvneshwar’s first ball of the match. It swung away, caught the edge, went to Hazlewood at short third. One ball faced. Zero runs. Back in the hut.
The second ball of the match was a ripping inswinging yorker. Middle stump gone. Bhuvneshwar pumped his fist. The crowd went silent. And it only got worse from there.
In 2.4 overs, DC were 7 for 5. Five wickets gone before the third over was even finished. It has never happened before in IPL history. The earliest any team has ever lost five wickets in an innings. A record that DC will absolutely not want their name attached to.
Hazlewood then got Rahul. Bounced him out. The man who averages 69.91 against this very RCB side across his career. Gone cheaply. And then the very next delivery Hazlewood bounced out Nitish Rana too, angling it sharp into his armpit from around the stumps. Rana had no idea what to do with it. The bat went up, the ball lobbed softly to Padikkal at slip, and DC were 8 for 6 in the fourth over.
At that point people in the press box were genuinely looking up what the lowest total in IPL history was. DC were threatening to break it in real time.
Tristan Stubbs went for 5. Axar Patel edged behind in the same over as Stubbs. Everyone came and went. Nobody could stand at the crease long enough to build anything resembling an innings.
Abishek Porel came in as Impact Player and at least gave the innings a heartbeat. He made 30 off 33 balls and was the only batter all night to even cross 20. Hazlewood finished things off with a late swinging yorker that crashed into the stumps.
DC all out. 75 runs. Third lowest total in the history of the IPL.
At home. Against the team they had beaten in Bengaluru earlier this season. In front of a crowd that had come expecting a KL Rahul special.
Hazlewood Was a Different Level Tonight
4 wickets for 12 runs.
On a ground known for big hitting. On a surface where the average first innings score this IPL has been pushing 200. Against a batting lineup that had just posted 264 in its previous home game.
There are nights when a bowler is simply in a different zone to everyone else on the field. Hazlewood was in that zone from ball one. The bounce was testing, the seam movement was sharp, the yorkers were the kind that even good batters just cannot do anything about. He was not getting lucky edges. He was creating wickets, planning them, executing them.
Bhuvneshwar was just as good at the other end. He has been around since before most of DC’s younger batters were playing professional cricket, and tonight he looked every bit as dangerous as he did in his prime. The late swing, the inswinging yorker that shattered Parakh’s stumps on debut, the one that got Axar’s outside edge. He was relentless.
Between these two, DC never had a chance. The innings was over as a contest before it had properly started.
DC’s powerplay total tonight was the lowest in IPL history. Not in 2026. Not in recent seasons. Ever. In the entire history of the tournament since 2008. That is the company this performance puts them in, and not in a way any franchise wants to be remembered.
The Chase Lasted About as Long as a Bollywood Interval
Jacob Bethell hit the first ball he faced for four. The match was already over in spirit. Now it was just a matter of runs.
Kohli came to the crease and looked completely unbothered. A stepped four off Chameera, a couple of singles, everything ticking along smoothly. Bethell went after Jamieson with two sixes in the same over before getting out to a brilliant running catch by Natarajan on the boundary. That was the only wicket RCB lost all night.
By the third over RCB had already scored 26 runs. DC had scored 13 in their entire powerplay. RCB had doubled DC’s powerplay total in three overs with nine wickets standing.
At 6.3 overs, Kohli hit Natarajan back to back over the ropes. Match done. 77 for 1. Nine wickets. 81 balls unused.
The ground was half-empty before the presentation ceremony even started.
But here is the thing about Kohli’s innings tonight. It was not the winning runs that mattered most. It was the milestone buried inside them.
Virat Kohli tonight became the first human being in the history of cricket to score 9,000 runs in the IPL.
Nine thousand. Nobody else has ever done it. Nobody else is even close to doing it. He got there on a Monday night in Delhi, at the Arun Jaitley Stadium, the ground where he grew up watching the game before he started dominating it. The match around him lasted barely ninety minutes. The match was basically already won. And yet Kohli found a way to make it historic anyway.
That is just who he is at this point.
DC Need to Have a Very Honest Conversation With Themselves
Three losses from their last four games. Seventh on the table. And now this.
The bowling has been a problem since game one of this season. Everyone knew that coming in. But the batting was supposed to carry this team, the way it always has under Rahul. Tonight the batting produced 75. At home. The same batting lineup that made 264 five days ago looked like a completely different eleven tonight, and not in a good way.
Mitchell Starc was in the squad but did not play. Still being eased back in apparently. Whether he would have made a difference in the second innings is a conversation worth having. But the first innings happened before any of that mattered. No bowler in the world can defend 75.
Rahul had a night to forget against his old team. Parakh had the kind of debut you want to forget immediately. The experienced names in the middle order contributed almost nothing. When five wickets go inside three overs, there is no tactical adjustment that saves you. You just have to live with it.
The playoffs are still technically possible. But DC need to win most of their remaining games, and they need some results elsewhere to go their way. After tonight, that feels like a very tall order.
RCB Are Starting to Look Like the Real Deal
Six wins from eight. NRR jumped from 1.101 to 1.919 in a single evening. A bowling attack that can bowl the best batting lineup in the competition out for 75 on a flat pitch. And Kohli at the top of the order, in the form of his career, closing in on records that nobody else will ever touch.
Rajat Patidar won the toss, made the right call, backed his bowlers, and watched them do the rest. That is what good captaincy looks like when the players deliver. He did not need to be clever tonight. He just needed to let Hazlewood and Bhuvneshwar bowl.
RCB are defending their title and right now they look very, very capable of doing exactly that.
And Kohli has 9,000 IPL runs. In Delhi. Where it all began.
Some stories write themselves.
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- Prakash Nair
- Prakash Nair
- Prakash Nair
- Prakash Nair
