By Prakash Nair 
Mumbai, April 12: Nobody told Royal Challengers Bengaluru they were supposed to be the wounded side tonight.
They had just lost to the Rajasthan Royals. They had taken the flight to Mumbai carrying that particular kind of silence a dressing room holds after a defeat. And then they walked out at the Wankhede, under the lights, in front of a crowd that was absolutely ready to bury them, and played as if none of that had happened at all.
RCB finished with 240/4. Off 20 overs. At the Wankhede. Against a Mumbai Indians bowling attack that contains Jasprit Bumrah.
Let that sit for a moment.
Hardik Wins the Toss, and Things Go Downhill From There
Mumbai Indians captain Hardik Pandya won the toss and chose to bowl. On paper, sensible. Night match, Mumbai humidity, dew rolling in after the 15th over you want to bat second, chase under lights, give Bumrah and Boult the new ball to do their damage first. Classic Wankhede logic.
MI also made two changes. Mitchell Santner came back in after a fitness scare, and Mayank Markande was handed a start. Ghazanfar and Deepak Chahar sat out. RCB brought in Jacob Duffy for Josh Hazlewood. Minor shuffles. Nothing suggested either side was dramatically different from what they had been all season.
And then Phil Salt walked out to open, and the match became something else entirely.
Salt Just Doesn’t Care
There are T20 openers who are aggressive. And then there is Phil Salt, who seems to operate on a completely different frequency from everyone else on the field. He does not ease into an innings. He does not respect reputations. He took one look at MI’s opening bowlers on Sunday evening and decided, apparently, that 78 off 36 balls was the appropriate response.
He hit boundaries almost at will in the powerplay. When the field was up, he drove. When the field spread, he found the gaps anyway. Shardul Thakur was the man who finally got him, but by that point Salt had already done what he came to do. RCB were 100 inside nine overs. The crowd had gone from confident to concerned to outright disbelieving.
The opening partnership between Salt and Virat Kohli put on 120 runs. For the first wicket. Before the 12th over.
Hardik’s toss decision was starting to look a lot less clever.
Kohli Does Kohli Things
Virat Kohli, to his credit, was not the one going berserk. While Salt was busy dismantling the MI attack at one end, Kohli batted with the kind of focused calm that only players with a thousand international caps seem to manage. He picked gaps, rotated strike, and let Salt take all the risk. He reached his fifty and looked ready to go even bigger.
Then Hardik came on himself. He has his limitations as a captain this season, but the man still knows how to take a wicket when he needs one. He got Kohli holed out in the deep right after the fifty caught pushing for a big one, trying to accelerate, finding the fielder instead of the rope. It was MI’s first real moment of the match. The crowd came alive again, briefly.
Briefly.
Then Patidar Happened
Rajat Patidar has been one of the quiet stories of IPL 2026. He is captaining RCB for the first time, leading a side that used to be defined entirely by one man’s presence, and doing it with a confidence that frankly nobody outside Bengaluru fully anticipated. On Sunday, he did not just lead the side. He batted like a man in the middle of the best form of his career.
27 runs off seven balls. Five sixes in total during his stay. When Mayank Markande came on to bowl, Patidar hit him for three sixes in a single over, the kind of over where you can physically see a bowler’s confidence drain in real time.
RCB crossed 150 in the 13th over. The MI bowling attack, which had looked so threatening on paper, never truly got a foothold. 240/4 was the final number. Tim David and Jitesh Sharma in the lower order made sure there was no drift in the final three overs.
Where Things Stand
This result matters beyond the scorecard. MI came in having won just one from three. RCB, despite the Rajasthan loss, were sitting comfortably with 4 points and a settled lineup. A 240-run total on a Wankhede surface that was doing nothing for the bowlers was exactly the kind of statement RCB needed to make, not just to the rest of the tournament, but to themselves.
For MI, the concern is deeper. The toss went their way. The conditions were set up for their bowling attack to perform. And they still conceded 240. Bumrah will not bowl like this every game; he rarely does, but the supporting cast once again looked short of the required quality to contain a batting side firing on all cylinders.
There is a version of this Mumbai Indians team that can chase 241. Rohit Sharma, Suryakumar Yadav, Tilak Varma, and a settled lower order are not short of options. The dew would have made batting easier as the night wore on, and the Wankhede surface was still true.
Still. 241 in 20 overs. That is not a target. That is a mountain.
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- Prakash Nair
- Prakash Nair
- Prakash Nair
- Prakash Nair
