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Brilliant Kohli leads RCB back to the top

football13 May 2026 19:14| © MWP
By:Neil Manthorp
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The genius of Virat Kohli shows no signs of dimming despite two ducks in his previous innings as he stroked a sublime, unbeaten 105 to lead the Royal Challengers Bengaluru to a convincing six-wicket victory against the Kolkata Knight riders after choosing to bowl first in their Tata IPL match at the Shaheed Veer Narayan Singh Stadium in Raipur on Wednesday.

Replying to KKR’s 192-4 Kohli caressed 11 fours and three sixes in his century to dominate the run chase with Devdutt Padikkal making 39 from 27 balls in support, but it was truly the Kohli Show as RCB romped to the top of the log with five balls to spare.

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KKR opener Finn Allen (18 off eight balls) and captain Ajinkya Rahane (19 off 13) gave the visitors a quick start on a pitch offering some assistance to the seamers with Australian allrounder Cameron Green (32 off 24) and Rinky Singh (49* from 29) doing their best to accelerate but Angkrish Raghuvanshi was the glue which kept the innings together with all three batsmen struggling to achieve a strike rate of higher than 160.

Raghuvanshi was run out for 71 from 46 balls at the end of the innings with seven fours and three sixes, but his sensibly paced innings was in vain with the fire very much in Kohli’s belly.

RCB’s experienced seamers, Josh Hazlewood (4-0-35-1) and Bhuvneshwar Kumar (4-0-34-1), once again rose to the challenge of leading the attack while only New Zealander Jacob Duffy (0-48) conceded more than 10 run per over.

The result moves RCB into first place on the log with 16 points from 12 games and a guaranteed place in the playoffs but yet to be certain of a coveted top-two finish.

KKR remain in eighth place with nine points from 11 games and, although a mathematical possibility remains for a playoff place, they need to win their remaining three games and hope for a series of other, unlikely results to work in their favour.

ROYAL CHALLENGERS BENGALURU: Jacob Bethell, Virat Kohli, Rajat Patidaar (captain), Jitesh Sharma (wkt), Tim David, Venkatesh Iyer, Krunal Pandya, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Rasikh Salam Dar, Jacob Duffy, Josh Hazlewood.

KOLKATA KNIGHT RIDERS: Ajinkya Rahane (captain), Finn Allen, Angkrish Raghuvanshi (wkt), Cameron Green, Rovman Powell, Manish Pandey, Rinku Singh, Sunil Narine, Anukul Roy, Vaibhav Arora, Kartik Tyagi

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