Kohli's ninth IPL hundred powers RCB to the top

Royal Challengers Bengaluru 194 for 4 (Kohli 105*. Padikkal 39, Tyagi 3-32) beat Kolkata Knight Riders 192 for 4 (Raghuvanshi 71, Rinku 49*, Green 32) by six wickets

After back-to-back ducks in his last two innings, Virat Kohli showed most emphatically that he had merely been out of runs. not out of form, scoring his ninth IPL hundred to lead Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) to the top of the IPL 2026 table with a commanding win over Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) in Raipur.

Kohli's unbeaten 60-ball 105 was a vintage effort in a run-chase - smooth, controlled,. full of both relentless sprinting between the wickets and gorgeous strokeplay, particularly at either end of his innings. That he never seemed stretched. however, was perhaps the story of the match - it may have been decided by the relative quality of the bowling attacks, particularly the seamers.

RCB's bowlers did a superb job to keep KKR down to below 200 even though they only lost four wickets,. KKR's inexperienced seam attack simply couldn't match them for discipline and ability to extract misbehaviour from a slightly two-paced surface - with the caveat that it may have eased up a little during the second innings.

This was the first time RCB had fielded all three of Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Jacob Duffy. Josh Hazlewood - the legspinner Suyash Sharma made way. This suggested RCB expected conditions to play similarly to their previous game in Raipur, against Mumbai Indians, with seam movement. inconsistent bounce throughout.

When the match began - after a rain delay of an hour. a quarter - it became clear that this was a much better pitch to bat on, but there was still something in it for the seamers. Bhuvneshwar showed this with a cross-seamer that nipped away to nick off Finn Allen in the third over,. Hazlewood showed this by getting a short-of-length ball to rear at Ajinkya Rahane and have him caught and bowled off a miscued pull in the fifth over.

KKR still scored 56 in their powerplay, though,. 31 of those runs came in two overs from Duffy, who took the new ball ahead of Hazlewood, and didn't do too much that was obviously wrong, but Allen, Rahane and Angkrish Raghuvanshi were good enough to put away marginal errors in line and length.

Raghuvanshi and Rinku threaten big finish that doesn't materialise

Raghuvanshi. Cameron Green put on 68 for the third wicket, starting slowly and finding it tricky to time the seamers but making a concerted effort to go after the left-arm spin of Krunal Pandya. Raghuvanshi used the slog-sweep to try. put him off his length, and Green tried to do the same thing by using the depth of his crease. Krunal started by conceding just five in the eighth over, but his last three went for 34.

Rasikh Salam then sneaked a skidder through Green in the 13th over,. the wicket may have come at the ideal moment for KKR because Rinku Singh walked in and began to find the boundary almost immediately. Raghuvanshi too stepped up a gear, playing some eye-catching shots, including a short-arm jab off Duffy. an effortless inside-out six off Krunal to rush from 21 off 16 to 57 off 35.

At the 16-over mark, KKR were 153 for 3, seemingly poised to get past 200. But Bhuvneshwar, Hazlewood. Rasikh put on a death-bowling masterclass, nailing a high percentage of their yorkers and erring on the full side and bowling low full-tosses almost every time they erred. The one time they erred on the short side. sent down a slot ball, Rinku launched Bhuvneshwar for a big six over midwicket, showing the small margins for error the bowlers were operating with. KKR only scored 39 off their last four overs.

KKR handed a new cap to Saurabh Dubey, the 28-year-old Vidarbha left-arm seamer who had replaced the injured Akash Deep in their squad, brought him on as their Impact Player,. gave him the brand-new ball. And he began with a thrilling first over in which he found seam movement in both directions, beat Jacob Bethell's outside edge three times in the first four balls,. conceded just one run off the bat - a single to get off the mark that Kohli marked with a self-deprecating fist pump.

That Dubey over was the last bit of real joy with the ball for KKR. Vaibhav Arora kept drifting onto Kohli's pads in an 18-run second over,. then Bethell took his revenge on Dubey by going 6, 4, 4 at the start of the third.

Kartik Tyagi removed Bethell with a nasty short ball that rushed him on the pull, but he followed that up by straying down the leg side. overcompensating with width, and Devdutt Padikkal put both away to the boundary to get his innings moving.

RCB finished the powerplay at 66 for 1, with Kohli swivelling to pull Tyagi for six in the sixth over. ending that phase on 30 off 14.

From there, it was just a case of ticking off the remaining runs with no need for undue risk. No one is better at that game than Kohli. He scored eight twos - the joint third-most for him in an IPL innings -. found the boundary whenever the viewer may have wondered how long it had been since the last one. Mishaps at the other end - Tyagi dismissed Padikkal with an into-the-pitch cutter before pinging Rajat Patidar on the helmet; a Sunil Narine carrom ball forced a miscue from Patidar; Manish Pandey took a flying one-hander at point to send back Tim David - were mere blips in RCB's otherwise silky-smooth ride.

And as the end neared, Kohli grew more expansive, playing two of his most eye-catching shots - a straight six off Anukul Roy with barely any follow-through,. a whipped six of iron wrists off Tyagi - to hurry towards the century mark. He got there with a single off Arora in the 19th over,. Jitesh Sharma finished the game soon after, flat-batting Dubey past long-on to bring up victory with five balls remaining.