IPL-2025: Virat Kohli helps Royal Challengers Bengaluru defeats Punjab Kings by 7 wickets in Chandigarh
A comfortable victory for the Royal Challengers Bangalore and they are back to winning ways. It was an impressive effort by their bowlers to restrict the Punjab Kings to a mediocre total and their batters have completed the chase without breaking a sweat.
They were always in control. Earlier in the day, the RCB spinners – Krunal and Suyash claimed a couple of wickets each, while Bhuvi and Hazlewood were outstanding towards the end overs. They didn’t allow the Punjab players break free in the death overs, eventually restricting them below the 160-run mark.
In reply, RCB did lose Salt in the first over of the run chase, but Kohli and Padikkal had a solid partnership for the second wicket. Padikkal was aggressive in the powerplay and also following that. In the process, he also notched up a brisk fifty. And once DDP departed, Kohli took control of proceedings. He notched up his 59th IPL fifty and took RCB over the line in the 19th over. A clinical performance by the Challengers indeed. Stay around for the presentations..
Padikkal: It was important when I went in that I built a partnership with Virat. These small totals can be tricky and I wanted to make sure I give a good start. There’s been a lot of hard work that’s gone in the last few months. With DK and Andy I’ve worked on certain aspects and it’s coming off now. When you have someone on the other side with that much confidence and calmness, it makes your job easy.
Playing for my home state and city is very special. It always feels a little bit more special when you play for them and play in the Chinnaswamy as well. There’s a lot of confidence in the side. Everyone is batting well and getting runs. We haven’t batted well in our home conditions, which is something we have to accept and take responsibility for. Hopefully we can really work on that.
Shreyas Iyer: Just a minor niggle, should be fine after this game. If you see the majority of our batters like to go from ball one, we’ve struggled to assess the wicket when we bat first. Otherwise we’ve not been able to capitalise on the starts we’ve been getting. We weren’t able to set a total we could defend. If you see the positives, we got a great start, the bowlers have been doing a tremendous job. Credit to Virat and the boys, they played well.
We keep talking about adapting to the wicket, once the ball gets old it doesn’t skid off the wicket that well. Both of them (openers) are great strokemakers, it’s hard for them to comprehend if you tell them to slow down. Need to take the bull by the horns and see to it that we get a good total on the board for the bowlers. I’m in a great mindspace, I just need to cross 10 runs and I can take on the charge.
Don’t want to give reasons, want to stay in the present as much as possible. We’ve got six days off, important that we go back to the drawing board, also important we rejuvenate and refresh, need to make sure we’re in the best shape possible before the next game.
Virat Kohli | Player of the Match: Very important game for us. 2 points can make a massive difference in terms of qualification. We have played some amazing cricket away from home. When you go from eight to ten (points), it makes a massive difference in the points table.
The mindset has to be to get 2 points in every game. I wanted to accelerate more. I thought Dev made a difference today, this award should go to him, I don’t know why they have given it to me. I try to stay there, holding one end up and try to accelerate later. There always is a temptation to keep going in the same way.
