Royal Challengers Bengaluru eased past Lucknow Super Giants by five wickets on Wednesday night, chasing 147 with seven balls to spare, but the talking-point was Virat Kohli turning up only as the Impact Player – and still top-scoring with 49 from 34.
“I’m still not 100%,” he admitted after collecting the Orange Cap for moving to 228 runs this season. “My knee was a bit sore last game. Even health-wise, I’ve been under the weather for four or five days now.”
Key facts first
• RCB left Kohli out of the starting XI, bowled first, then activated him at the change-over.
• He blasted 34 from his first 14 balls, setting up a powerplay of 60 for 1 on a surface he later called “slower than normal”.
• Rajat Patidar, now RCB captain, chipped in with 27 off 13; Tim David and Romario Shepherd finished the job.
• The win lifts RCB into the top half of the table; LSG, restricted to 146 for 7, stay mid-pack.
Why the Impact route?
Kohli had pulled up with knee soreness during Sunday’s game against Mumbai and missed the fielding innings entirely. Management decided the substitute option offered the safest route while still giving him time in the middle. The gamble worked; he looked fluent, if not quite free of discomfort.
Plan was clear
“We thought it’s going to be a dry, slow wicket rather than one of those bare ones that are tacky,” he explained. “So the idea was to push the game away from the opposition in the first five-six overs.”
The numbers back him: RCB were 67 for 2 after six; the required rate never climbed above eight.
Intensity versus finish
“I started off well today, so I was happy with my intensity,” Kohli said. “Then again, would have liked to carry on and finish the game off … in the end should have probably finished that one off as well.” The dismissal – drilling a low full-toss to long-on – left him shaking his head. Yet by then only 38 were needed from 44, and the lower order had breathing space.
Heat takes bite out of the pitch
Bengaluru has been unusually hot and dry this week, barely any breeze in the evenings. Those conditions, plus thin grass cover, produced a surface with variable pace. Slower balls gripped, strokes off the splice were common, and only four sixes came in the first 15 overs of the match. As Kohli put it: “If you saw, there was not enough grass on it … it was different.”
LSG stuck in second gear
Quinton de Kock, standing in for the injured KL Rahul, top-scored with 41 but found little support. RCB’s seamers, using cutters and wide yorkers, conceded only 25 in the final three overs. Shepherd’s 2 for 25 was the pick.
Patidar’s fearless brief
“Well, you know, we have our KPIs as a batting unit, and it says ‘Rajat to go in and assess the situation’,” Kohli joked afterwards. “I always tell him, you’re probably looking to assess the bowler’s heart rate rather than the situation – like, where do these guys stand?”
Patidar and Rajasthan’s Vaibhav Sooryavanshi are the only two batters this IPL with 200-plus runs at a strike rate above 200. That stat, remarkable as it is so early in the tournament, reflects a broader trend: teams stacking batting depth and freeing the top order to swing hard.
Depth breeds freedom
“The way our management has stacked up our team, it allows us to play in a certain way,” Kohli noted. With David at No. 6 and Shepherd at No. 7, RCB can afford a collapse or two; on Wednesday, they barely needed the cushion.
What next?
RCB travel to Jaipur on Saturday, where another dry deck beckons. The medical staff expect Kohli to train lightly on Friday and decide on full selection on match-day. He cares more about how he moves than how he feels, he said, and right now he feels “much, much better than the last game”.
If the knee holds, expect him back in the main XI. If not, this Impact-sub workaround looks a decent stop-gap – and, judging by Wednesday, plenty effective.
