A disciplined bowling display strangled Lucknow to 146, then Virat Kohli’s measured 49 and Rasikh Salam Dar’s four-wicket haul ensured Royal Challengers Bengaluru got home with 29 balls to spare — and the Chinnaswamy faithful had plenty to roar about.
There is something about the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium that brings out a particular kind of cricket — electric, uneven, and almost always entertaining. Wednesday evening in Bengaluru was no different. Lucknow Super Giants arrived as a side with genuine firepower and left having been picked apart by a bowling attack that refused to give them an inch when it mattered most. Royal Challengers Bengaluru sealed a five-wicket win in just 15.1 overs, chasing down 147 with authority and a certain swagger that their fans have come to expect.
The story of the first innings was really the story of Rasikh Salam Dar — quiet for the first half of the Lucknow innings and then devastating in the final stretch. The young pace bowler finished with four wickets for 24 runs in his four overs, and his last spell was the one that truly broke LSG’s back. Two wickets in the 20th over — including Mukul Choudhary, who had been one of the few bright spots for Lucknow in the death overs — effectively sealed their fate at 146 all out.Josh Hazlewood and Bhuvneshwar Kumar chipped in with one and three wickets respectively, Krunal Pandya took a couple in the middle, and between them they restricted LSG to a total that always felt about fifteen or twenty runs short of competitive on this ground.
For Lucknow, Mitchell Marsh’s 40 off 32 balls was the most fluent contribution — a knock that kept them in the game through the first ten overs when the RCB bowlers were threatening to run riot even earlier. Ayush Badoni added a brisk 38 lower down the order and Mukul Choudhary’s cameo threatened to give LSG a more dangerous total. But the wickets kept tumbling at the wrong moments — Nicholas Pooran was pinned for just one off seven balls, one of the tournament’s more alarming pieces of form — and Lucknow never quite found the momentum that their batting lineup is capable of generating.
“The T20 format rewards the brave, but it also punishes the hesitant — and on this evening, RCB had the answers every time LSG asked a question.”
The chase was, in truth, never in serious doubt after Virat Kohli found his stride. The RCB captain came in at number two and played the kind of innings that reminded you why cricket fans across India still arrange their evenings around his batting. His 49 off 34 balls — six fours, a six, and a run rate that kept RCB comfortably ahead — was the anchor the chase needed. When he fell to Avesh Khan in the eleventh over, RCB still needed 29 from 54 balls, which in T20 cricket is an entirely manageable equation. Rajat Patidar had already shown intent with 27 off 13 balls, and Jitesh Sharma gave the crowd one of those brief, thrilling cameos — 23 off 9 balls — that remind you why the T20 format can be so intoxicating.
Tim David and Romario Shepherd saw RCB home without fuss in the final couple of overs, the Chinnaswamy faithful long past the tension stage and well into celebration mode. For LSG, Prince Yadav was the pick of the bowlers with 3 wickets, while Avesh Khan claimed two — but the total simply never gave them enough margin for error.
The result keeps RCB in strong shape as IPL 2026 progresses through its middle phase. The tournament has been delivering the kind of quality that has made T20 cricket India’s great sporting obsession, with massive fan engagement across the country — in stadiums, on phones, and in the thousands of living rooms where every boundary and wicket is greeted with the same intensity as a world cup moment. This is what the Indian Premier League does: it compresses cricket into its most theatrical form and invites an entire nation to feel it together.
In the broader context of the IPL 2026 season, RCB’s bowling unit is quietly becoming one of the more complete attacks in the competition. Rasikh’s emergence as a reliable death-over specialist, combined with the experience of Bhuvneshwar and Hazlewood and the variation of Krunal, gives them something many teams are still searching for — options. And when Kohli is in this kind of touch, the batting takes care of itself. The Chinnaswamy delivered another evening to remember, and RCB fans will take that every single time.
Kohli, Rasikh and the Chinnaswamy Magic: RCB Knock Over LSG in a Low-Scoring Thriller.
