Virat Kohli has played 278 IPL matches — more than anyone alive or retired. On Sunday in Raipur, he was out first ball. For the second game in a row.
It didn’t matter.
RCB chased down Mumbai Indians’ 166/7 with two runs off the last ball — Rasikh Salam, batting at No. 10, drove Raj Bawa for the winning two. The win lifted RCB to the top of the IPL 2026 table. It also ended Mumbai Indians’ season — RCB put 240 on MI at Wankhede earlier this season, and now they’ve finished the job. With LSG eliminated by CSK earlier that afternoon, two former finalists were knocked out of the playoffs in a single Sunday. GT’s 77-run win over RR the previous night had already reshuffled the top four, while KKR’s own four-match win streak kept their playoff hopes alive as the bottom half tightened.
Three Big Names. Zero Runs Between Them.
Kohli miscued Deepak Chahar to mid-off. Golden duck. His previous innings — against LSG — also a duck. First time he’s been out for nought in consecutive matches since 2022. The IPL’s all-time leading run-scorer hasn’t scored a run in two weeks.
Suryakumar Yadav: first ball, gone. Bhuvneshwar Kumar, swinging it both ways. SKY’s 26th T20 duck. Rohit Sharma — quietly past 7,000 IPL career runs, only the second batter after Kohli to get there — also dismissed by Bhuvneshwar.
Three of Indian white-ball cricket’s biggest names. Combined contribution with the bat: a Bhuvneshwar masterclass and one wild swing.
Bhuvneshwar Took the Ball. Krunal Took the Chase.
Bhuvneshwar’s 4/23 — Rickelton, Rohit, SKY, Tilak Varma — was his sixth three-plus-wicket haul of IPL 2026. He’s at 21 wickets, alone at the top of the Purple Cap race, 35 years old, with twelve powerplay wickets at an economy of 6.91. The case for an India recall is no longer a whisper.
Krunal Pandya did what Kohli couldn’t — a 73 that anchored RCB while Corbin Bosch’s four wickets dragged MI back into the game. The chase came down to the final over with RCB eight down. Bhuvneshwar, batting now, launched a six. Two needed off one. Rasikh Salam got them.
The RCB That Doesn’t Need Kohli
This is the third time this IPL 2026 that RCB have won a meaningful match without Kohli contributing a run. Kohli was dropped on zero against GT — RCB chased 206 anyway. Once was an outlier. Three times is a team. The franchise that was built around one batter just topped the points table while he hasn’t scored in a fortnight.
The record 278 appearances still belong to him. The team, increasingly, doesn’t.