The 34th match of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2026 was played on Friday (April 24) between Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) and Gujarat Titans (GT). In this match, RCB won by 5 wickets and captured the second position in the points table. When GT was invited to bat first at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium, it scored a big score of 205 runs with the help of a century by Sai Sudarshan (100), which RCB achieved in just 18.5 overs.
For RCB, Virat Kohli played a brilliant inning of 81 runs in 44 balls, which included 8 fours and 4 sixes. Devdutt Padikkal scored 55 runs in 27 balls. 2 fours and 6 sixes came from his bat.
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RCB was stuck trying to win quickly
In the run chase, Virat Kohli got life on the very first ball. Mohammad Siraj had him caught at midwicket but Washington Sundar dropped an easy catch. Siraj gave GT its first success by dismissing Jacob Bethel (14) in his next over. However, this did not bring relief to the visiting team. As soon as Padikkal came, he batted brilliantly and put him on the backfoot. Kohli also started playing openly. Padikkal hit fifty in 20 balls. Whereas Kohli scored a half-century in 30 balls. With Padikkal-Kohli at the crease, RCB seemed to be winning easily but the story changed as soon as both were out in consecutive overs.
Jitesh Sharma (10) and Rajat Patidar (8) played big shots as soon as they arrived but they also quickly returned to the pavilion. In no time, half the RCB team was reduced to a score of 173. He still needed 33 runs in 27 balls to win. The match seemed to be stuck. But Krunal Pandya easily took them to the threshold of victory by scoring unbeaten 23 runs in 12 balls. Tim David returned unbeaten after scoring 10 runs in 9 balls. Rashid Khan took maximum 2 wickets from GT. He was also the most expensive. He gave away 49 runs in 4 overs. Siraj, Jason Holder and Manav Suthar got one success each.
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Slow batting in death overs sank GT
GT team had scored 170 runs in 15 overs and only 2 wickets had fallen. She seemed to be easily crossing 220 but no boundaries came in the next 3 overs and she was in trouble of even reaching 200 runs. Holder took the team beyond 200 by hitting 2 sixes and a four in the last over against Krunal Pandya, which proved to be insufficient. For GT, all the batsmen including Shatkaveer Sudarshan reached double digits but except Holder, no one’s strike rate went close to 200, due to which the team could not score a huge score and had to face a crushing defeat.
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