The Royal Challengers Bengaluru is currently sitting at a good position in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 points table. With six wins in nine matches, RCB have 12 points and find themselves among the top four in the IPL 2025 points table. Virat Kohli, who has only played for RCB in the IPL, has also hit the right strides. In nine matches, he has hit five half-centuries. His run tally is 392 at an average of 65.33 and a strike-rate of 144.12. Kohli has a huge fan following outside and inside RCB too.
Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) batter Swastik Chikara is among them. He left his teammates completely bemused with his antics in the dressing room. In a video shared by RCB, pacer Yash Dayal and captain Rajat Patidar revealed Chikara, 19, opened franchise icon Virat Kohli’s bag without permission and sprayed a bottle of perfume on himself in the dressing room. That too in front of Kohli. Guessing by Dayal and Patidar’s face, neither of them would’ve even thought about encroaching Kohli’s privacy.
Now, Chikara has has had yet another incident with a Kohli connection. “Swastik Chikara ka sabse bada tension yeh rehta hai ki Virat Kohli ko pehle koi paani na pila de (Swastik Chikara’s biggest tension is nobody should go before him and serve Virat water),” one of his RCB teammates showed him a viral meme.
“To kya hoga? Apne bhai ko toh main hi pilaunga (What’s there in that? I will serve water to my brother),” Chikara replied.
Royal Challengers Bengaluru talisman Virat Kohli on Thursday lauded the batting unit after a hard-fought 11-run win over Rajasthan Royals in the IPL here, saying they focused on timing the ball rather than forcing shots, which helped them post a competitive total. Put in to bat, Kohli struck a fluent 70 off 42 balls and shared a 95-run stand with Devdutt Padikkal (50 off 27) for the second wicket before a late flourish propelled RCB to 205 for five.
In response, Rajasthan Royals were cruising at 110 for two but RCB pulled things back to restrict them to 194 for nine, with Australian pacer Josh Hazlewood returning match-winning figures of 4/33.
“Look, we’ve had three pretty average games at home and we discussed a few things we need to get right as a batting unit and we applied ourselves well to get the total on board.
“The pitch wasn’t as flat as the score makes it look. Dew made the ball come on nicely in the second half and credit to Rajasthan for coming out and playing some good shots.” The victory marked RCB’s first at home this season following three consecutive defeats.
RCB have also been on the wrong side of the toss in all their home matches.
“The first challenge is winning the toss (chuckles). In the second half there is always dew. We’ve struggled to put on a par score,” Kohli said.
“The template is now pretty simple, for one guy to bat through and the others to attack around him. Devdutt and I know this ground well. Just wanted to let Salt to his thing at the top.
“There is pace and bounce in the first few overs with the new ball. Today we just tried to time the ball and keep enough pressure on the opposition to keep giving us boundary balls.”
With PTI inputs
Topics mentioned in this article
