Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) hosted Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) in Match 36 of IPL 2023 at M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru on Wednesday (April 25).

RCB stand-in captain Virat Kohli won the toss and elected to bowl first, as KKR piled on the runs with Jason Roy (56), captain Nitish Rana (48) and Venkatesh Iyer (31) leading the charge. Rinku Singh and David Wiese provided the finishing touch as KKR posted 200/5 on the board.

Kohli (54) scored his fifth half-century of the season, but received very little support other than from Mahipal Lomror (34) as RCB kept losing wickets at regular intervals to finish at 179/8 in their reply, to lose the game by 21 runs.

KKR completed the double over RCB this season having beaten them at Eden Gardens and recorded their fifth consecutive win in Bengaluru since 2016. Varun Chakaravarthy won the Player-of-the-Match award for his figures of 3/27.

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Kohli, was expectedly furious at the presentation ceremony, as he slammed his team for their poor show, particularly in the field which allowed KKR to score extra 25-30 runs.

“To be honest we handed them the game. We did deserve to lose. We handed them a victory. We were certainly not up to standard. If you look at the game, we didn't capitalize our chances. We dropped a few chances which cost us 25-30 runs. We set up ourselves really well,” Kohli said during the post-match presentation ceremony.

He then spoke on the batting effort and lamented the soft dismissals. “We ended up hitting the fielder to balls that weren't wicket-taking. It is what's on the scoreboard and how to get them. Even while chasing, despite losing wickets, we were one partnership away from being in the game. We needed one partnership to get us home. We need to be switched on and not give away soft plays,” Kohli said.

After playing three consecutive home games, RCB will now resume traveling as they play Lucknow Super Giants in Lucknow on May 1.

“We have won one and lost one on the road. It is not something that is making us nervous. We need to win some away games to be in good shape for the later stages of the tournament,” he signed off.