Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) registered a thumping seven-wicket victory over Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) in Match 10 of the IPL 2024 season at the Chinnaswamy Stadium on Friday (March 29).

Invited to bat first, the hosts posted 182/6 in their allotted 20 overs on the back of Virat Kohli’s 83 not out off 59 balls. Cameron Green (33 off 21) and Dinesh Karthik (20 off 8) also chipped in with handy contributions.

In reply, KKR’s opening duo of Sunil Narine (47 off 22) and Philip Salt (30 off 20) set the tone with a partnership of 86 runs in just 6.3 overs.

After their dismissals, the likes of Venkatesh Iyer (50 off 30) and skipper Shreyas Iyer (39* off 24) completed formalities and took the visitors over the line with 19 deliveries to spare.

Following the heavy defeat, RCB skipper Faf du Plessis expressed shock over the two-paced nature of pitch.

"Strange one, first innings we thought that the wicket was very two-paced, you could see that when the guys bowled the cutters, back of a length, the guys really struggled. We thought it was a decent score knowing that it gets a little bit easier in the evening, there was a little bit of dew that came in. Looking at the way we batted in the first innings, even if you have someone in there, Virat was struggling to hit the ball just because there was lack of pace and the two-paceness," Du Plessis said at the post-match presentation.

The RCB captain was also appreciative of the counter-attack produced by Narine and Salt at the top of the order for KKR.

"You can always know after the game, we can say perhaps try one or two things but the way the two of them (Narine and Slat) were striking the ball, some really good batting there, they put pressure on our bowlers. They hit strong cricket shots and pretty much took the game away,” Du Plessis stated.

"With Narine there, you can't really go to spin, you want to use pace upfront. That's also a really good match-up for Salt and the way he plays. They were excellent, really broke the game in the first six overs. We've tried the spinning options with Maxi, the finger-spinners seem to be effective here, but at night there wasn't too much spin, With left-hand, right-hand combination, it's one of those things, you can bowl a spinner. But as you saw when Venky was playing against the left-arm spinner, you feel like it's an easy hit on a small boundary to hit with the spin. Ideally you want someone who can spin the ball both ways but with the set-up of our team tonight, we didn't have that option," he explained.

Vijaykumar Vyshak was the pick of the bowlers for RCB, returning with the figures of 1/23 in his four overs.

Commenting on Vyshak’s impressive display, Faf said: "Very good, he hasn't had opportunities. We had a look in the first innings and we thought about bringing in Karn Sharma. But we felt someone who could bowl really good slower balls is probably the most difficult bowler to face on this pitch. Dre Russ probably bowled 80% of his balls cutters. We took some learnings from that and he was the best bowler of the evening."

It was RCB’s second defeat in three games this season so far. They will next face Lucknow Super Giants in Bengaluru on Tuesday (April 2).