Prince Yadav stuns Kohli as RCB chase starts badly

A 140.4 kph ball can make even a great career look briefly mortal.

Virat Kohli walked in chasing 209, the kind of job he has made feel almost routine for years. Two balls into the second over, Prince Yadav bent one back sharply and hit the off stump. Kohli had no run, no rescue act, no familiar chase script.

For Royal Challengers Bengaluru, that single ball changed the mood of the chase. For Lucknow Super Giants, it gave a young bowler a moment he will replay for years.

Prince Yadav finds Kohli’s gate

Virat Kohli carries a special weight in run chases. Bowlers know it. Captains know it. Fans know it even before the required rate appears on screen.

That is why this dismissal mattered more than a normal early wicket.

Prince Yadav was not just removing an opener. He was removing the man who usually tells a chase to calm down. His delivery came in at 140.4 kph, jagged in late, and beat Kohli’s reading of the line.

The ball crashed into the off stump. The stadium, which had expected noise, got silence instead.

The stat cut deeper. This was Kohli’s first duck while chasing in the IPL since 2017. For a player called the chase master with good reason, that is not a small footnote.

Prince also entered a tiny list. After Dhawal Kulkarni in the 2016 IPL season, he became only the second bowler to dismiss Kohli for a duck in the tournament’s history, as per the match details.

That is the beauty of T20 cricket. A youngster gets one brave ball right, and a giant looks human.

Rain turns the contest awkward

This was not a clean, rhythm-friendly evening for either side. Rain interrupted Lucknow’s innings more than once, which forced the match into a 19-over contest.

The Duckworth-Lewis-Stern method, better known as DLS, then came into play. In simple terms, it adjusts targets when rain cuts overs or breaks the flow of an innings.

Fans often dislike DLS because it feels like maths entering a street fight. But teams live with it. They must plan wickets, overs, and risk around the revised equation.

Lucknow still made the most of the shortened game. They set RCB a target of 209 from 19 overs, which meant the chase needed a flying start.

Instead, Bengaluru lost their opening pair for just 9 runs.

That early damage mattered because a 19-over chase gives you less time to repair mistakes. You cannot spend 4 overs settling in when the asking rate already bites.

Kohli’s duck, then, was not only a personal shock. It also pushed RCB into catch-up mode before the chase had properly begun.

Marsh gives Lucknow the muscle

Before Prince took over with the ball, Mitchell Marsh had shaped the match with the bat.

Marsh scored 111, a powerful innings that gave Lucknow the kind of total that survives rain, pressure, and late hitting. In a shortened match, a century carries extra force. It means one batter has controlled a large slice of the contest.

Nicholas Pooran added 38, playing the sort of innings that keeps fielders under stress. Captain Rishabh Pant stayed unbeaten on 32, giving Lucknow finishing strength.

Together, those runs built a target that looked heavy from the first over of the chase.

RCB’s bowlers did pick up wickets. Josh Hazlewood, Krunal Pandya, and Rasikh Salam Dar took 1 each. But Lucknow had already done enough damage.

In T20 cricket, 209 in 19 overs is not just a target. It is a scoreboard message. It tells the chasing side that one quiet over may cost the match.

That pressure followed RCB from the start.

Patidar and Padikkal fight back

After the early collapse, Rajat Patidar and Devdutt Padikkal gave Bengaluru a route back.

Their 95-run stand for the third wicket made the chase feel alive again. It did not erase Kohli’s wicket, but it changed the conversation for a while.

Patidar and Padikkal did what good middle-order players must do. They absorbed the shock, found boundaries, and stopped Lucknow from running through the innings.

But T20 chases are cruel when the target is this high. A partnership can revive hope, yet one wicket can reopen the wound.

Once Patidar fell, RCB started losing wickets in clusters. The required rate kept climbing, and every new batter had to attack quickly.

Tim David still made Lucknow sweat. His 40 from 17 balls brought power, noise, and late tension. That kind of innings can make a dugout restless.

But Lucknow had enough control left. Prince Yadav finished with 3 wickets, while Shahbaz Ahmed took 2. Those wickets mattered because they broke Bengaluru’s chase at important moments.

Lucknow eventually won by 9 runs through DLS. In a match shaped by rain, power-hitting, and one fierce inswinger, that margin felt both narrow and telling.

Kohli’s duck tells a bigger story

Kohli’s dismissal will get replayed because it looked dramatic. The stump went back. The crowd froze. The headline wrote itself.

But the larger story is not that Kohli failed once. Even the best batters miss good balls. The larger story is how quickly T20 cricket shifts power.

One over can lift a young bowler’s career. One rain break can change a captain’s plan. One early wicket can make a huge chase feel heavier than the numbers suggest.

For RCB fans, the worry will not be Kohli’s form alone. The source match details say he had been scoring heavily this season. The concern will be how the side responds when he falls early.

That is the old question around Bengaluru. Can the rest of the batting order carry a chase when the biggest name leaves too soon?

Patidar, Padikkal, and David showed fight. But Lucknow found wickets whenever the match began to tilt.

For Prince Yadav, this match may become a selection-room calling card. Coaches remember bowlers who take big wickets under pressure. Captains remember bowlers who do not hide from famous batters.

Kohli will move on. Great players usually do. But for one night in IPL 2026, a 140.4 kph inswinger reminded everyone why sport keeps pulling us back. Reputation starts the contest, but the ball still has the final word.