Samira Vishwas
Tezzbuzz|29-03-2026
Defending champions Royal Challengers Bangalore and Sunrisers Hyderabad were face to face in the opening match of IPL 2026 played at M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru on Saturday (28 March). Sunrisers Hyderabad had a very poor start after being invited to bat first. The team lost its three big wickets inside the powerplay itself. Abhishek Sharma returned to the pavilion after scoring 7 runs, Travis Head 11 runs and Nitish Kumar Reddy scored just 1 run.
However, after this, captain Ishan Kishan took charge of the team by playing a brilliant innings. He scored 80 runs in 38 balls, which included 8 fours and 5 sixes.Ishaan also got good support from Heinrich Klaasen, who played an important inning of 31 runs in 22 balls. There was a partnership of 97 runs in 53 balls between the two for the fourth wicket.
In the last overs, Aniket Verma scored 43 runs in 18 balls and took the team to a strong score of 201 runs in 20 overs.Jacob Duffy made a brilliant debut in bowling for RCB, taking 3 wickets for 22 runs in 4 overs. Romario Shepherd also took 3 wickets, while Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Abhinandan Singh and Suyyash Sharma got 1 wicket each.
Chasing the target of 202 runs, Royal Challengers Bangalore got off to an early start in the form of Phil Salt (8 runs).
After this, Devdutt Padikkal, who came as impact sub, started aggressive batting as soon as he came. Padikkal made a quick partnership of 101 runs in 45 balls with Virat Kohli for the second wicket and turned the match towards RCB. Padikkal scored 61 runs in 26 balls, which included 7 fours and 4 sixes.In the middle overs, captain Rajat Patidar played a brilliant inning of 31 runs in 12 balls.
Whereas Virat Kohli held one end and played a sensible inning of 69 not out in 38 balls, which included 5 fours and 5 sixes. Thanks to these innings, RCB achieved the target with 26 balls remaining and registered a spectacular victory by 6 wickets.David Payne took 2 wickets for Sunrisers Hyderabad, while Jaydev Unadkat and Harsh Dubey got 1 wicket each.
In this way, RCB made a strong start to their title defense campaign in IPL 2026 with a win.
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