Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) made history by winning their sixth consecutive away game in IPL 2025 on Sunday (April 27). They kept Delhi Capitals (DC) down to 162 for 8, and chased it in 18.3 overs, thus making it to the top of the points table.
In T20 cricket, teams usually prefer to bowl first rather than bat first. Batting second gives a line-up complete clarity on what pace to set in the chase. And no one does that better than Virat Kohli.
Virat Kohli is having a fruitful tournament. He is the leading run-scorer and the holder of the ‘Orange Cap’ at the moment, with 443 runs. And, during the tournament, he has lived up to his status as the chase master, hitting four fifties in four RCB chases, all of them resulting in victories. After their away win against DC, Kohli broke down the different aspects of how he plots his chases.
Taking the game deep
“Whenever there is a chase on, or there is a situation that I go in, I keep checking with the dugout whether we are on course, what is my role, what is the kind of innings that I need to play,” Kohli said after the game, before explaining what aspects he focuses on while batting second.
“The total on the board, what the conditions are like, who are the bowlers that are due to bowl, who are the bowlers that are going to be hard to get away,” Kohli explained.
He added, “I try and make sure that my singles and doubles don’t stop, and then you keep getting the odd boundary in between. The game never gets stagnant.”
IPL 2025 has differed from last year’s edition in one key aspect: the pitches are no longer as flat. Several pitches across the country are offering something to the bowlers, which is also why there have not been the kind of frenetic, huge scores we had in IPL 2024.
The pitch for the game against DC was slow too, which meant Kohli couldn’t go slam-bang at the start. It would have been too risky a move, and moreover, the target being chased wasn’t all that high.
“People, I think, are forgetting the importance of stitching in a partnership or going deep into the innings in T20 cricket,” Kohli said.
He added, “I think this year around, you are seeing that you can’t just come out and tee off from ball one. You need to have professionalism to read the situation and try and get into a position where you can start dominating the bowlers. And for that, you need to string in a partnership. It won’t come easy if on a slow pitch you don’t know how to rotate the strike. That’s pretty much my method: analyse the conditions, understand what the score on the board is, understand what the situation demands of me, and have the skills to keep rotating the strike and not be stagnant on one end.”
Kohli in IPL 2025
Kohli’s strike rate this IPL season has been 138.9, a good one, but not outstanding. And without the only innings he struggled this year – against CSK away – that figure rises to 142.6. It illustrates the method Kohli outlined well. It’s not the strike rate of someone who goes slam-bang, but rather of someone who can calibrate his scoring according to the conditions and situation. Kohli hitting four fifties in each of RCB’s four chases, and RCB winning each time, suggests that Kohli’s method is working nicely.
Remarkably, Kohli stayed undefeated in all but one of those chases, giving him an average of 245.00. He has shown that he has an extra gear too, especially when RCB have batted first. Apart from one game against CSK, where he was struggling to put the ball away even though he was looking to play aggressive shots, Kohli has a strike rate of 156.10.
It’s lesser in chases, but that’s because he has often batted against good attacks, on non-flat pitches, while not chasing exorbitant totals thanks to RCB’s excellent bowling. Kohli has calibrated his batting to ensure victory. He has chased wins, rather than inflating his own stats. The surest proof of that is in the result: with RCB having won seven out of ten games, and being atop the points table.