Royal Challengers Bangalore defeated defending champions Kolkata Knight Riders by 7 wickets in the first match of IPL 2025. Ajinkya Rahane played an innings of 56 runs, but Krunal Pandya's three wickets restricted KKR to 174 runs. Then Virat Kohli and Fit Salt's fifties gave the team an easy win.
Kolkata: Royal Challengers Bangalore have started IPL 2025 with a win. RCB won by 7 wickets against defending champion Kolkata Knight Riders. With this win, RCB has also avenged the defeat it suffered 17 years ago. The match of the first season of IPL was also played between these two teams. Then KKR won. Now in the 18th season, these two teams clashed in the first match. Playing first, KKR scored 174 runs. RCB won the match in the 17th over itself after losing two wickets.
Ajinkya Rahane played a captaincy innings
Ajinkya Rahane made a great start as captain of Kolkata Knight Riders, scoring a half-century in 25 balls. Sunil Narayan supported him brilliantly with an innings of 44 runs in 26 balls. Both laid the foundation for a big score by sharing 103 runs in 55 balls at a speed of more than 10 runs per over for the second wicket. After 10 overs, the team's score was 107 runs for 2 wickets.
After this, thanks to three wickets of Krunal Pandya, the defending champion team remained far away from the 200-run mark. 36-year-old veteran Rahane, who played his last T20 match for India in 2016, has been made the captain of KKR in place of Shreyas Iyer. He played a fearless innings of 56 runs in 31 balls. However, Krunal curbed the pace of KKR by taking three wickets for 29 runs in the middle overs. After dismissing Rahane, this hand spinner showed the way to the pavilion to Venkatesh Iyer (six) and Rinku Singh (12) in his consecutive overs.
KKR's lower middle order batsmen disappointed. This included their most expensive player of Rs 23.75 crore, Venkatesh Iyer, Rinku Singh and Andre Russell. Due to the failure of these batsmen, the team could score only 23 runs in the last four overs after losing two wickets. Josh Hazlewood, who dismissed Quinton de Kock (four) in the first over of the innings, took two wickets for 22 runs in four overs. KKR scored only nine runs in the first three overs in front of the brilliant bowling of Hazlewood and Yash Dayal.
Virat and Salt finished the match in the powerplay
Virat Kohli and Phil Salt gave an explosive start to RCB. KKR did not even expect this start. Phil Salt, who was a part of KKR last season
