Royal Challengers Bangalore landed in Mumbai after maintaining a perfect record at Chennai winning all of their 3 matches there. They were up against an under-confident injury-prone Rajasthan Royals who were probably missing their premier fast bowler and game-changing all-rounder in Jofra Archer and Ben Stokes.
After winning the toss RCB put Rajasthan to bat first on a flat Wankhede wicket as the due was going to play a big role later in the game. RCB went to a flying start picking up Rajasthan top-order very cheaply and reducing them to 18-3 in the fifth over. Rajasthan built some partnerships later in the innings and courtesy of some good hitting by Shivam Dube, Riyan Parag, and later by Rahul Tewatia, managed to bring up a respectable total of 177 in 20 overs.
On a flat wicket with due in play 178 was never going to be enough against a strong in form RCB batting line-up. Rajasthan needed quick wickets to establish their authority in the game, instead a 20 year old kid from Karnataka who oozed confidence and class had different plans. Devdutt Paddikal played innings of his lifetime making 101 off 52 balls in an innings which impressed the Legend Sunil Gavaskar so much he predicted that this kid will play for India on all three formats.
When Virat Kohli is opening the innings it very difficult to not talk about him yet an uncapped player form Karnataka out batted the king of the game. Virat though found his own during the latter part of the innings after scoring 28 off 26 balls he went on to score a class personified innings of 72 off 47 balls hitting 6 fours and 3 sixes.
Bangalore easily chased down the target with 21 balls to spare in a record breaking opening partnership of 181 between Kohli and Padikkal and managed their perfect record of 4 wins out of 4 in the current season of VIVO IPL 2021.