Three days ago, Virat Kohli was walking back to the pavilion for a duck. Again.
Two games in a row. Two balls faced across both innings combined. Back-to-back ducks in the IPL, only the second time that has happened in his entire career. The first was in 2022, when he had his worst IPL season on record, not on paper but based on impact, and the whole of cricket spent six months questioning whether he was finished.
He was not finished in 2022. He came back with 639 and 741 runs the following years, even winning an orange cap. But that did not stop the same conversation starting again three days ago in Raipur, because it never does with Kohli. The moment he looks human, people rush to say he is ordinary.
On Tuesday night at the same ground, he scored 105 not out off 60 balls. RCB chased 193 with five balls to spare. KKR’s four-match winning streak was over. And Kohli was standing at the crease with a ninth IPL century, not celebrating like it was the greatest thing he had ever done, but looking around with the quiet satisfaction of a man who already knew this was coming.
That is the thing about watching Kohli at this stage of his career. He never looks surprised by his own excellence.
The Two Ducks
The ducks mattered more than the numbers suggest. Not because two low scores are a crisis for a batter of his class, but because of what they revealed about how he was feeling.
Against LSG, a young pacer named Prince Yadav bowled a delivery that crashed into his stumps on the second ball. Against MI three days later, Kohli tried to loft Deepak Chahar over the infield early and completely mistimed it. For a batter who talks constantly about process and preparation and not chasing outcomes, mistiming a loft in the third over suggests a mind searching for something it was not quite finding.
He said it himself after the KKR game.
“The fact I did not score runs, it eats me up because I have been playing well. It bothers you because that has been the goal.”
Most players at 37, with 85 international centuries and more IPL runs than anyone in history, would have made peace with two bad games. Kohli has not made peace with it. He is still bothered. Still eating himself up over a duck. And that is exactly why he is still the player he is. Someone who doesn’t need to prove himself on the ground but is still fighting harder than many.
What the Hundred Looked Like
It was not careful. It was not survival. He scored 30 off 14 balls inside the powerplay and essentially told KKR within the first four overs that the game was already decided.
The knock had everything that makes Kohli different in a chase. The clarity about which bowler to attack and when. The ability to rotate strike without ever losing momentum. The complete absence of panic even when wickets fell around him at the other end. Devdutt Padikkal played beautifully for 39 in 27 balls beside him and the two of them put the chase to bed in the middle overs before it ever got tense.
When he reached his century he did not leap. Did not scream. The celebration was calm. He looked around the ground once, acknowledged the dressing room and got back into his stance, showing that this was not something but something he knew was coming, something expected of him, something he does regularly.
After the match he explained it simply. “The celebration was not a big one because we know the importance of the points.” That sentence is the whole story of where Kohli is right now. Not chasing records. Not chasing milestones. He is the highest run-scorer in IPL history. He became the fastest batter to 14,000 T20 runs on Tuesday night, going past Chris Gayle. He now has the most IPL centuries ever. None of that seemed to move him as much as the two points RCB earned by winning the game.
The Bigger Picture
RCB had been drifting. Three losses in their last five going into Tuesday. The team that arrived as defending champions had started to look like they were running out of ideas at the wrong end of the season. A win here did not just stop the slide. It took them to the top of the IPL 2026 table.
Kohli knew what the game meant. He knows what every game means at this point. He has played 18 IPL seasons for a single franchise without ever winning the title, except in the previous season. That is a weight most players would feel. He seems to convert it into fuel instead.
There is a reason people say pressure is a privilege, he said. It keeps you humble. Good pressure always helps you improve. Two ducks and then a century. Same player. Same ground. Three days apart. Some players recover from bad form. Kohli treats bad form like a problem that was always going to have a solution. He just had to find it. On Tuesday night in Raipur, he found it in 60 balls.
