Vaibhav Arora spilled a catch in the square leg region and Devdutt Padikkal got a reprieve after mistiming a pull shot off Cameron Green’s bowling. The miss came early in Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s chase and gave Padikkal a lifeline at a point when Kolkata Knight Riders had already been pushed back to a total of less than 200 runs.

The dropped chance mattered because Bengaluru were already in command of the match, with Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Rasikh Salam and Josh Hazlewood helping keep Rinku Singh and Angkrish Raghuvanshi from dragging Kolkata past 200. Kartik Tyagi then struck in his first over, removing Jacob Bethell and briefly giving Kolkata something to hold onto in a chase that had started with Virat Kohli and Bethell putting on 37 for the opening wicket.

Padikkal made the most of the escape. He and Kohli added 92 runs for the second wicket, with Padikkal contributing 37 to that stand before Tyagi returned and ended his innings with a slower ball off the first delivery of the spell. Tyagi was the only wicket-taker in the game, but by then Bengaluru had already built the innings around a partnership that shut the door on Kolkata’s hopes of forcing the match back into balance.

The wider picture is familiar for Bengaluru this season. They had started well and had kept that form going, with Kohli also in good touch and Padikkal continuing to make crucial runs. That made the dropped chance more costly for Kolkata, because once Padikkal settled in beside Kohli, the chase moved away from a contest of pressure and into one of control.

What stood out most was the gap between Kolkata’s bowling threat and Bengaluru’s ability to absorb it. Tyagi’s lone wicket came only after the opening pair had already done enough damage, and Padikkal’s brief reprieve at square leg became the point from which the chase took shape. By the time he fell, the outcome had been made far more difficult for Kolkata by one miss and one long partnership.