Three talking points from RCB vs PBKS IPL 2025 clash

Last night, we witnessed this season’s first rain-truncated game in the IPL as Punjab Kings picked up another victory, defeating Royal Challengers Bangalore on their patch. It was a solid performance from Shreyas Iyer’s team, who came through a tricky chase to pick up another two points. Despite a spirited batting performance by Tim David, who scored a 26-ball 50, RCB failed to get a worthy target. Punjab chased down the score with almost two overs to spare. 

Here are three talking points from the game between RCB and PBKS in IPL 2025: 

1. RCB can’t win at home

It is becoming a rather uneasy trend now for Royal Challengers Bangalore fans, as their team don’t seem to win at home. They succumbed to their third successive home defeat for the season last night, and are now the only team who are yet to win at home for IPL 2025. 

This has been a concerning trend for RCB across the years, who have struggled to find a winning mantra at home, despite putting in some big performances away from the Chinnaswamy Stadium. Despite having a very passionate home fan base, the dimensions and pitch conditions in Bangalore make it difficult to devise a winning strategy while playing at home. IPL success has often been determined by home form, and RCB need to find a solution soon enough if they are to be title contenders this year. 

2. Nehal Wadhera’s coming of age

This is Nehal Wadhera’s third season in the IPL, having played his first two years with Mumbai Indians. He put in a few eye-catching performances for the five-time IPL champions, but failed to deliver consistently, and was let go by the franchise ahead of the mega auction. 

Nehal Wadhera though seems to have found a new, happy home at PBKS and is coming of age this season. He spoke after his season debut on making the most of the IPL experience from the past couple of seasons, and pushed the envelope this year. A solid ball striker, and a prodigious player of spin, Nehal Wadhera always had the talent and potential. However, this season he is converting that potential into performances. Wadhera has played match-winning knocks against Lucknow and RCB this year, and this could just be the start for the dashing southpaw. 

3. All-round performance from Punjab

Not often does the Man of the Match award go to a player of the losing team, but it happened last night as Tim David was given the accolade. That was because Punjab did not have a standout performer last night, but everyone chipped in with some handy contributions to get them over the line. 

Arshdeep Singh struck twice with the new ball, Marco Jansen troubled the batters with his extra bounce and Chahal weaved his magic, later on. On the batting front, PBKS got cameos from Prabhsimran Singh, Priyansh Arya, Josh Inglis, and Nehal Wadhera as they got through a tricky chase to win away from home. 

There were also some tactical astute moves taken by Shreyas Iyer and Ricky Ponting, who picked Harpreet Brar for last night’s game because of his good record against RCB. The decision to persist with Josh Inglis also came good last night, as the Aussie batter scored some crucial runs and took a stellar high catch of Phil Salt.