On the night of 25 May 2022, a batter who had gone unsold in the IPL mega auction three months earlier walked out at Eden Gardens and scored 112 not out off 54 balls in an Eliminator. Rajat Patidar hit 12 fours and seven sixes for Royal Challengers Bangalore, and his last 62 runs came off just 26 balls. He was the first uncapped player to make a hundred in the IPL playoffs. RCB posted 207/4, beat Lucknow Super Giants by 14 runs, and a career that had looked finished in February 2022 suddenly had a future.
Looking back from October 2026, that innings reads like the first chapter of a much bigger story. The man who arrived in 2022 as a ₹20 lakh injury replacement for Luvnith Sisodia went on to captain RCB to their first IPL title in 2025 and then a second in 2026. This is a reconstruction of the night it started, ball by ball, using the Cricsheet record of all 256 deliveries.
The Night Eden Gardens Changed RCB's Story
How RCB got there at all
RCB's 2022 season nearly ended before the playoffs. They finished the league stage fourth on 16 points, and their place in the top four was only confirmed on 21 May 2022, when Mumbai Indians beat Delhi Capitals at the Wankhede. Bangalore supporters spent that evening cheering for their oldest rivals. Lucknow, playing their first IPL season, finished third and looked the more complete side, with a strong top order and a bowling attack built on young Indian pace.
Rain delayed the start at Eden Gardens on 25 May 2022, but no overs were lost. Lucknow won the toss and chose to bowl, which made sense on a damp evening with a knockout chase to follow.
Collapse averted: 4/1 to the powerplay
The plan worked straight away. In the first over, Mohsin Khan had Faf du Plessis caught behind by Quinton de Kock for a golden duck, and RCB were 4/1 after five legal deliveries. Virat Kohli settled in, but carefully: he made 25 off 24 balls, hit two fours, and spent most of the powerplay watching from the other end.
Patidar started almost as quietly. He was on 14 off his first 13 balls when Krunal Pandya came back for the sixth over, and then he took that over apart. Four, four, six, four, single: 19 off five balls, 20 from the over. RCB finished the powerplay on 52/1, and Patidar was on 33 off 18.
The middle-overs squeeze
Then Lucknow pulled things back. Avesh Khan removed Kohli in the ninth over (70/2, caught by Mohsin Khan), Krunal had Glenn Maxwell caught for nine in the eleventh (86/3), and Ravi Bishnoi got Mahipal Lomror caught by KL Rahul from the first ball of the fourteenth (115/4). RCB took just 6, 2 and 6 from overs 11, 14 and 15. At the halfway mark they were 84/2, five runs behind where Lucknow would be at the same point. After 15 overs RCB were 123/4, a total that projects to about 165 at Eden Gardens.
Patidar reached his fifty off 28 balls with a single in the eleventh over, but between overs 11 and 15 he scored only 17 off 12 balls. Dinesh Karthik had joined him at 115/4, and for three overs the two of them just kept the score moving.
Twenty-seven off Bishnoi: the over that decided the Eliminator
The sixteenth over, bowled by Bishnoi, changed the match. Karthik took a single off the first ball. Patidar then faced five deliveries and hit 6, 4, 6, 4, 6: twenty-six runs off five balls, and 27 from the over. The leg-spinner went from 3-0-18-1 to 4-0-45-1 in six balls.
Avesh Khan's seventeenth over went for 15, but Patidar faced only one ball of it. In the eighteenth he went from 95 to 101 with a six off Mohsin Khan, completing his hundred off 49 balls. His second fifty took 21 balls. Karthik, unbeaten on 37 off 23 balls, joined in at the other end: RCB took 21 from the nineteenth over, bowled by Dushmantha Chameera, and 13 from Avesh in the twentieth. Patidar hit a six and a four in Chameera's over and finished with a single off the last ball.
From 123/4 after 15 overs, RCB scored 84 runs in the last five. Patidar and Karthik's unbroken fifth-wicket stand was worth 92 in seven overs. RCB's 207/4 was then the highest total ever made in an IPL Eliminator.
Data Deep-Dive: The Scorecard Behind the Legend
RCB batting — 207/4 (20 overs)
| Batter | Dismissal | R | B | 4s | 6s | SR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Virat Kohli | c Mohsin Khan b Avesh Khan | 25 | 24 | 2 | 0 | 104.2 |
| Faf du Plessis | c de Kock b Mohsin Khan | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 |
| [Rajat Patidar](/players/rajat-patidar) | not out | 112 | 54 | 12 | 7 | 207.4 |
| Glenn Maxwell | c Lewis b Krunal Pandya | 9 | 10 | 0 | 1 | 90.0 |
| Mahipal Lomror | c KL Rahul b Bishnoi | 14 | 9 | 2 | 0 | 155.6 |
| Dinesh Karthik | not out | 37 | 23 | 5 | 1 | 160.9 |
Extras: 10. Fall of wickets: 1-4 (1st over), 2-70 (9th), 3-86 (11th), 4-115 (14th).
Patidar's 112 made up 54% of RCB's total and 57% of the runs scored off the bat. No other RCB batter reached 40.
How the two innings compared
| Checkpoint | RCB (batting first) | LSG (chasing 208) | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| After 6 overs | 52/1 | 62/1 | LSG +10 |
| After 10 overs | 84/2 | 89/2 | LSG +5 |
| After 15 overs | 123/4 | 143/3 | LSG +20 |
| Overs 16–20 | 84 runs | 50 runs, 3 wkts | RCB +34 |
| Final | 207/4 | 193/6 | RCB by 14 |
This table explains the match. Lucknow were ahead at every checkpoint for 15 overs. They lost because RCB got 84 out of their last five overs and Lucknow got 50 out of theirs.
Lucknow's chase — 193/6 (20 overs)
KL Rahul played the anchor role in the chase with 79 off 58 balls (3 fours, 5 sixes). Deepak Hooda, who joined him at 41/2, hit 45 off 26 balls, and their third-wicket stand of 96 took Lucknow to 137/2 early in the fifteenth over. They needed 71 from just over five overs with eight wickets left. On most nights at Eden Gardens, that is a comfortable chase.
Then Wanindu Hasaranga bowled Hooda. Even so, 18 runs came from that fifteenth over, and Lucknow needed 65 off 30 with Rahul still batting.
RCB's death bowling — overs 16 to 20
| Over | Bowler | Runs | Wickets | Key moment | Required after |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16 | Mohammed Siraj | 10 | 0 | Rahul six | 55 off 24 |
| 17 | Wanindu Hasaranga | 14 | 0 | Rahul 6, 4 | 41 off 18 |
| 18 | Harshal Patel | 8 | 1 | Stoinis c Patidar; 6 of the 8 were wides | 33 off 12 |
| 19 | Josh Hazlewood | 9 | 2 | Rahul and Krunal Pandya off consecutive balls | 24 off 6 |
| 20 | Harshal Patel | 9 | 0 | One Chameera six, nothing else | Won by 14 |
Harshal's eighteenth over is the oddest in the reconstruction. He bowled a wide, then a wide that ran away for five more, then two dot balls to Marcus Stoinis, before Stoinis mistimed the next one into Patidar's hands at 173/4. Only two runs came off the bat in that over. Hazlewood then had Rahul caught by Shahbaz Ahmed with the score on 180, and had Krunal caught-and-bowled off the very next ball. Hazlewood finished with 3/43 and Harshal with 1/25 from four overs, the cheapest spell on either side.
Legacy Impact — What the Eliminator Means in 2026
The obvious legacy is captaincy. Patidar missed the whole 2023 season with a heel injury, came back in 2024 to make 395 runs at a strike rate of 177.1, and was given the RCB captaincy for 2025. That year he made 312 runs at 143.8, and RCB won their first title after 17 seasons of trying. In 2026 he led them to a second: RCB beat Gujarat Titans by 92 runs in Qualifier 1 after making 254/5, then chased down 156 in 18 overs to beat the same opponents by five wickets in the final at Ahmedabad on 31 May 2026.
Before the Eden Gardens innings, RCB had lost their previous three knockout matches: the 2016 final and the 2020 and 2021 Eliminators. The 2022 Eliminator broke that run, and every RCB playoff win since then has come with Patidar in the side.
A second legacy is tactical. The 2022 Eliminator was an early sign of the scoring explosion that followed in 2023–2025. It showed that 123/4 after 15 overs was not a ceiling if a set batter stayed in, and that a team chasing 208 could be 20 runs ahead with five overs left and still lose. Lucknow's 50 runs in their final five overs was below par even by 2022 standards, and two seasons later it would have looked worse still.
This is also the kind of match that tests how honest a prediction model is. Early in the fifteenth over of the chase, with Lucknow on 137/2 needing 71, most live models would have made them favourites. CricMind's Oracle is built for exactly that problem: it publishes a probability rather than a verdict, and its season record is shown in public, misses included. In 2026 the Oracle picked Gujarat in both Qualifier 1 and the final, and Patidar's RCB won both. A 60% favourite still loses four times in ten, and the 2022 Eliminator shows how that happens in the space of five overs.
The personal legacy is the simplest. In 2022 Patidar played seven innings and made 333 runs at a strike rate of 152.8, and 170 of them came in two knockout games: 112* in the Eliminator and 58 against Rajasthan in Qualifier 2. A batter signed as a stopgap, who wasn't even in the squad when the season began, ended it with more playoff runs than anyone on his team.
Three Takeaways
- The first 15 overs did not decide this match. Lucknow led at the 6, 10 and 15-over marks and still lost by 14. RCB's 84 from overs 16–20, and especially Patidar's 27-run assault on Bishnoi, swung the Eliminator more than anything earlier did.
- Patidar's innings had two speeds. He made 49 off his first 27 balls, then only 17 off the next 12 as wickets fell, then 46 off his last 15. Holding back when RCB were losing wickets is what let him attack so hard at the end.
- Hazlewood's two-wicket nineteenth over decided the chase. With 33 needed from 12 balls and Rahul on 79, he gave away three wides, a bye and a single, then took two wickets in two balls. Lucknow never got close again.
FAQ
What did Rajat Patidar score in the IPL 2022 Eliminator?
Rajat Patidar scored 112 not out off 54 balls for Royal Challengers Bangalore against Lucknow Super Giants at Eden Gardens, Kolkata, on 25 May 2022. He hit 12 fours and seven sixes, scored at a strike rate of 207.4, and was named Player of the Match.
Was Patidar the first uncapped player to score an IPL playoff century?
Yes. At the time, Patidar had not played international cricket, and his 112* made him the first uncapped player to score a century in an IPL playoff match.
How did RCB beat LSG in the 2022 Eliminator?
RCB were sent in and made 207/4, with an unbroken 92-run fifth-wicket stand between Patidar and Dinesh Karthik (37* off 23). Lucknow reached 137/2 in 14 overs thanks to KL Rahul (79) and Deepak Hooda (45), but RCB's death bowling held them to 193/6. Josh Hazlewood took 3/43 and Harshal Patel conceded only 25 runs in four overs.
Which over turned the 2022 Eliminator?
The sixteenth over of RCB's innings, bowled by Ravi Bishnoi, cost 27 runs. Patidar hit 6, 4, 6, 4, 6 from the last five balls. RCB went from 123/4 to 150/4 and finished with 84 runs from the last five overs.
How did Rajat Patidar join RCB in 2022?
Patidar went unsold at the IPL 2022 mega auction. RCB signed him for ₹20 lakh as an injury replacement for Luvnith Sisodia, and he went on to score 333 runs that season, including 170 runs in the two playoff matches.
Did RCB win IPL 2022 after the Eliminator?
No. RCB lost Qualifier 2 to Rajasthan Royals by seven wickets at Ahmedabad on 27 May 2022, despite Patidar's 58, as Jos Buttler made an unbeaten century. Gujarat Titans won the 2022 title. RCB's first title came in 2025, with Patidar as captain, and they retained it in 2026.
Where can I compare Patidar's numbers with other IPL batters?
Patidar's full career breakdown is on his player profile. The Compare tool puts any two careers side by side by format, and RCB's franchise history is on the Royal Challengers team page.