Rasikh Salam turned a Tuesday night at the Chinnaswamy into a return on investment. The right-arm quick took 4/25 as Royal Challengers Bengaluru beat Lucknow Super Giants by five wickets, chasing 147 in 15.1 overs with Virat Kohli’s 49 anchoring the reply.
Salam struck early, removed Aiden Markram, then came back through the middle overs to get Ayush Badoni before cleaning up Mukul Choudhary and Avesh Khan at the death. His first over went for 10 runs and brought a wicket, his second cost only 2, his third gave away 6 and produced another breakthrough, and his last over went for 7 and yielded two wickets. Across 24 deliveries, he sent down 12 dot balls and conceded only three boundaries.
The performance mattered because RCB did not pay pocket change for him. Salam entered the IPL 2025 auction at a base price of ₹30 lakh and was bought for ₹6 crore, then retained for the same figure for IPL 2026. On the model used in the article, Tuesday’s spell returned ₹1.0486 crore in value — nearly nine Tata Sierras at the car’s starting ex-showroom price of ₹11.49 lakh.
That value came in a match RCB had to keep under control after Lucknow Super Giants made 146, a total that felt short once the pressure mounted. Mitchell Marsh made 40, but the innings was interrupted by Rishabh Pant’s injury and never fully settled. RCB kept landing blows, and Salam did most of the heavy lifting when the game was there to be won.
The contradiction in the night was simple. Salam’s spell began with a 10-run over and still produced a wicket, then kept tightening until the finish, when he took two more. That kind of spread is what teams pay for in the auction and keep for the next season too. On Tuesday, it was also the difference between a defendable total and a chase that never really got away from Bengaluru.
For RCB, the result was a clean one: a five-wicket win, a chase finished with time to spare, and a bowler whose figures made the price tag look modest. For Salam, it was a spell that did not just win overs. It won the night.
