Moeen Ali was on the board second ball upon his return after a brief injury break when Faf du Plessis mistimed a long-hop to deep midwicket in the eighth over. In the ninth, Glenn Maxwell was run out trying to steal a single after a horrible misjudgment from Kohli. In the 10th, Kohli was done in by a Moeen ripper. He tossed it up and got it to rip in sharply off the surface to beat his drive and crash into the stumps. The top three gone inside 10 overs. 62 for 0 was now 79 for 3.

Then there’s Lomror, who has seen a lot of life and cricket at 22. Six years ago, he was part of the same batch of India Under-19s as Rishabh Pant, Ishan Kishan and Avesh Khan. While the careers of those three have progressed into the fast lane, Lomror, all of 19, was given the captaincy of Rajasthan’s first-class side. It’s a state known for its administrative challenges, where selections are often arbitrary, and teams not decided until the day of departure. As captain, I have managed the team, the logistics, the training, and everything else.

It’s among the harshest reality checks a player of his age can get at a time when he should perhaps have been having fun hitting the red and white ball. To his credit, Lomror’s graduation as a big-match player may have come about because of the additional responsibility. It’s another matter altogether that the captaincy would soon leave his hands of him, but he proved to have a good head on his shoulders.

In junior cricket, Lomror and Pant were both bashers in Rajasthan. Lomror was even nicknamed ‘Junior Gayle’ by Chandrakant Pandit, the former India wicketkeeper who is now a respected domestic coach, a man known to have a keen eye for talent. On Wednesday, Royal Challengers needed Lomror to channel the Gayle in him. He needed to win back lost momentum from the innings. On a surface where it wasn’t easy to come in and start swinging straightaway.

This is where Patidar helped him. Picked seemingly because of a strong spin game, which Royal Challengers felt would be worth a punt at No. 3, he was quickly off the blocks, churning strike and moving the scorecard along. Off the fourth ball he faced, the first from Moeen, he got to the pitch and walloped a flighted delivery into the stands at long-on. And he went again off Moeen’s next, trying to throw him off his lengths of him. Then as Maheesh Theekshana came on, Patidar sent a scorching bullet over a ducking Lomror to the straight boundary. What stood out about his shot-making of him was his clarity of him. On a surface with bite, he’d quickly realized hitting with the spin was the way to go.

Patidar’s enterprise had a positive effect on Lomror, too, as he used the long levers to great effect. And within no time, Royal Challengers were back up and running with the pair adding 44 off 32. A replacement player and a middle-order reserve, who had spent five seasons at Royals but with little game time to speak of, were expertly reviving the innings.

When Patidar fell to an outstanding catch from a sprinting Mukesh Choudhary for a 15-ball 21 in the 16th over, you got the sense he had done his job. It brought out supreme finisher Dinesh Karthik, who initially struggled, especially with Theekshana bowling hard into the pitch and making him force the pace, but by then Lomror had set himself up for a final flourish.

Far too often in the past, Royal Challengers have lacked that one solid Indian uncapped player capable of bridging the gap between their top order and their finishers. In two innings alone, Lomror had proved he could step up. By the time Lomror was out in the 19th, he had danced the innings out and given their bowlers something to defend.

It was still only par, but without much dew, it still was something to work with. And in making 42 off 26, Lomror reassured himself and everyone that his overall T20 strike rate of 120 coming into the season was heading north. He also gave a glimpse of his maturity and level-headedness of him as Royal Challengers fight to go deep in the competition.