Rahul posted the fourth highest individual score in Indian Premier League history with his unbeaten 132no from 69 balls, but he was dropped by the RCB skipper as Kings XI amassed 3-206.
Bangalore were never in the race in reply, slumping to 3-4 with Kohli unable to make up for his fielding mishaps with 1 off 5, as they were eventually bowled out for 109 from 17 overs.
Kohli accepted blame for his errors, dropping Rahul on 83 off Dale Steyn and again on 89 from the bowling Navdeep Saini.
“I have to stand in front and take the brunt of it,” Kohli said.
“Cost about 30-40 runs. If we’d restricted them at 180 we wouldn’t have felt pressure to go from ball one.
“There are days when you have these kind of things happen. Just have to accept them.
“We’ve had a good game, we’ve had a bad game. Time to move on. We need to learn to plug those little mistakes.”
Kohli’s dropped catches aside, Rahul’s knock was the highest ever by a captain in an IPL match or an Indian player and only behind Chris Gayle’s 175no, Brendon McCullum’s 158no and AB de Villiers’ 133no on the all-time list.
The typically modest Rahul, 28, preferred to discuss his team’s performance despite scoring almost 65% of their runs.
“It’s as complete a team performance as it can get, so I’m happy,” Rahul said.
“I’ve actually been not so confident. I had a chat with Maxi (Glenn Maxwell) yesterday and said I wasn’t feeling completely in control of my batting.
“I was a little nervous but I knew if I faced a few balls, it would settled down.”