Skipper Jitesh Sharma hammered an unbeaten 85 and Virat Kohli hit 54 as Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) stormed into qualifier 1 of the IPL playoffs with a six-wicket win over Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) on Tuesday.

Bengaluru chased down 228 to go second in the 10-team table in the last league match of this season and set up a meeting with table-toppers Punjab Kings on Thursday.

The result pushed Gujarat Titans into third spot. They will face Mumbai Indians in the eliminator on Friday.

The winners of qualifier 1 go straight to the final on June 3 but the losers have a second chance of joining them as they will face the winner of the eliminator in qualifier 2 to decide who will head to Ahmedabad.

Lucknow skipper Rishabh Pant signed off with an unbeaten 118 off 61 balls in his team's 227-3, but Bengaluru knocked off the target with eight balls to spare.

Kohli set up the chase with his 30-ball knock and after his departure stand-in-skipper Jitesh put on an unbeaten stand of 107 with Mayank Agarwal, who hit 41, to trump Lucknow, who were already out of the playoffs.

"I will not be able to express my thoughts, I can't believe I played that knock," said player of the match Jitesh. "When Virat bhai (brother) was out, I was just thinking of taking it deep."