Tag: Royal Challengers Bengaluru

In The News, sports

Back-to-Back IPL Wins: RCB’s Journey to Glory

May 31, 2026 will remain an unforgettable day for me as also for the millions of other loyal fans of the Royal Challengers Bengaluru ( RCB). They won the Indian Premier League in style beating the Gujarat Titans in the finals at Ahmedabad. Through this victory, RCB won the IPL for the second successive year, having won it for the first time in 2025. You must remember why we fans were delirious with joy. It had been a long, long wait for us. In 2025, RCB won after a barren 18 years of missing out on winning the world’s most coveted T20 cricket championship after the T20 World Cup,

The fans have been loyal- sticking with the team through thick and thin. They bore the agony of having lost in the Finals in 2009, 2011, and 2016. They were one of the few teams to have never lifted the trophy. Yet the fan base kept growing. RCB currently has more than 25 million followers in Instagram- the highest fan base amongst all the teams. Finally, in 2025 RCB beat Punjab Kings in the finals and the jinx was broken.

This year, the team did consistently well. At the end of the league phase, they were table toppers with 18 points having won 9 out of the 14 matches. They then beat Gujarat Titans handsomely in the Qualifier 1 to head straight into the finals. Interestingly, they met the same opponents in the finals and beat them again. By winning 2 IPL titles in a row, RCB join Chennai Super Kings (CSK) who won in 2010 & 2011 and Mumbai Indians (MI) who won in 2019 & 2020 as being the only teams to have achieved this commendable feat.

Unlike in the past, RCB had a well rounded team and did not depend on a few stars. In past years, the batting was a major strength but the bowling unit did not quite measure up. So in spite of having super stars like Chris Gayle, A B de Villiers and Virat Kohli in their ranks, they could not win important matches consistently. The bowling unit was considerably strengthened with bowling stars like Bhuvaneshwar Kumar and Josh Hazlewood. Many individual players won Man of the Match for RCB in the last two seasons. This definitely helped them win in 2025 and 2026. Experts and players alike speak of excellent strategies by Head Coach Andy Flower, Director of Cricket Mo Bobat, Batting Coach Dinesh Karthik and others which was a major factor in the RCB championship victories.

Virat Kohli is now past 37 but showed the same enthusiasm and commitment as when he played the first game in 2008! His feats will always be cherished by RCB fans the world over. Now is the time to celebrate, to once again live through the moments that made 2026 such a special season for RCB! .

In The News, My Take

RCB- Romanticising The Loser

As a die-hard fan of this cricket franchise, I feel the think tank of Royal Challengers Bengaluru have had it all too easy for far too long! Year after year we have flattered to deceive. I can’t ever forget the first match of the inaugural IPL in 2008. Brendon McCullum of KKR took us to the cleaners scoring 158, we scored 82 – and we haven’t fully recovered yet! I have watched virtually every match of RCB- both men and women- over the years so I write this with considerable anguish.

The men’s team haven’t won even once in 18 years. This makes me believe RCB has made a class act of romanticising the loser! A powerful PR ecosystem and social media presence have almost indoctrinated fans in their millions to believe it is perfectly ok to lose -as long as you try!!! Instead of a strong killer instinct with little or no patience for failures, we seemingly have a bland acceptance of fate.

I hope and pray 2025 will be a different outcome but based on recent events in the ongoing Women’s IPL, I have my grave doubts. Which leads me to the question: who is responsible for decisions ? The coach, captain, owners or none of them?? Who is the think tank for RCB? Are they in any way accountable for results?

In the Women’s IPL, RCB finished a disappointing 4th in the first edition but did really well to win the championship last year. This means we are the defending champions in 2025.

Most teams do well in their home grounds- there are many reasons for this most of which are quite obvious. We somehow don’t. The fact that RCB have lost both home games played so far is shocking to say the least. Yes, of course, they tried their best; there were injuries which prevented other good players from playing etc, but why did we make some elementary blunders???

Here are two, according to me: 1. In the first match at Bengaluru versus a strong Mumbai Indians team, knowing the size of the ground, the tendency of batters to try to hit sixes, how come we had a slow over rate that penalised us in the end. With one fielder less in the outfield, was it smart cricket? 2. In the same match, wasn’t someone keeping an eye on who’s bowling? We know the 19th and 20 th overs are the most crucial. Leaving the 19th over to Kanika Ahuja, a well-meaning but not the leading spinner of the team was asking for trouble. We could have perhaps won but we lost this game in the last ball!!!

And more blunders came up in the very next match versus less fancied UP Warriorz. 1. Renuka Singh giving away 17 runs in that one over virtually gave away the match. She may have the Purple Cap but is not the best bowler at the death. 2. Worse was to follow. In the Super Over, Kim Garth was excellent to restrict UP Warriorz to just 8 runs. We needed 9 to win. Instead of sending in one in red hot form- Elyse Perry ( holder of the Orange Cap with 235 runs and an average of 117 and a strike rate of 160 including 90 not out in 56 balls in this very match), we sent Richa Ghosh – and worst of all Smriti Mandhana went in herself when she has not been a great player of spin bowling. Sophie Eccelstone added to her batting performance of 33 which got MI to the super over, by defending 8 runs. She gave away only 4!! How can you win matches if you can’t score 5 runs in the crucial make or break over????

Still we will rationalise and say it was only a game, they did their best, we are sorry to disappoint our fans, we will come back stronger next time etc etc. Another example of romanticising the loser!

I sometimes wonder based on what I have seen in the IPL over the years, whether it is the owner’s ego that propels the team’s urge to win! Looks like the Ambanis, the Goenkas, the Marans, and SRK don’t take kindly to defeat- though I am sure they accept they can’t win every game every year. RCB has no owner in that sense. We started off with a single owner, Dr Vijay Mallya. Love him or hate him he was there in your face. Today RCB is owned by United Spirits Limited, part of the Dieago Group. It is a corporate entity. Winning or losing a IPL title may not matter much to the company executives- as it does to us fans. They are more interested in revenues from advertising, publicity campaigns, brand, marketing, and social media presence. We are more interested in winning matches!