RCB's emergence in the IPL

Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) continued their dominance and defeated Gujarat Titans in the IPL 2026 final at Ahmedabad. Though the emotions were not as high as 2025 when they laid their hands on the trophy for the first time ever, the victory showed that RCB has outsmarted a lot of other teams through smart tactics, superior skills and their ability to withstand pressure & win crucial moments. Their clinical exhibition underlined the efforts the support staff had put in over the last couple of years.

On the day of the 2026 final, after a wayward first over by Jacob Duffy, Bhuvneshwar bowled a tight one conceding only 5 runs. Rajat Patidar, sensing an opportunity, introduced Josh Hazlewood who struck immediately as Gill tried to pull one off a good length delivery and Patidar safely pouched it. Instead of Jos Butler, GT sent Nishant Sindhu. Bhuvneshwar, continuing, bowled a bouncer just outside the off stump and Sai Sudharsan, who was dismissed in a freakish manner in his previous two outings, tried to flash and the ball went high up as Jitesh Sharma completed a neat running catch. With the in-form openers dismissed, GT, when it mattered the most, had their middle order exposed early unlike most of their games before. Sindhu lost patience and holed out in the deep and the RCB bowlers never let the run rate go above 8 after the fourth over. As wickets kept tumbling, RCB firmly wrested control of the match and romped home comfortably by chasing GT's score of 155 in 18 overs with the loss of only five wickets. Rajat Patidar became only the third captain to win back to back IPL finals after MS Dhoni and Rohit Sharma.

So what changed for RCB, perhaps the most underperforming franchise with a huge fan base across the nation, that had to wait for 18 years since IPL's inception to win it? The support staff under Director of cricket Mo Bopat, Head coach Andy Flower & mentor Dinesh Karthik had their task cut out when they took over. They appear to have done their homework well, beginning from the planning ahead of the mega auction. Historically, RCB had a reputation of messing up auctions resulting in forming squads which lacked balance. In 2008, the squad boasted names like icon player & captain Rahul Dravid, the legendary Anil Kumble along with stalwarts like Zaheer Khan, Jack Kallis, Mark Boucher among others. After a string of poor performances, the owner Vijay Mallya rued the fact that he was not present at the auction. Resignations followed, Ray Jennings took over as coach and Anil Kumble took over from Kevin Petersen in 2009 - even as RCB reached the final, they lost to Deccan Chargers from an arguably winning position.

The years 2010 & 2011 were not bad either as they finished third and as runners up respectively. Virat Kohli, a superstar by then, took over the helm in 2012 from Daniel Vettori ( who in turn took charge as the head coach later) and a slump followed. Riding mostly on individual brilliances rather than collective consistent performances, an inconsistent RCB slipped even to 7th in 2014. The year 2016 was unforgettable as Virat Kohli broke all batting records and scored 973 runs in total but could not take his team through and cross the line as they lost agonizingly to SunRisers Hyderabad. Chris Gayle, Shane Watson, AB de Villiers, Mitchell Starc - all shone but the trophy eluded them.

Virat finally shed the captaincy burden as the 2021 season ended - he gave up the Indian captaincy too the same year ( T20s initially, only to be removed from ODIs too and later he decided to relinquish the test captaincy in January 2022). Gary Kirsten, Simon Katich, Mike Hesson & Sanjay Bangar assumed the role of Head Coach during these years one after the other but it did not have any significant bearing on the result till 2024 when Andy Flower was appointed. Though RCB finished 4th, a wise decision was made to retain Flower which also meant that he could thoughtfully plan about overhauling the squad ahead of the 2025 mega auction.

Though some great bowlers were part of the squad across seasons such as Zaheer, Kumble, Mitchell Starc, Yuzi Chahal, Mohammed Siraj, Wanindu Hasaranga and Umesh Yadav to name a few, the focus was more on all rounders. Darren Sammy, Glen Maxwell, Marcus Stoinis, Colin de Grandhomme - all who could at most bowl at military medium but were not consistent frontline bowlers, played for the franchise but never really catapulted it to the reckoning. RCB lacked a proper frontline quick. Virat's tactics were also questioned -particularly his inability to recognize when a bowler was having an off day, make proactive field adjustments, and adapt to the changing flow of a match. The fact that was being overlooked was that while other captains had good fast bowlers at their disposal, Kohli virtually had none - this weakness was pronounced at the relatively smaller Chinnaswamy stadium in Bangalore, where RCB played most of their home games. Also, whenever RCB did well, they almost always had at least one of their bowlers among the tournament’s top wicket-takers. Squads are typically assembled by the team management factoring in the seven home games to maximize the obvious advantages. RCB never appeared to have addressed this nuance.

By recruiting Bhuveneshwar Kumar, RCB added massive firepower to their bowling. With Hazlewood, Yash Dayal and Kyle Jamieson along with youngsters Suyash Sharma, Jacob Bettel and all rounders Krunal Pandya and Romario Shepherd, the team wore a balanced look, at least on paper probably for the first time after 2008. Rasikh Salam, Devdutt Padikkal, Phil Salt, Jitesh Sharma & Venkatesh Iyer offered promise and most importantly performed when it mattered. RCB finally had the bases covered and with a determined Virat Kohli topping their run charts, they won against Punjab Kings in 2025 and GT in 2026 in the final. In fact in 2026, RCB were treated as serious contenders even before the tournament commenced and a few experts also predicted that one of the four play off spots would be occupied by RCB while only the other three were up for grabs - such was the look the squad wore. The support staff including Flower, Bopat and Karthik along with Omkar Salvi ( bowling coach), Malolan Rangarajan ( fielding coach and head of scouting), Shanker Basu ( Head Conditioning Coach) and others deserve full credit. Above all KING KOHLI finally appears to be getting his due share of trophies which evaded him during his captaincy tenure - both for India and RCB.

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