The unsung heroes in Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s rise to the summit

One of the oft-used cliches is that the IPL is a marathon, not a sprint. Delhi Capitals will ruefully agree – after all, they won their first four matches in a canter yet failed to make even a serious push for the Playoffs.

It’s also said regularly that while batters win matches, bowlers win tournaments. One need not look beyond Royal Challengers Bengaluru to understand exactly what that means.

On an emotional, dramatic Tuesday night in front of nearly 100,000 spectators at the gigantic Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad, the most passionate sports fans in the world were finally rewarded for loyalty when Rajat Patidar did what Rahul Dravid, Kevin Pietersen, Anil Kumble, Daniel Vettori, Virat Kohli and Faf du Plessis before him had failed to accomplish. In his first season as the captain of the franchise, any franchise, the unassuming Madhya Pradesh batter took his team over the finish line, sparking waves of unchecked celebration throughout the night on the pothole-ridden streets of Bengaluru. After 17 unsuccessful attempts, RCB had finally shed the monkey off their back. There was unalloyed delight, of course, but also a huge sigh of relief. And the unmistakable air of having ‘done it for Virat’, in a throwback to 2011 when triumph at the 50-over World Cup in Mumbai was dedicated to the peerless Sachin Tendulkar.

Kohli was the obvious cynosure, like he always is when he takes the cricket field, and there is no mistaking his imprint on the march to the Promised Land. He topped 600 runs in an IPL season for the third time on the bounce, finishing with a franchise-high 657 runs. Only Orange Cap winner Sai Sudharsan (759) and the tournament’s Most Valuable Player, Suryakumar Yadav (717), boasted a higher tally. No one scored as many half-centuries (8) as the former India and RCB skipper and his strike-rate of 144.71 was a marked improvement on his overall IPL strike-rate of 132.86.

Alongside the effervescent Phil Salt, Kohli formed an exceptional opening pair. The Englishman, who had struck up an excellent alliance with Sunil Narine at the top of the tree when Kolkata Knight Riders won a third title last season, ended up with 403 runs, strike-rate 175.98. Until he pulled up lame with a hamstring injury deep into the league stage, Australian finisher Tim David had sent the RCB faithful into raptures by smashing 16 fours and 14 sixes in 101 deliveries to average 62.33 and strike at 185.14 runs per 100 balls faced, while Romario Shepherd became a household name after a 14-ball half-century (the joint second fastest in the tournament’s history) against Chennai Super Kings a month back.

Patidar himself and feisty, inventive wicketkeeper-batter Jitesh Sharma were the other batting heroes at various stages while local lads Devdutt Padikkal and his injury replacement Mayank Agarwal more than held their own, which meant that for the first time in their history, IPL weren’t reliant merely on their top three or four, as has been the case for much of their existence.

Suyash Sharma
| Photo Credit:
R.V. MOORTHY

One of the reasons why RCB only made three finals in the first 17 years was because they didn’t have sustained firepower in their bowling. There would be the occasional high-performing asset – none more so than Yuzvendra Chahal – but one couldn’t shake off the feeling that RCB had been so fixated on their explosive top order which included Kohli (the only man to play for the same franchise for all 18 years) and at various stages Chris Gayle, A.B. de Villiers, Yuvraj Singh and Shane Watson that they didn’t quite pay the same attention to their bowling.

That anomaly was emphatically corrected at the big November auction in Jeddah, and the results are there for all to see. RCB weren’t just content to secure the services of Josh Hazlewood; they stuck with Yash Dayal, the left-arm quick, while roping in the experienced Bhuvneshwar Kumar. The two Indians played all 15 matches while Aussie Hazlewood missed three games with a shoulder injury, during which time his value to the team became even more evident. Rasik Salam and Lungi Ngidi were used sparingly – both played only two games apiece – which was because Shepherd slotted in nicely as a fourth seamer when required. The West Indian did go at 10.78 runs per over but had the happy knack of picking up big wickets, none bigger than Punjab Kings captain Shreyas Iyer, caught behind in the final for just one after having knocked Mumbai Indians out in Sunday’s Qualifier 2 with a special unbeaten 87.

The pundits were unanimous in their view that RCB had had an excellent auction, that they had most bases covered. If it was only ‘most’ and not ‘all’ bases, that was because the spin department looked a little undercooked. Their main specialist spinners were Krunal Pandya, the fastish left-armer, and Suyash Sharma, the little leggie who tends to look at the sky when he releases the ball. Competent, sure, was the verdict, but game-changing? Decisively impactful? Hmmm, the jury went.

How wrong we were all to be proved. The older Pandya brother will never fall in the ‘classical’ category – not that he will ever lay claim to it – but he is street-smart, clever, a half-step ahead of the game, making the most of whatever he has without attempting to overreach. Throughout the campaign, his changes of pace and angles were exemplary; he even bowled the bouncer, often clocked in the mid-110s, with reasonable regularity. He rushed through his overs, he was seldom collared – his economy of 8.23 was the best among all RCB bowlers who played at least two matches – but most importantly, he kept adding to the wickets column.

On Tuesday, Krunal packed off Prabhsimran Singh and dangerous Aussie Josh Inglis, two wicketkeeper-batters eminently capable of changing the course of a game in a matter of a few overs. Like he had done in the previous 14 games, he was relentless, probing, testing – not with loop and drift and dip and turn, but with common sense which in reality isn’t all that common. By the time he was done with his spell, he had picked up two for 17, enough to secure him the Player of the Final award for an unprecedented second time in the IPL. Krunal’s 17 wickets were the joint second highest for RCB, alongside Bhuvneshwar; unsurprisingly, Hazlewood topped the charts with 22 sticks.

Suyash wasn’t in the same wicket-taking league as his ‘spin’ twin, but he too had a season to remember – eight wickets, economy 8.84. At KKR, he had often slipped in as an Impact Player; here, he often played entire matches, the surest indication of how highly he is rated by the team management even in the nascent stages of his career. In his 14 appearances, Suyash bowled 50 overs, the second most by an RCB bowler (behind Bhuvneshwar’s 52), reiterating the confidence Patidar and Jitesh, who stood in as captain when Patidar was nursing a finger injury, had in the 22-year-old.

Bhuvneshwar Kumar
| Photo Credit:
Getty Images

While the spinners unexpectedly whipped up a storm, Bhuvneshwar and Dayal ensured that Hazlewood wasn’t left to do all the heavy lifting on his own. Bhuvneshwar is a seasoned campaigner who won the title with Sunrisers Hyderabad in 2016 and is closing in on 200 IPL wickets. He provided the cutting edge with the new ball, making up for a slight drop in pace by bringing his experience into play and dipping into his vast reservoir of tricks. He was also a mentor to Dayal, useful tips from mid-on or mid-off ensuring that the left-arm quick didn’t get carried away.

Dayal has been one of the stars for RCB in the last couple of seasons. He was a shining light in Gujarat Titans’ surge to the title on their debut in 2022, but like Chetan Sharma and his last-ball six (conceded to Javed Miandad in Sharjah), he was remembered more for having gone for five sixes in the last over the following year when Rinku Singh muscled KKR to one of the more famous T20 victories. The way the 27-year-old from Allahabad has bounced back is the stuff of legend. Now, Dayal doesn’t invoke memories of Rinku anymore. He has established his own identity as a wicket-taker with the new ball, because he is able to swing the white ball when it is new, and as a terrific end-overs specialist who has become adept at defending targets in the last over (poetic justice, you say?).

Last year, Dayal put Chennai Super Kings out at the league stage in a virtual quarterfinal. The five-time former champions needed 17 off the last over to dump RCB and advance even in the event of a defeat, and when Mahendra Singh Dhoni smashed Dayal over long-on and out of the park, images of Rinku might have briefly surfaced. Dayal pulled himself together brilliantly, dismissed Dhoni off the next ball, and conceded only one more run in the over to win over the RCB fans. This year, with the stakes a lot lesser, he again expertly defended 15 in the last over and six off the last three deliveries against the same opponents at the same venue (the Chinnaswamy), one of many instances when he was the last-over boss.

His 13 wickets were crucial to RCB’s fortunes. Alongside Hazlewood and Bhuvneshwar, he ensured that RCB’s three principal pacers accounted for a staggering 52 wickets in the competition. The batters will understandably hog the limelight because that is the nature of the cricket beast, especially in the 20-over format, but within the dugout, Patidar, head coach Andy Flower and Kohli, the team’s heartbeat, will have profusely and gratefully acknowledged the class, tenacity, persistence and bloody-mindedness of a largely settled bowling unit. And this truly was the definition of a unit propelled by its Indian core, not just Hazlewood and the rest. How heartening.