RCB- The Golden Losers

The Surprises

If we take a look at RCB's past squads, we find great players like Anil Kumble, Daniel Vettori, Chris Gayle, Brendon McCullum, Virat Kohli, AB De Villiers and so on.

But, if we take a look at their trophy collection, we find it to be empty.

Squads that contain such high-quality players really outdo themselves in the league, but RCB has had a rather below par performance in the IPL. From crashing out of the finals to being in the last position at times, RCB has suffered it all. 

The question that arises in this situation is: Why do they choke in the end or simply start by a losing streak?

A choke can be defined as a sudden event or situation that completely changes the outcome of the match or game. For example, being the 2nd only player in a PUBG match and having to reload in front of your enemy. You had a fantastic game so far, but that one situation killed you.

In the IPL 2016 Final, SRH won the toss and chose to bat first. RCB did a fairly good job containing SRH to a total of 208 runs. While still a huge target, the form of Virat Kohli and Chris Gayle kept alive the chances of winning their maiden trophy. And they did not disappoint, having a hefty partnership of 114 runs, with  Virat Kohli, AB De Villiers, KL Rahul and Shane Watson to finish the job and score 95 runs off 57 balls. RCB lost its second wicket at 140, when Virat Kohli returned to the stands after another half-century registered in his name. They now needed 69 runs off 43 balls, with an average of approximately 1.6 runs per ball. With such decorated and renowned batsmen in their squad, this should have been a walk in the park for RCB. KL Rahul walked out to bat and was looking quite promising. However, RCB's third wicket fell at 148, the wicket of AB De Villiers, the man everyone had huge expectations from. One of the very rare cases in this extraordinary man's career, he cracked under pressure. No sweat, Shane Watson can still carry the team, right? That's what everyone thought when he walked out to bat.  At 160, KL Rahul walked out, having scored only 11 runs before being bowled. RCB now needed 49 runs off 27 balls, which was quite difficult even for batsmen like Chris Gayle and Virat Kohli. The middle order collapsed like a set of dominoes: Watson for 11 runs at the total of 164, Binny for 9 at 180, Jordan for 3 at 194. 15 runs were now needed off 3 balls. Iqbal Abdullah and Sachin Baby were the batsmen unlucky enough to be at the receiving end of all the pressure from the fans. The next ball was hit for a single. This was it. RCB had already lost. All Bhuvneshwar Kumar had to do now was to not deliver a wide or no-ball. RCB now needed 14 runs off 2 balls. It was all over. As a consolation, Abdullah hit a four off the final ball. It was not enough, though, as SRH won their first IPL Cup by 8 runs.

This was not at all the case in 2017, when RCB recorded their worst performance, as they won a meager 3 matches out of the 14 played. Needless to say, they remained at the bottom of the league table. 

The squad for 2017: Virat Kohli, Sreenath Aravind, Samuel Badree, Yuzvendra Chahal, AB De Villiers, Chris Gayle, Travis Head, Kedar Jadhav, Adam Milne, Pawan Negi, Billy Stanlake, Shane Watson, KL Rahul and so on. Infact, many users on Quora said that they believed RCB could lift the cup this year due to their investments in good bowlers.

However, we all very disappointed by RCB's performance.