Let’s be honest with each other for a second. If you’d told any cricket fan in, say, 2023 that Royal Challengers Bengaluru would soon be the most ruthless, best-organised, serially-winning franchise in the IPL, you’d have been laughed out of the group chat. RCB were the meme team. Eighteen years, zero trophies, a million “next year” jokes.
Well. It’s 2026, they’ve just beaten Gujarat Titans by five wickets in the final at Ahmedabad, they have two trophies in two years, and nobody is laughing anymore. On 31 May, at the Narendra Modi Stadium — Gujarat’s own backyard — RCB became just the third team in IPL history to defend their title. And the man who ended it? Come on. You already know.
Here are six things from that night (and that season) we’re still not over.
1. Patidar won the toss and said “we’ll bowl” — at Ahmedabad, in a final
Captaincy is easy when it works, but let’s give Rajat Patidar his flowers. Choosing to chase in a final, at a ground where the home crowd wants your head, takes a certain calm. Two years of trophies say the man has it. There was even a mini heart-attack moment in the very first over — Sai Sudharsan was given out caught behind, reviewed it, and survived. GT fans exhaled. It didn’t matter for long.
2. The powerplay ambush that broke the game open
Whatever plans Gujarat had for a home-final party, RCB’s new-ball bowlers shredded them inside four overs. Both GT openers were gone before the end of the fourth, with a grand total of 22 runs between them. Arshad Khan tried to swing the momentum back with a wild 15 off 6, and Josh Hazlewood calmly ended that too. By the time the powerplay was done, the final already had a mood — and it wasn’t Gujarat’s.
3. Washington Sundar deserved better teammates that night
Real ones respect a lone fight, and Washington Sundar’s unbeaten 50 off 37 was exactly that. While wickets fell all around him, he dragged Gujarat from “this could get embarrassing” to a semi-respectable 155 for 8. Rasikh Salam was brilliant for RCB with 3 for 27, and the two old pros — Hazlewood and Bhuvneshwar Kumar — grabbed two wickets each. Both teams played their Impact Player cards along the way (Prasidh Krishna came in for GT, Venkatesh Iyer for RCB), but no tactical substitution was saving Gujarat from what came next.
4. Kohli decided Rabada’s Purple Cap meant nothing to him
Here’s the thing about that chase: Kagiso Rabada wasn’t just any bowler. He was the leading wicket-taker of IPL 2026, the eventual Purple Cap winner with 29 scalps, the one genuine threat to a 156 chase. So what did Virat Kohli and Venkatesh Iyer do? Took him for 37 runs in his first two overs. Game, effectively, over — in the powerplay of the chase.
Iyer smashed 32 off 16 before Mohammed Siraj (against his old team, of all people) got him in the fifth over, and Rabada hit back with Devdutt Padikkal soon after. At 70 for 2 after six overs, the scoreboard said “contest.” Everyone watching knew otherwise.
5. That finish. THAT finish.
Kohli in a run chase, in a final, with the job nearly done, is one of sport’s great sights — and this time there was no twist. He raced to the fastest fifty of his entire IPL career, carved nine fours and three sixes, ignored Rashid Khan’s excellent 2 for 25 like it was net bowling, and then finished the whole thing with a six over long-on off the last ball of the 18th over. RCB 161 for 5. Twelve balls to spare. Kohli unbeaten on 75 off 42, Player of the Match in an IPL final.
And if you want the full-circle detail: in the 2025 final, when RCB finally broke the 18-year curse against Punjab Kings in that nervy six-run squeaker, Kohli’s contribution was a gritty 43 in a team score of 190. One year later, he didn’t grind out a final. He owned one.
6. The record books had to make room
Back-to-back titles puts RCB in genuinely tiny company — only Chennai Super Kings (2010–11) and Mumbai Indians (2019–20) had ever defended the crown before. Add the fact that RCB flattened this same GT side by 92 runs in Qualifier 1, and this wasn’t a lucky run. This was a machine.
Which sets up the only question that matters for IPL 2027: can they make it three in a row? Nobody has. CSK couldn’t in 2012. Mumbai couldn’t in 2021. It’s the one mountain in this league that has never been climbed, and RCB — RCB! — are the team standing at the base of it. Cricket is weird and wonderful.
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Bonus: the season belonged to a 15-year-old (no, really)
The trophy went to Bengaluru, but the individual awards night belonged to a kid who can’t legally drive. Rajasthan Royals’ Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, aged fifteen, won the Orange Cap with 776 runs — at a strike rate above 237, the most outrageous number ever posted by a season’s top scorer — and became the youngest player to ever claim it. He also collected the MVP, Emerging Player, Super Striker and Super Sixes awards, presumably needing a bigger shelf at home.
Elsewhere on awards night: Rabada’s 29 wickets sealed the Purple Cap, Sai Sudharsan hit the most fours of anyone, Siraj took home the dot-ball award with 172 of them, Punjab Kings won Fair Play, and Manish Pandey’s flying grab to remove Tim David in the KKR–RCB league game was voted Catch of the Season. A season where a teenager broke the batting charts and a thirty-something fast bowler topped the bowling ones — that’s the IPL doing IPL things.
So… what now?
Now the fun part. Gujarat will hurt from losing a home final, but with Sudharsan, Rashid, Siraj and Rabada in the core, they’ll be back in the contender conversation before you can say “revenge arc.” Their management admitted the team came up one step short while backing the overall campaign — which is exactly what you say when you plan to run it back.
Everyone else? They spend the off-season trying to solve one problem: how do you beat this RCB team? Every trade, every release, every crazy December auction bid across all ten franchises will secretly be an answer to that question.
The off-season drama has already started, by the way — one governing-council-approved blockbuster trade is done, another mega saga is refusing to end, and the auction is pencilled in for December. We’ve got separate breakdowns of all of it on the site.
But for now, one more time, because it still feels surreal to type: RCB. Back-to-back champions. What a time to be a cricket fan.
Scoreboard for the purists: GT 155/8 (Washington Sundar 50* off 37; Rasikh Salam 3/27) lost to RCB 161/5 in 18 overs (Virat Kohli 75* off 42; Rashid Khan 2/25) by five wickets with 12 balls to spare. Final played 31 May 2026, Narendra Modi Stadium, Ahmedabad.
