18 years for one. 12 months for another. RCB are IPL champions again

Results in brief: Royal Challengers Bengaluru (161/5) beat Gujarat (155/8) by five wickets to clinch their second IPL title in Ahmedabad.

IPL 2026 FINALS: MAIN | SCORECARD

Eighteen years of pain, broken hearts and howling at the moon. And then boom. Two titles in 12 months, as if they’ve been doing it all their lives.

Royal Challengers Bengaluru have officially demolished the most exclusive club in Indian cricket. Only Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians have done it back to back before them. Old money. Establishment. Untouchable. Well, come on, gentlemen. There’s a new royal family in town and they wear red.

And they didn’t just win. They rolled with steam. They were crushed. It looked, frankly, awkward. The Gujarat titans reached the finals hoping for a coronation of their own. Instead, they got a tutorial, a brutal, merciless masterclass in how a rocket-fueled Swiss watch team runs its business.

If the 2025 and 2026 campaigns are anything to go by, Royal Challengers Bengaluru are no lightning rod. They are not a Cinderella story. They are the story. Dot. Lock it up. They are here to stay, here to dominate, and they would very much like you to take note.

18 points to top the group stage table. A wild 92 runs by the Gujarat titans in Qualifier 1 to book a direct flight from the mountains of Dharamsala to the heat of Ahmedabad. and then? In the finale, a walk in the park. An absolute, utterly calm, almost offensively relaxed stroll in front of 1,10,000 fans at the Narendra Modi Stadium.

Rajat Patidar and his band of raiders said they wanted to be called the attacking champions. Earned. Stamped out. Certified. It felt like a 12-month hiatus that saw more retirements, reshuffles and more MS Dhoni farewell rumors than anyone can count didn’t change anything for RCB. They picked up right where they left off, as if someone had simply pressed a resume button.

PARTY RCB FROM BEGINNING TO END

The final at the Narendra Modi Stadium was technically Gujarat Titans’ home ground. Theoretical. On paper.

Actually? It was RCB’s home party and Gujarat were uninvited guests who turned up late and regretted it immediately.

Since the evening before the match, hundreds of red shirts have descended on Ahmedabad, a city that sits proudly along the banks of the Sabarmati, where ancient ghats meet modern ambitions and the air hums with history, chanting RCB, RCB off the venue like an army besieging a castle. On Sunday, more than 80 percent of that 1,10,000 crowd was draped in crimson. Hostile takeover.

RCB had the luxury of arriving early, setting up camp, training twice, sweating in 40-degree heat and soaking up the vibes of the city before a single ball was bowled. They knew the land. They knew the pitch. They knew exactly what was coming.

And then they put on a show that their fans drove across the country to witness.

LIVE BOWLING SHOW

After winning the toss, RCB bowled first. The pitch, baked, slow, roughened by the merciless sun of Ahmedabad, was not a composition that promised fireworks. Tough, yes. Unplayable, no. But against a bowling attack so precisely, relentlessly, so stiflingly well? Hard was more than enough.

A slow tone? No problem. Rasikh Salam Dar, the fifth bowler who might have been underestimated by the opposition for half a second, came in and took three wickets.
Both Gujarat openers are 700-run monsters this season? Fascinating. RCB knocked them both out in the power play, for the third time in the season. Third. Time. It wasn’t a coincidence the first time. The second was no accident. By the third over, it was simply inevitable, like sunrise, like taxes, like Virat Kohli’s next innings. More on Virat’s latest master class by scrolling down.

Gill won’t have the courage to look in the mirror after throwing it away and just hitting a majestic six. Josh Hazlewood joins the party in the grand finale, as always. Then came Bhuvneshwar Kumar, a wily old dog who ended the season with xx wickets, ensuring that there would be no Sai Sudharsan marathon. Seeing Sai standing outside the crease to negate the early swing, Bhuvneshwar bent his back and bowled the bouncer. Sai was the first of many to fall into the bouncer’s trap, which was executed like clockwork by the RCB bowlers.

26 for 2 in 3.4 overs Both Gill and Sai are gone. RCB have done half their work within 20 deliveries of the final over.

Gujarat middle order? Well, that was Gujarat’s problem to solve. RCB only compounded the vice, the pressure was relentless, so suffocating that even Jos Buttler, the man who counter-attacked out of more impossible situations than most teams will face in a lifetime, didn’t like it. He didn’t even dare.

Gujarat Titans were held to 155 on a slow pitch, with the crowd mostly cheering against them, under a sky that looked like a furnace. It could have been worse had Washington Sundar not been given a reprieve when he was batting at 3 and substitute fielder Jordan Cox was spending his catch. It could have been worse had Arshad Khan, the uncapped all-rounder, not shown that there is room to counter-attack if you are brave enough with a six-ball 15.
But 155 was all they could manage.

VIRAT KOHLI MASTERCLASS IN CHASE

However, the chase. Oh, the chase.

Rajat Patidar said on the eve of the final that RCB are not thinking of defending the title. For them, Sunday was a blank canvas. Turn around. Go for it. Start from scratch.

They appeared fine.

Venkatesh Iyer, who plays a major role in the absence of Phil Salt, is running on a leg that is obviously treading and certainly hasn’t let him slow down, and Virat Kohli, a man who at this stage of his career is clearly experimenting with fast bowler raids with cross-bat shots just for fun, stormed into the Gujarat team as if the first attack in the 60 over was available.

They got past 60 in the fifth over. By the end of the power play, they had 70 on the board despite losing two wickets. The 70 runs at six paces with two men in the hut, an effervescent Venkatesh Iyer after a thrilling cameo and a rare failure by Devdutt Padikkal, who was already forgotten by the crowd given what was going on around him.

And then there was Kagiso Rabada. Beautiful, terrible, merciless.

The best in South Africa. The best goalkeeper of the season. Bowl short, pull shot, four. Bowls a good length, wrists in, ball dispatched. Three boundaries and a six. 19 runs over. The animal grabbed the collar, shook violently, and hurled itself in one direction only. RCB.

A game held by the scruff of the neck? That’s one way to put it. The second way is: Gujarat never prayed.

There was a swing in the ninth inning. It turned out to be just a turning point. Rashid Khan, one of the best T20 spinners in the world, gave the Gujarat Titans only a short period of prayer, hoping that a prayer or two might actually work as they were not doing well. He picked up the Rajat Patidar, flew it bravely and invited the destroyers to go after the big one. Rajat went for the pull but was caught at deep mid-wicket by Rabada.

Rashid struck again in the same over and removed Krunal Pandya, who had been their crisis man all season, on the 1st Sweep gone wrong. A rare failure for another man who, like Devdutt, would have been forgiven for what he did during the campaign.

The crisis man left. But Virat Kohli was there and he ensured that the pressure never got to them. The two batsmen with the company of Tim David never allowed the Gujarat Titans bowlers to find a way back. Kohli reached his fifty off 25 balls, his first half-century in a play-off match since the final in 2016. A 41-run partnership that took them close to the finish line.

Tim David went. RCB were down by five and needed 20. But with no pressure on the scoreboard, it was always going to be a piece of cake.

Kohli unbeaten on xx, battling cramps. A clockwork effort in the final. It didn’t carry the electricity of that 82 at the MCG against Pakistan. But Kohli was there till the end and thanks to a brilliant effort from his bowlers, he finished the job in a chase that was delivered on a platter.

Only one team turned up in front of one of the biggest crowds an IPL final has ever seen in Ahmedabad on Sunday.

This wasn’t the team that checked into town late Saturday night and stumbled off the buses under the moon, barely 24 hours before the biggest game of their season. The Gujarat titans were there in the flesh. They were lacking in everything else.

Royal challengers Bengaluru, meanwhile, were there body, soul, voice, plan, execution, belief and sheer, unapologetic dominance.

Two titles. Back to back. 18 years to win first, 12 months to win second. A new empire is being built in red. Not on social media this time, but with silverware in the trophy cabinet.

– The end

Issued by:

Saurabh Kumar

Published on:

31 May 2026 23:29 IST