Follow UsThe Qualifier 1 clash between Punjab Kings and Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) tonight was as good as over when Shashank Singh was cleaned up by Suyash Sharma, and it most certainly was a write-off when Jitesh Sharma took an absolute blinder to bowl Punjab out for 101. Lightning was not going to strike twice. RCB were always going to walk their way towards the total.
Yet you could understand why even the most optimistic RCB fans hesitated to display confidence even when victory had effectively been sealed inside the first 80ish balls of the contest.
For such had been the history of RCB. For 17 seasons, it was a franchise synonymous with ‘bottling’. The journey and the results endured by the team gave you the impression that cricketing gods gained pleasure from seeing the side and its fans suffer, and it got so ridiculous that it felt like no good thing was destined to ever happen to RCB in the IPL.
But maybe now, it’s time for RCB fans to finally let go of the inherent apprehension instilled in them. Maybe now, it’s time for RCB fans to let go of this dreaded feeling that all good moments will inevitably be succeeded by a gigantic heartbreak. Maybe it’s time to stop being pessimistic, and maybe it’s time to put an end to the perennial reverse-jinxing.
RCB’s class of 2025 has already distinguished itself from every RCB side of the past, and the side’s performance in Qualifier 1 against Punjab Kings was the clearest indication yet that this is a unit that DOES NOT carry any baggage.
Dominance. It’s a term we’ve come to associate with champion sides like CSK, MI and KKR in the crunch stages of the tournament, but never with RCB. 2016 was the last time the side played Qualifier 1, and there, they had to pull off an all-time-great comeback to get the job done. In 2011, the year in which the playoff system was introduced, they got obliterated by Chennai in Qualifier 1 before bouncing back and beating Mumbai in the second Qualifier.
Considering this backdrop, and considering the franchise’s history, it’s borderline shocking what RCB managed to do against Punjab tonight. It was 100 minutes of perfection; the most dominant showing by ANY SIDE in any playoff game in the competition’s 18-year history.
RCB had *some* luck in the form of the toss — and you can argue that they deserved it anyway — but jeeeez, what they managed to produce thereafter was nothing short of SCARY.
In 10 overs, Rajat Patidar’s side COMPLETELY BLEW AWAY Punjab, and while they were undoubtedly aided by some atrocious strokemaking by the ‘home’ side, what prompted the horrible stroke-making from the Punjab batters was the near-perfect showing with the ball from the RCB bowlers.
RCB began the contest with eight straight overs of pace, and collectively as a bowling unit, the team could not have a) walked in with a better plan and b) executed the said plan any better.
As is the case with almost every batting unit in the world, Punjab’s weakness lay against back-of-a-length pace bowling.
In the 13 group games, PBKS’ batters averaged 38.5 against pace overall, but under 30 against good length and back-of-a-length deliveries, with 58% of all their dismissals against pace coming off these lengths.
In the games they played in Mullanpur in the group stages, meanwhile, Punjab’s batters averaged just 17 against good length and back-of-a-length deliveries against pace.
Come Qualifier 1, an extraordinary 73% of the deliveries RCB bowled in the first 7 overs were either length or back-of-a-length. And the result? 5 dismissals for 52 runs, Punjab's batting backbone was fully destroyed.
Now, Hazlewood was always going to hammer the ‘awkward’ length, so his wickets of Shreyas Iyer and Josh Inglis came as no surprise. It’s his bread and butter after all.
Rather, it was what the two Indian speedsters around him, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Yash Dayal, did that was astounding. Bhuvneshwar is known for his ability to swing the ball up-front, and Dayal is also someone very much capable of zooting the ball into the left-hander. Bhuvi, at least, is the kind of bowler you’ll always ask to bowl full and look for swing.
On the night, however, in the 30 balls these two pacers bowled between them in the first 7 overs, nearly 65% of the deliveries were either good length or back-of-a-length.
We have to look no further than the third over Bhuvneshwar bowled to Prabhsimran Singh to understand RCB’s tactical masterclass on the night.
In an ideal world, Bhuvneshwar bowls a full outswinger to Prabhsimran and he ends up nicking it to the keeper or the slip cordon. Or maybe an inswinger where the wicketkeeper batter gets trapped in front. But no, here, Bhuvneshwar kept going back-of-a-length, even after he got clobbered for two boundaries by the batter.
The result? The reward? There was extra bounce from a good length on the final ball of the third over, and Prabhsimran ended up nicking it to the wicketkeeper attempting a wild hoick.
In a way, that one over pretty much summed up the first innings. RCB’s bowlers knew exactly what they were doing. On the contrary, the Punjab batters didn’t. They had no counter-plan against the back-of-a-length barrage, and the attempted counter-attacking fell flat (and embarrassingly so) with the wickets of Iyer, Inglis and Prabhsimran looking ugly. They were ugly indeed, but those hits were as much forced errors as they were unforced.
Punjab knew they had to unsettle RCB’s lengths; it’s just that they didn’t know how to. And in the end, that ended up making the difference.
The three wickets taken by Suyash Sharma proved to be the knockout blow, and that’s another area where you have to credit RCB. In knockouts, when there’s an opportunity to kill the game, you kill the game. In the group stages alone, plenty of teams — none more than CSK and KKR — had been guilty of letting Punjab off the hook.
But Suyash came, saw, and he conquered. Granted, he was aided by some eye-watering stuff from the Punjab batters but, then again, it was the relentlessness of the RCB pace attack upfront, and the damage they caused, that left the PBKS lower-order batters with no option but to take stupid, undue risks against the spinners.
The icing on the cake proved to be the ruthlessness RCB displayed in the chase. Chasing low totals can sometimes be nervy. I mean, ask KKR, they were unable to chase 112 at the very same ground. The game was as good as done at the halfway mark, but still, you could not rule out the possibility of RCB stumbling in the chase.
Yet as it turned out, they needed just 60 balls to get the job done, with Phil Salt smashing the fastest fifty by an RCB player in a playoff game. It turned out to be the quickest chase in a playoff game in IPL history as well.
An all-time-great batting performance in the final group game against LSG has now been succeeded by an all-time-great bowling (and overall) performance against PBKS in Qualifier 1.
In IPL history, champion teams have always peaked at the right time, and with three games left in IPL 2025, RCB are certainly peaking at the perfect time.
Whisper quietly, but Ee Sala, the cup looks like it’s destined to be RCB’s, because they've been writing their own destiny.