RCB: From the Cliff to the Herring, and Beyond

The wait was extraordinary. The victory was extraordinary. What surprised me was how normal everything has been since.

source: cricketcountry.com

At school, we were taught a story about a young timid seagull and its first flight. Standing at the edge of a cliff, she looked down at the vast sea below, terrified to jump. Her parents and siblings flew in style. She was completely ignored and, at times, teased. At last, when she grew ravenously hungry, she had no option but to leap. And there she took her “first flight.” She caught her first herring, and from there on, moving swiftly over the waves was all too easy.

It was one of those textbook stories that I found rather annoying back then.

Today, however, it makes a lot of sense.

For eighteen years, being an RCB supporter felt a little like standing on that cliff.

The funny thing is that I never even cared much about the IPL.

Though cricket fills my veins with excitement, IPL has largely been an annoying tournament for me, especially post-COVID. The format has become way too long, the impact player rule makes it extremely one-sided, and then, of course, there are those “expressways” to bat on.

For a traditionalist like me, who survives on a flighted cherry pitched outside off, nipping back into a right-hander and taking a feather before bouncing off the leg guard to the low-kneeling man at the side of the screen, leading to at least five hands going up in unison; batters with long blades hitting across the line into the second tier is a disaster.

Yet despite all of this, there has always been one accidental association I have had with the IPL.

RCB.

Accidental because I never really chose the franchise.

In fact, I never consciously chose the player either.

I watched cricket from 2011 onwards, but I started understanding the game only in 2013. This period coincided with the retirement of the God and the rise of a young “spoiled brat” — at least that is what the mature men around me called him back then.

I remember looking at a scorecard in the local newspaper from one of India’s practice games before the 2013 Champions Trophy. One name stood out.

Virat Kohli. Around 150 runs beside it.

I had never heard the name before, and I would never know why, but it almost instantly looked interesting.

Then, of course, the fellow scored a lot of “important” runs in the years that followed.

By the time IPL 2014 arrived, I was a cricket freak and, more importantly — though I hate using this word — a Kohli fan.

I never made that choice.

Everyone around me was a Rohit, Raina, or Dhoni fan. Trust me, it was very difficult to say your favourite player was Virat back then. People almost looked at you as if you were joking.

Then came the moment that tied me to RCB.

It was the middle of IPL 2014 when I went with my father to buy my first-ever cricket kit. After purchasing the kit, the shopkeeper showed us some IPL jerseys.

I picked the RCB one.

The shopkeeper laughed.

“Aapki team to bahar ho gayi hai.” (Your team has been eliminated.)

I still remember my response.

“Mera favourite player iss team se khelta hai. Virat.” (My favourite player plays for this team. Virat)

And that was that.

Since then, my association with RCB has been nothing more and nothing less than that one sentence.

The problem was that supporting RCB became increasingly difficult.

When the IPL started, fan rivalries were nowhere near what they are today. I remember sitting at home and celebrating good cricket irrespective of who won. It genuinely felt like “India ka tyohar.” (India’s Festival)

Then fantasy gaming arrived. People started forming teams, spending money, and investing emotionally in franchises. Fan wars became uglier every season. Somewhere around 2019, RCB not having a trophy stopped being a statistic and became a punchline.

Honestly, even losing the 2016 final was not a very big deal for me personally, though I completely understand why die-hard RCB supporters still speak about it with pain. For me, that team was never meant to win the title.

It was two men.

Sorry.

An alien and a superman.

They carried that side to the final.

Then came COVID.

The jokes became relentless. Players joked about RCB’s trophy cabinet on Instagram Lives. Every discussion somehow ended with “zero trophies.” Then came Kohli’s dip in form.

Now I really started feeling the heat.

Every time someone asked me which IPL team I supported, I would say RCB, and a truckload of taunts, jokes, and abuses would follow.

Eventually, I stopped telling people I followed the IPL at all.

From a cricketing perspective, until Season 18, RCB never truly looked like a championship-winning franchise.

That was never Vijay Mallya’s vision.

His objective was to promote “Royal Challenge whisky.” Promotion required stars. So, he went after stars. Over time, that became the franchise philosophy itself.

Spend heavily on three or four marquee names and somehow assemble the rest of the squad with whatever remains.

The result was often a team with famous cricketers but very little balance.

Even if I had the maturity I possess today back then, I would never have chosen RCB as my team.

Like most people from parts of the country that do not have their own IPL franchise, I probably would have gravitated toward the obvious choices — MI, CSK, or KKR.

But there was that one man.

The number 18 guy.

The reason most of us stayed.

There might be some true RCB fans who fell in love with the franchise itself.

But trust me, a large number of us fell in love with the man first and inherited the franchise later.

Otherwise, who willingly supports a sinking ship for nearly two decades?

Then came the 2025 mega auction.

For the first time in my life as an RCB supporter, I looked at the squad and said something I had never said before: “This team can win.”

Mo Bobat, Andy Flower, and Dinesh Karthik — I owe you a lot. Trust me, I do.

For eighteen years, hope had largely been emotional. For the first time, it felt rational.

And so, they won!

Over the years, I have become non-processional — I believe in God, but not so much in rituals.

Yet I found myself visiting the temple at IIT Roorkee and seeking blessings for a cricket team!

Countless others did the same.

The buzz that night was different. We cried with Kohli. We celebrated with him. We also witnessed the consequences of excessive celebration the following day in an unfortunate incident. But for one night, eighteen years of waiting disappeared.

The seagull had finally jumped.

This year, however, the feeling was different.

To everyone who asked me who would win the IPL, I had the same answer — RCB.

I almost knew they would.

The final on the 31st was stuff of dreams.

If you have followed RCB for long enough, you can relate.

We all pleaded for this team to play the way they eventually did.

And yes, somewhere deep down, we all dreamt of that “spoiled brat” from West Delhi hitting a bowler over long-on to seal a title. Every single one of us did. At some point during those eighteen years, we imagined that shot.

The strange thing was that victory itself felt subtle.

Not overwhelming.

Not dramatic.

Just satisfying.

Perhaps that is what the first flight does to you.

The jump feels impossible. The wait feels endless. The hunger becomes unbearable. But once you finally catch your first herring, flying over the waves no longer feels extraordinary. It simply feels right.

My young seagull has finally had its herring. And it is savouring it all too well.

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