IPL 2017

RCB weighed down by barren decade

by Kaushik Rangarajan • Last updated on

Virat Kohli was left ruing yet another season without silverware with RCB. © BCCI

Virat Kohli was doing his best to say the right things. It was a shade past 11.10 PM in Kolkata, a time when most IPL chases begin to gather momentum. But, there he was, fulfilling his post-match media commitments. RCB had crumbled to 49 all out - the lowest total in the league's history - in a small chase of 132. Words like "unacceptable" and "disgraceful" escaped his mouth, but he was careful not to let the decimation blur the broader picture. "I'm sure we will not bat like this in the next few games. We can still turn it around," he said.

Despite losing five of their first seven games, RCB's fate was still in their own hands, which as it turned out, was the worst place it could possibly be. In the two completed innings following the Kolkata capitulation, RCB's vaunted line-up managed 134 and 96 for 9, and were soundly beaten by Gujarat and Pune. A year on from their heroic march to the finals, everything had changed. Yet, everything was still so similar.

A group of fans hung back after the Gujarat defeat in one of the upper-tier stands at the Chinnaswamy and chanted the team's initials. Kohli, chewing his lips, glanced at the section. Maybe he simply looked beyond them, into the past. That's the thing with memory - sometimes it is always right there - so inescapable, just so absolute. And Kohli has lived the RCB journey from the get-go. That little moment there was an apt summary of RCB's first decade in the IPL. A cabinet of several intimate highlight reels. But just a cabinet without any silverware.

RCB are one of the four major players in the IPL's brief history, alongside Chennai Super Kings, Mumbai Indians and Kolkata Knight Riders. Quite simply put, these sides have shown to have brawn on the pitch and a brand off it. But RCB are the only side in this make-believe group without a title.

After the naively assembled 'Test team' in 2008 was battered across stadiums and in print, RCB re-positioned themselves with an assimilation of T20 batting superstars from around the world. AB de Villiers and Chris Gayle arrived in 2011 even as Kohli, their Under-19 acquisition from season one, quietly matured into a lean, mean, run-making machine. Then Yuvraj Singh, Tillakaratne Dilshan, Shane Watson, Dinesh Karthik and even Saurabh Tiwary earned big bucks at the club for their x-factor abilities. Yet, not one could provide the ignition for a successful season. RCB continued to wilt when it mattered most. They routinely broke batting records but made the same mistakes - usually with the ball - over and over again.

In the 2011 final, R Ashwin took all of three deliveries to Chris Gayle to slam the door shut on RCB's face. In return, RCB choked in their final league encounter of 2012 to allow CSK to progress to the playoffs at their behest. In 2013, one untimely home defeat to KXIP in the final stretch put paid to their hopes. In 2015 and 2016, the heartbreak came post the league phase, which if anything, was worse on the fans. An old cricketing adage was used at the end of the final defeat in 2016, when the bowling so gloriously came apart at the death overs to concede those crucial extra runs. "RCB haven't played nine seasons of IPL, they've simply played the same season nine different times."

How could RCB allow this to happen again? This was supposed to be their season. As was the last and the ones before that. Before the start of the IPL 10, the noise within the camp was to make that push to go one step further. Instead they've now gone six steps behind (they are last at the time of writing). "It has happened to a few teams but we didn't certainly expect it to happen to us. We didn't get the momentum going in the first half of the tournament and that's what hurt us," said a disbelieving Stuart Binny after RCB became the first side to bow out this year.

Then Binny added another line. "It is something new for the team to be struggling in the competition," he said.

That isn't entirely true. They did finish second from bottom in 2008 and 2014. Even in 2016, they were stranded at the bottom before the Kohli-de Villiers' mutual-appreciation society dragged them to the playoffs and the final.

The RCB's fans are a faithful lot despite paying some of the highest prices in the league to attend the home games at the Chinnaswamy. It helps that the city's affluent IT belt can afford the high-priced tickets. But even for those that fill the stadium season-in, season-out, the most demoralising part of this whole experience is that not many are greatly surprised anymore. It's been 10 seasons of the team losing its way at various points but it is difficult to imagine another occasion than this season when they've looked so far removed from the elite of the IPL.

Kohli spoke about "lacking intensity" and "fear of failure" in defeats following the 49 all-out. But those flatlines have been nothing new. That was only the latest evidence in that modern T20 squads are built around an evenly balanced mix of batters and bowlers, of utility cricketers and prodigious talents. RCB have unfortunately been far too uni-dimensional in the way they've set up for seasons.

Ahead of this season, they made Tymal Mills their latest big-money signing. A specialist T20 bowler was the supposed final missing piece in the RCB jigsaw. It didn't work. The first XI, on paper, was good but the squad still lacked all-round depth. So when the injury bug hit, RCB simply could not afford to assimilate absence and withered away rather early. In contrast, Sunrisers Hydereabad, a team with infinitesimally lesser star power, had ready replacement in Rashid Khan even for their season-winner Mustafizur Rahman.

Aside from Yuzvendra Chahal and Kohli of course, none of the so-called 'promising youngsters' in the side like Mandeep Singh, Sreenath Arvind or Sachin Baby have been able to graduate to the next level. In fact, some have stagnated to a point where they are no longer young or promising.

Nothing is set in stone in franchise T20 cricket. RCB may still go on to lift titles, provided of course they choose to renew their contract with the BCCI at the end of this season. They are a professionally run franchise and the people at the head seem to care. But when they look back at this barren 10-year run, one of their biggest regrets will have been to have not won even a single title with unarguably the greatest T20 batsman of the decade - Gayle. Add Kohli and de Villiers to the mix and their tale becomes a tearjerker. Now 37, a series of back-related injuries have waned the big Jamaican's powers. He will command respect when picked but will no longer be the first name in any XI, not even the fantasy ones.

Radical changes are rarely a good idea but the retention policy, when it is formulated at the end of the season, might just enforce that. Who knows? Perhaps that'll allow RCB to start the jigsaw around Kohli and de Villiers and some others that can put their head above the parapet and end this inertia. Hopefully, these others can also find it in them to bowl two overs at the death. That way they will have a little more to find in that cabinet.

© Cricbuzz

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