Kohli and Royal Challengers Bengaluru are finally IPL champions

Eighteen years spent in the belief that ee sala cup namde (this year the cup is ours), 17 of them ending in wretched disappointment for one of the IPL's biggest and most passionate fan bases, three of them ending with defeat at the final hurdle.

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Eighteen seasons in, Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) are finally IPL champions. Their victory in their fourth final came at the expense of another trophy-less team that had put together a heartwarming IPL 2025 campaign; it wasn't to be for Punjab Kings (PBKS), but their time will surely come too.

It's a sign of how far T20 has come that 190 beating 184 was a bowler-dominated game. PBKS did brilliantly to restrict RCB to 190 after sending them in, but RCB's bowlers did even better, with Krunal Pandya, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Yash Dayal - who have all won IPL titles at other teams bringing their experience and nous to play on an unusual Ahmedabad surface.

The margin of victory was narrow six runs - and while it showed how closely matched these two teams have been over the season, it was also deceptive. Shashank Singh, who finished on an unbeaten 30-ball 61, hit Josh Hazlewood for 6, 4, 6, 6 to end the match and the season. But those hits came just a touch too late; PBKS went into the final over needing 29, and Hazlewood had started with a pair of dots that all but ended the contest mathematically.

At the end of it, all eyes were on one man, the man with 18 on his back. Like his innings in last year's T20 World Cup final, Virat Kohli's 43 in this game seemed at various points like it belonged to another era, too risk-averse, and likely to set his team a below par total. But there were clues throughout his knock that this wasn't the sort of pitch that Ahmedabad has rolled out routinely this season, where 196 had been the smallest first-innings total in eight games. He had struggled especially to generate power with his pull shot, with the PBKS seamers generating tennis-ball bounce when they bowled into the pitch.