FROM DESPAIR TO BIG DREAMS
Dysfunctional Bengaluru come together to conjure up magic
Bengaluru, India - Three weeks ago, when Royal Challengers Bengaluru fell one short of an epic chase at Eden Gardens, they slumped to their seventh defeat in eight games. Rooted to the bottom of the 10-team table then, you didn’t think a miracle was possible.
Glenn Maxwell, their most prolific overseas allrounder, was woefully out of form. Their costliest pre-auction signing, Cameron Green, wasn’t clear about his role. Virat Kohli, their biggest brand captain or not, was under the spotlight for his postpowerplay slowdown. Faf du Plessis, the captain, was coming to grips with the challenges of juggling retirement with three months of franchise gigs.
Andy Flower’s proven track record as coach - he has won titles as a coach in the PSL, CPL, Hundred, T10 League, ILT20 - is perhaps why he was signed in the first place. But the lack of a big Indian presence in the back room left you wondering if they had tactically erred many times over by not picking Mahipal Lomror in the middle order.
Way too many pieces of the
jigsaw, spread across corners RCB thought they’d never be able to access, needed to be pieced together for this dysfunctional outfit to once again compete, forget about conjuring magic.
Yet, here we are, 13 games into the league phase, beginning to wonder if the stars are aligning. Is this their year? A question asked of RCB consistently every
year pre-auction. Perhaps it wasn’t a legit enough debate this year, but they’ve shredded that theory to bits, and how! Essentially, way too many results had to go their way, along with them winning, of course, for RCB to even be in the conversation.
Did they believe in this miracle? Their calculators, which they unfailingly dust back to life at this
time every year, have been working overtime. There’s now a realistic possibility of them securing that fourth playoff spot from under Chennai Super Kings. Or maybe with some help from Gujarat Titans and Punjab Kings, maybe they can edge out Sunrisers Hyderabad? There are so many possibilities.
Who can understate luck amid all this? Sunday evening was meant to be a washout, one of those annual rituals that leave RCB fans tearing their hair out at times for the loss of a point, celebrating in jest at other times for salvaging one point. There was a 60% chance of thunderstorms. Three hours prior to the start, it rained in torrents for an hour.
Miraculously, it cleared up for the entire duration of the game, to give RCB a chance of playing without looking at the DLS.
Kohli was out of the blocks in a jiffy - no look six swag and all that. Keenness to prove a point to those in the box? Who knows. Perhaps it was just the feeling of being unshackled and playing with a high tempo on a surface where RCB needed the extra runs to play for the net run rate.