Virat Kohli and RCB’s love story: Now retired from two international formats, winning IPL title is his last big battle

Like a happy old couple, Virat Kohli and Royal Challengers Bengaluru have celebrated the good days and survived the bad ones through 18 summers of the Indian Premier League, the essence of their longevity being stability and dependability, rather than blind, flawless love. Now that he has retired from Test cricket and T20Is, his international duties restricted to ODIs, infrequently calendared, Kohli is all RCB’s. And winning the IPL could be the last big battle Kohli would wage in a glorious career.

The love for him overflows and overwhelms. Hundreds turned up to watch him bat in the nets when he returned to the Chinnaswamy on Thursday, before the match against Kolkata Knight Riders on Saturday. Thousands, it is widely rumoured, might turn up in white Kohli shirts, an ode to his Test career. Saturday Night Fever would play out at the Chinnaswamy without a break. Traffic snarls would be endless. All to cheer Kohli to fulfil his elusive dream of the IPL crown.

All that remains unfulfilled in Kohli’s staggering career is league silverware. Thrice has the finals inflicted pain on him (2009, 2011, 2016). The last one kept hurting him for a long time. “I had two heartbreaks in my life in 2016. First was the World T20 and then the IPL Final,” he told JioStar.

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RCB lost the match, at home to worsen the pain, by merely eight runs and the what-ifs rankled him in a season where he racked up 973 runs. “To this date, when there is a highlight package coming on Star of that game, KL takes screenshots from that game and says it still hurts. And it does. You’d think about the game every now and then and how there were dejected faces in that amazing setup we had done for the post-victory celebration,” he added.

Virat Kohli of Royal Challengers Bengaluru in the match vs Chennai Super Kings at the M.Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bengaluru. (Sportzpics) Virat Kohli of Royal Challengers Bengaluru in the match vs Chennai Super Kings at the M.Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bengaluru. (Sportzpics)

The subsequent season saw RCB plummet to depths before finally reviving post-pandemic, reaching the play-offs in four of the five seasons from 2020. The Rajat Patidar-led side are effectively in the last four this season and a victory over KKR would secure the slot mathematically as well. As with all their finest seasons, Kohli has been their axis of success. He helms their run-scoring charts with 505 runs at a strike rate of 143.47.

A liberated Kohli

The IPL, post relinquishing captaincy, has been a source of liberation for Kohli. It’s where he is most himself, creative and audacious. It’s where he swat-flicks and upper cuts, when he goes over extra cover, inside out, when he bats with a smile. In the last three episodes of renaissance, he has piled 1885 runs at 59.3, at a strike rate of 146. It is arguably his most influential phase in the IPL, when he has struck the magic formula of scoring consistently as well as fast, an autumnal bloom that could land his first IPL crown.

Perhaps it’s all destiny. That Kohli turns up for RCB itself is a strange quirk of fate. Eighteen years ago, a bunch of teenagers in a hotel room in Kuala Lumpur were impatiently awaiting the beep of text messages on their mobile phones. The first message came: Delhi Daredevils acquire Pradeep Sangwan, the left-arm swing bowler. Excitement roared in the room.

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Miles away, where the CEOs and coaches of the eight teams were finalising their two U-19 players in an NBA-style double draft system, wherein every franchise had to pick two U-19 players, a question flashed through the mind of RCB’s think tank. ““Why didn’t they pick Kohli, the U-19 captain and the local boy?” It was so straightforward. When we heard the name, Sangwan, all seven franchises were shocked,” then RCB CEO Charu Sharma recollected in an NDTV show.

The next turn was RCB’s, and “all we took was one-by-millionth of a second to choose him,” Sharma would say. In the KL hotel room, Kohli recalls in an RCB podcast: “We went crazy in the corridor — ‘We got Rs 20 lakhs’!” “That was the emotion behind it. Because we didn’t know what to expect—the opening ceremony, the whole experience of meeting great cricketers — it was surreal,” he recounted.

Virat Kohli of Virat Kohli of Royal Challengers Bengaluru during the IPL 2025 match vs Chennai Super at the MA Chidambaram Stadium, Chennai. (Sportzpics)

Thus began RCB’s Kohli story, from a stroke of fortune and fate. As years rolled on Kohli became the franchise’s captain and talisman, its soul and identity, a balm of hope and comfort in dark days of underachievement and the beacon of dreams in their quest to land their maiden title, the only one-club wonder in the league, an aura and popularity bettered only by Dhoni.

Contrasting city love

The bond between Kohli and the RCB crowd is organically different from Dhoni and Chennai Super Kings. The affection is more acquired than natural, a reflection of the varying values of the two cities. Bengaluru is gracious and laid back yet steeply cosmopolitan and pragmatic; Chennai, for all its modernity, is rooted in tradition, its masses simpler, more emotional and warmer than the torrid heat of May. Instant as well as sustained success too helped spin the myth of their Thala.

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Both are cities that embody the characteristics of their totems. Dhoni retains the earthy charm of Chennai, exudes wit and humility the city appreciates; Kohli is uber-modern, ambitious and aggressive, like Bengaluru. Chennai has fully embraced Dhoni, consider him as one of their own even though he does not speak their language, love him unconditionally. Kohli is loved, but not deified to that MS-scale, even though the Kohli-chant is the inescapable anthem of game-days at Chinnaswamy, even though they croon RCB when Kohli walked out in the blue or white of his country, even if he sometimes flexes his tongue over the hard-syllabled Kannada in advertisements.

Perhaps it’s not a Bengaluru thing to star-worship cricketers, to stand awestruck in their aura. It’s a city that gives space to cricketers so that some of its greatest could quietly sit in the corner of a cafe in MG Road and enjoy their coffee without being disturbed for selfies and autographs. Maybe, they understand that the game is ever more team-oriented on a tactical level. Perhaps a title would be the last step of fulfillment in the 18-year-old wedlock of Kohli and RCB.

A parallel story: Even though Sangwan’s career didn’t soar, he was part of two IPL-winning teams, separated by a decade.

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