Ahmedabad: The wait of 17 years was once a heavy burden, but Royal Challengers Bengaluru have suddenly made winning look like second nature.

Anchored by a masterclass unbeaten 75 from the immortal Virat Kohli, Bengaluru defended their crown in spectacular fashion, overpowering the Gujarat Titans by five wickets to claim their second straight Indian Premier League title.

Under the blinding lights of a packed Narendra Modi Stadium, the reigning champions turned what was expected to be a high-octane thriller into a clinical, lopsided exhibition of T20 execution. Chasing a modest 156, Bengaluru breezed across the finish line with 12 balls to spare, sending a packed house of over 90,000 spectators into absolute delirium.

True to his legendary status, Kohli closed out the fairytale in style. He sealed the championship with a towering six, capping off a magnificent, 42-ball blitz that featured nine blistering fours and three maximums. As the ball cleared the ropes, Kohli proudly pointed toward the roaring stands, before being swarmed by teammates sprinting onto the field to celebrate their historic back-to-back glory.

“From years of heartbreak to back-to-back glory, Bengaluru truly owns the game right now,” fans echoed across social media, celebrating a stunning transformation for a franchise that took 18 attempts to lift its first crown just a season ago.

Bengaluru’s chase began at breakneck speed. Kohli and his opening partner Venkatesh Iyer ripped into the Titans’ pacers, forging a devastating 62-run partnership in just 29 balls. Iyer was particularly aggressive, smashing a rapid 32 off just 16 deliveries before Mohammed Siraj provided a fiery breakthrough for Gujarat.

Siraj’s departure of Iyer sparked a mini-collapse, as Kagiso Rabada quickly removed Devdutt Padikkal. Afghanistan maestro Rashid Khan then turned the screws tightly, picking up two wickets in a single over to dismiss RCB skipper Rajat Patidar (15) and Krunal Pandya.

With Gujarat’s hopes briefly ignited at 92-4, Tim David joined Kohli to steady the ship with a mature 41-run stand. Though David fell for 24, Kohli kept his composure, steering the team safely home alongside Jitesh Sharma.

While Kohli walked away with the silverware and the plaudits, the foundations of this championship victory were poured in the first innings by Bengaluru’s disciplined pace attack. After winning the toss and electing to field, the quicks systematically dismantled the Titans’ batting order, restricting them to a below-par 155-8.

Josh Hazlewood struck the first devastating blow by removing dangerous Titans skipper Shubman Gill for just 10, courtesy of a brilliant running catch by Patidar. In the very next over, veteran Bhuvneshwar Kumar dislodged Sai Sudharsan for 12, leaving Gujarat completely shell-shocked.

Despite missing out in the final, Shubman Gill (732 runs) and Sai Sudharsan (722 runs) enjoyed stellar individual seasons, finishing second and third in the tournament’s run-scoring charts. However, the coveted Orange Cap belonged to Rajasthan Royals’ 15-year-old batting prodigy, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, who topped the charts with an astronomical 776 runs. Kohli finished a spectacular fourth overall with 675 runs.

For Gujarat, only Washington Sundar offered any meaningful resistance in the final, scoring a defiant, unbeaten 50 to salvage some pride. Nishant Sindhu (20) and England’s Jos Buttler (19) tried to rebuild, but a restrictive left-arm spin spell from Krunal Pandya and relentless pressure from Salam kept the Titans grounded.

With this defeat, the Titans look back at a bitter-sweet history—finishing as runners-up for the second time in three finals, unable to recreate the magic of their debut championship in 2022. For Bengaluru, however, the party has only just begun.

New Delhi: Thanks to the hectic international schedule of the Indian team, skipper Virat Kohli hardly gets time off the field. But with the BCCI deciding to give him a well-earned rest after the tour of South Africa, Kohli is making the most of his time away from the game as he is enjoying life with wife Anushka Sharma. The couple got married just prior to the tour of the Rainbow Nation.
Taking to Twitter, Kohli posted a photo which read: “Chilling and how! ”

The Indian team is playing a T20I tri-series in Sri Lanka and the top cricketers have been rested for the tournament. Skipper Virat Kohli, MS Dhoni, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Jasprit Bumrah and Hardik Pandya are not part of the squad for the series.

In skipper Kohli’s absence Rohit Sharma is leading Team India. Rohit had earlier captained India in an ODI series against Sri Lanka in 2017. The team had won two games under his leadership, and lost one.

India has been playing non-stop cricket for the past few months, and have been on the South Africa tour since Jan this year. So the BCCI and the key players mutually agreed to give the series a miss.

“What is the point of sending these cricketers after such a hectic South African tour,” a team source had said.

Skipper Rohit will be desperate to get back to form as a resurgent India look to set their record straight against hosts Sri Lanka in the third match of the Nidahas Tri-Series on Monday.

The stand-in skipper, possibly the most prolific white ball player after regular leader Virat Kohli, has gone off the boil since the start of the South Africa series.

He will like to score heavily to get his confidence back as he frets on whether he could give Rishabh Pant another game in the tournament. Touted as Dhoni’s successor, Pant is yet to do justice to his immense potential till now. With someone like KL Rahul waiting for his chance, time is running out for the burly youngster from Rourkee.

Rahul’s presence gives his skipper an option to use him as an opener and himself come at No 4, dropping Pant from the XI. It was not a perfect start for India’s second string squad in the tournament as they lost by five wickets against the hosts in the opening match.

But the Rohit-led side bounced back strongly to beat Bangladesh by six wickets in their next match. So the match would provide India with a chance to make amends for the mistakes they committed against the Islanders in the opener.

The tournament is currently evenly poised as all the three teams have won a game each from two outings but Sri Lanka are leading the table on net run rate ahead of India and Bangladesh. But a win would take India to the top, dislodging the Lankans.

India 206 for 2 (Kohli 129*, Rahane 34*) beat South Africa 204 (Zondo 54, Thakur 4-52) by eight wickets

Confidence and form are two of the most influential factors in batting. They often dictate timing and placement – requisites for scoring runs. South Africa have lacked both after their sub-par performances this series. Therefore, in good batting conditions in Centurion, South Africa’s batsmen grappled with their own lack of confidence and India’s disciplined bowling, resulting in another mediocre total. Shardul Thakur, playing his first match of the series, led another clinical display from India with figures of 4 for 52 as South Africa were bowled out for 204.

On the other end of that form spectrum lies Virat Kohli. With 429 runs in five games prior to the final ODI, Kohli was oozing confidence. Against a jaded bowling attack, and with all that belief, his 35th ODI hundred was almost a formality. It helped India coast to an eight-wicket win, and take the six-match series 5-1. Kohli finished with 558 runs in six matches, the most by a batsman in a bilateral series.

Just like in the second ODI at the same venue, South Africa began cautiously to suss out conditions early. What their openers, Hashim Amla and Aiden Markram, found was a surface that was sluggish, with strokes on the up taking the inside and outside halves of the bat. In the thin air of the Highveld and under some pressure, Amla saw an opportunity to hit Thakur over fine leg for six in the seventh over. His attempt to pull, from bottom to top to get underneath the ball, cost him a fraction of a second, and he could only strangle a leg-side delivery to the keeper.

Markram played some fluent strokes, including a well-timed six over square leg, but like in Port Elizabeth he was caught in the circle trying to force the pace. He was caught, looking to clear cover, a shot that was preceded by two languid drives off overpitched deliveries that found the same fielder.

South Africa’s best period of batting followed, with AB de Villiers and Khaya Zondo attacking India’s wristspinners. In the 18th over, de Villiers hit Kuldeep for three successive fours – a drive through point, an inside-edge just past the stumps, and a reverse sweep. Zondo pulled Yuzvendra Chahal for two sixes over midwicket in the next over. They had added 62 off 65 balls before de Villiers missed a straight, flat delivery, trying to cut.

Zondo and Heinrich Klaasen, after the loss of South Africa’s best ODI batsman and with a fragile middle order to follow, were overly cautious, accumulating 30 in 58 balls. Klaasen then drilled a slower delivery to short cover. Farhaan Behardien, playing his first match of the series, holed out to third man in the next over. Zondo’s spirited fight ended when he chipped Chahal to sweeper cover, for 54. South Africa’s score hadn’t progressed much since de Villiers’ dismissal and their momentum had been sucked out.

Andile Phehlukwayo and Morne Morkel pleased the sparse Centurion crowd with an exciting 36-run partnership, the second-highest of the innings. Then Morkel scythed a cut to sweeper cover, and Imran Tahir and Phehlukwayo were caught off slower balls. Even though they did reasonably well against the wristspinners – scoring 89 runs for three wickets off 20 overs – South Africa fell well below the target they must have aimed at, ending up with 19 unutilised deliveries.

Fresh off a match-winning hundred, Rohit Sharma began the chase with a few exquisite cuts behind and in front of point. South Africa’s short-ball ploy worked as he gloved a bouncer from Lungi Ngidi to the keeper. They persisted with that length thereafter which, on a slow pitch, was always fraught with risk.

Kohli pounced on that length. With attacking fields and the short deliveries sitting up, Kohli laid into cross-batted strokes on either side of the pitch. He blazed away to 38 off 25. Dhawan, on the other hand, struggling for timing, was 14 off 30. Dhawan’s 34 ball struggle ended when he nailed a cut to backward point, for 18, South Africa’s last moment of respite in an effortless chase.

Kohli and Rahane added an unbeaten 129 off just 117 balls. Rahane contributed 34 off 50 balls, playing adeptly around the belligerence of Kohli. In stark contrast to his usual mode of operation in ODIs, Kohli’s ton was filled with boundaries: 19 fours and two sixes, making up 68.21% of his runs. The trouble he faced in mustering all those runs, though, was nearly zero.

There’s not much in cricket Virat Kohli doesn’t know about. The Indian captain could yet go down as his country’s greatest batsman, having met most of the requirements already. He has won a World Cup and a Champions Trophy, is on course to beat Sachin Tendulkar’s mark of 49 ODI centuries, and still has about half a career ahead of him.

And as Indian and Pakistani players, among a handful of others from the ’90s and 2000s, goofed around at an exhibition event in Switzerland, playing cricket in the ski resort of St Moritz at sub-zero temperatures, you couldn’t help but cast your mind to Kohli. There is, after all, one special feeling in cricket he might never get the opportunity to sample: lining up in a Test match against Pakistan.

The St Moritz Ice Cricket tournament was an event between star players of yesteryear in conditions that are the antithesis of those in which the summer game is played. The players themselves were well past their peak years, most in their late 30s, 40s, and in Wasim Akram’s case, 50s. They were unfit, not especially motivated, and scarcely recognisable as the giants we once watched on TV. They were also wrapped up in woollen scarves and jackets, wearing gloves to keep the relentless Swiss winter at bay.

But as you watched more of it (and who can blame you if you didn’t?), you began to sense that cricket wasn’t really the point. The easy camaraderie between once fierce rivals made you feel warm and fuzzy despite the snowy backdrop. At no stage was this more poignant than when Indian and Pakistani players and fans interacted with each other. There was a point where Mohammad Kaif hit Abdul Razzaq for three sixes in a row before Razzaq managed to york him. The pair met in the middle of the pitch, wide grins on their faces, giving each other a high five.

Even Virender Sehwag, hardly a dove in his views on India-Pakistan relations, appeared to have caught the bug. He took Shoaib Akhtar to task in both games, before joking that he thought he’d be facing a fast bowler. He clowned around with Shahid Afridi and Akram at the toss. The bonhomie with the Pakistan players was as surprising as it was welcome.

But the moment of the event, and what may yet be one of the feel-good cricketing moments of the year, came after the second game when Afridi stood at the boundary, signing autographs for the pocket of fans who were around to watch. As the diehards clamoured, a young girl with an Indian flag in hand asked for a picture. As Afridi granted the request, the fan withdrew the flag she’d been holding, folding it up and out of the frame, presumably so as not to offend Afridi.

He picked up on it, and almost chastised her, asking her to unfurl the flag properly. It was a moment warm enough to have melted the snow beneath their feet. That picture of a Pakistan player with the Indian flag in the foreground might well, in today’s environment, be vulnerable to all sorts of misinterpretation and malice, but the decency of the gesture is worth more than a thousand words.

India v Pakistan isn’t, as we’re told ad nauseum, like the Ashes rivalry. It isn’t a rivalry that took its root organically from the cricket, or is only about that; it was destined to be one from the moment the two nations went their separate ways over seven decades ago. Wins on the field for either side are hailed almost as military victories, with match analysis and reporting on news channels on both sides easy to confuse with war correspondence. The depth of animosity, and frankly, hatred, for each other entrenched in the minds of vast numbers of Indian and Pakistani cricket fans is evidenced by arguably the most rancid corner of the internet: the comments section of YouTube videos featuring Indian and Pakistani cricketers.

Of course, we tell ourselves, that in times such as these, normal cricketing ties cannot resume. But then you see the North Korean team marching with their southern counterparts under one flag at the Winter Olympics in South Korea, and competing as a joint Koreas team in the ice hockey event. It does make you wonder whether talk of the India-Pakistan rivalry being so intense as to not permit cricketing ties is a bit exaggerated.

The India-Pakistan relationship is, indeed, not comparable to that between Australia and England, but the situation between the two Koreas certainly offers a parallel. It is a loss to cricket that at the moment one can’t imagine the Indian cricket team arriving in Lahore to play a full series. It’s not just about security either, or we would have seen the two play each other in the UAE by now.

It would be unhelpful to lay the blame squarely at the BCCI’s feet. There is much it could be criticised for, but the nature of political ties between the governments makes it impossible for them to take an independent stance on the matter.

Pakistan need India more at the moment, and are naturally keener for cricketing ties to resume. They consider India to have reneged upon a written agreement for series at “home” Pakistan venues; one can’t help but suspect, however, that if Pakistan had had the upper hand in this relationship, they might have adopted a similar stance.

Kohli is busy getting hundred upon hundred in South Africa at the moment, but if he had a moment to see what happened in St Moritz, he might have wondered about the pettiness of the two nations’ current impasse. He had, after all, made his own gesture of goodwill just a few days earlier, posting a video to his millions of followers on social media, wishing Pakistani umpire Aleem Dar luck for his new restaurant (Dar hopes to use the proceeds to build a school for deaf children).

It is by no means Kohli’s only gesture of large-heartedness towards the neighbours. In 2016, he presented Afridi an Indian cricket jersey bearing his name, and the signatures of each member of India’s squad at the World T20, wishing Afridi luck in retirement. Yet we might never know how Kohli, perhaps the greatest Indian batsman of them all, might have measured up against the fast bowling production line that is Pakistan.

But events over the past week, both in Switzerland and South Korea, do seem to deliver a tacitly chastening message to India and Pakistan, and a rebuke to their list of excuses not to play cricket with each other. The toxic discourse that pollutes the air in the two countries clearly hasn’t affected the players who grew up living with it; their interactions with each other in the hills of Switzerland was clear evidence of that. There might not have been much by way of quality at the ice cricket in St Moritz, but there was plenty on offer as far as class was concerned.

Kohli’s innings was quite special in many ways. But one of the most significant and rare occurrence, was that he scored 100 out of 160 runs by running and only 60 from boundaries. In all, he ran 75 singles (75 runs), 11 doubles (22 runs) and one three (3 runs). Before Kohli, only four other batsmen have run 100 or more runs in an ODI innings and none of them are Indians. The most runs by running in an innings is 112 by Gary Kirsten in his unbeaten 188 at the 1996 World Cup against UAE. Last year, on this same day at the same venue, Faf du Plessis had run 103 runs in his unbeaten 185 against Sri Lanka which is second on the list. Adam Gilchrist’s 172 and Martin Guptill’s 189 are the others that make the list. The previous highest among India batsmen was 98 runs in Sourav Ganguly’s 130-run innings against Sri Lanka in 1999.

Captain Kohli beats Ganguly
The century was Kohli’s 12th as captain, going past Sourav Ganguly’s tally of 11 as India captain. Kohli has achieved the feat in 100 innings fewer than Ganguly. He has done it only in 43 innings. Now only two players have scored more centuries as captain than Kohli: Ricky Ponting with 22 centuries (in 220 innings) and AB de Villiers with 13 (in 98).

Bumper series on the cards
With just half the series done, Kohli has already scored the most runs by any India batsman in a series against South Africa. He has 318 runs from the first three matches. He is also the only India batsman to score more than one century in a series against South Africa. Before this, he did not have any hundreds in South Africa. He is also only the fifth batsman overall to score more than one century in a bilateral series against South Africa. The only one to hit three is Kevin Pietersen in 2004-05.

Kohli’s 160 not out is the second-highest by an India batsman against South Africa, only behind Sachin Tendulkar’s double-century in 2010 and third-highest for any player against South Africa in South Africa.

Aiden Markram (2) was the only South African wicket to fall as he edged a delivery from Bhuvneshwar Kumar to wicketkeeper Parthiv Patel, with the pitch giving plenty of encouragement to both sides’ all-seam attacks.

The hosts will be pleased with their day’s work after India had won the toss and elected to bat, despite having dropped catches, eschewed what would have been a successful review and at times bowled too short and wide.

De Villiers bruised the middle finger of his right hand in taking the catch and had to leave the field for treatment.

He had a slice of early luck when given not out after Ngidi struck him on the pads. South Africa did not review umpire Ian Gould’s decision and replays showed the ball would have hit leg stump.

Rabada (3-39) was perhaps the pick of the home bowlers, both fast and accurate. He removed opener Murali Vijay (8), caught by De Kock, before grabbing the wickets of Ishant Sharma (0) and the stubborn Kumar (30).

Morne Morkel (2-47) and Vernon Philander (2-31) also chipped in with wickets but were guilty at times of bowling with too much width, failing to make the batsmen play.

The home side had already claimed the series with an unassailable 2-0 lead but are chasing a first clean-sweep against India.