IPL Final preview as RCB and PBKS aim to win their first trophy, and where one team will find joy and other heartbreak.
The IPL Final will finally see a first-time winner as RCB take on PBKS for one last shot at glory.
The IPL trophy is engraved with the names of seven teams. One of them is no longer in existence. When the league first started, two weren’t included.
Punjab Kings (PBKS) and Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) have consistently been in the IPL. Between them, they have advanced to four finals, but neither has taken home the championship.
On social media, RCB, PBKS, and Delhi Capitals (DC), another trophy-less original team, are now referred to as the IPL’s Holy Trinity. Although there is some mockery in the moniker, it has grown softer and more affectionate over time, and even supporters of the three teams use it with a sense of humour and camaraderie with their fellow victims.
The trinity will no longer be a trinity on Tuesday night. On their eighteenth try, one of RCB and PBKS will have finally won the IPL. You wouldn’t want to be in that camp, to be honest.
A PBKS fan would see it as just another preseason reset—they’ve had too many to count—and an unimpressive conclusion to a campaign that had all the elements of a thrilling sports movie: a coach who made the extra effort to bring in a captain with a point to prove, the two of them paving the way for a group of unheralded, uncapped local players to rise to the top, giving hope to a team that had only known misery up until that point.
A fourth loss in a fourth final would mean that all the hope of a new approach—a club that at last achieved the ideal balance between bat and ball, between top-order flare and batting depth, and between superstars and support cast—would come to nothing.
Above all, it would be another setback for Virat Kohli, who has put together another season of unrelenting scoring—a record eighth with 500 or more runs—at the end of an incredible 12 months that has included both a bittersweet Test retirement and victories in the Champions Trophy and T20 World Cup. Surely, Destiny cannot be arranging for the man with 18 on his back to go his 18th IPL season without a trophy.
One team will fail at the final stage of the quest, while two teams are tantalisingly close to discovering the fulfilment that has eluded them for 17 years. An IPL final rarely promises both happiness and heartache at the same time.