IPL: 5 best purchases by Royal Challengers Bangalore over the years
Arrrrrrr Ceeeeee Beeeeee! The chant that lights up the whole Chinnaswamy stadium during the IPL is one of the tournament's most iconic. Watching an RCB match in the stadium is worth the price of admission just for its atmosphere.
The RCB team, which has been a part of the IPL since the start of the tournament, has given its fans plenty to cheer for. They are yet to win an IPL title, but the fans have always backed them for the entertainment they have provided for over a decade.
RCB have finished as runners-up thrice (2009, 2011, 2016), while they have finished in the top 4 on five occasions (2009, 2010, 2011, 2015, 2016). They have had the likes of Rahul Dravid, Anil Kumble, Zaheer Khan, Ross Taylor and Dale Steyn, whose contributions to the team in the initial years were immense.
From 2011 to 2017, it was the Gayle-Kohli-ABD era which took the league by storm. That knock of 175 off just 66 balls from Gayle in 2013 against Pune Warriors has become the stuff of folklore.
RCB came very close to winning the title in 2016, but lost against SRH by 8 runs. Since then, the team have struggled to find their form, and having won just nine matches against 19 losses across two seasons.
Nonetheless, RCB have always been a team with heavyweights, making some really costly buys in the auction. Let us look back at the best buys of RCB down the years:
1. Virat Kohli
RCB are extremely proud that they have the best batsman in the world in their side.
Kohli was taken into RCB as an uncapped player in 2008, and is one of the few players in IPL history to have played for a single franchise since its inception. He started captaining the squad from 2013, and has led the team from the front on numerous occasions - almost winning them the title in 2016 where he scored 973 runs with 4 tons to his name.
Representing the franchise in 163 matches, Kohli has amassed 4,948 runs at a strike rate of 130.76 with four 100s and 34 50s. He didn’t fare well in the initial years but turned the tide when it mattered, scoring over 300 runs in every season from 2011.
Kohli was the first player to reach the 4000-run milestone in IPL.
At the launch event of his biography, he announced that RCB would be his permanent franchise. Being the highest paid player in IPL history (17 crore), he was retained by his franchise at the 2018 auction.