The Memoir Of An RCBian!

 2008 was a simpler time. India had just won that T20 World Cup in a heroic fashion and there was this businessman who came up with a billion dollar idea called the IPL which was a global cricket and bollywood orgy. As fans, you could support any team by applying whatever criteria - it could’ve been your favourite player, favourite celebrity, or even your childhood crush’s hometown! Some got the ethnic bug and decided to support their home city. While it worked out well for some, some ended up at the wrong end of things. More precisely, they ended up being residents of Bangalore and hence fans of this godforsaken team called Royal Challengers Bangalore (pronouns: we/our/us/shit/f*ck)

Dunno About Political correctness, But at this point
winning is the royal challenge!

Getting trolled wasn’t new for us because we went in with a Test team first up with Local boys Dravid and Kumble, Kallis, Steyn and few others. The team also had a certain Virat Kohli, a brash Delhi batter who had just won India an U-19 World Cup in Malaysia. As expected, we finished 7th out of 8 teams in 2008 and a year later, these bottom two teams were finalists. The final was a painful one because an in-form Robin Uthappa struggled to middle RP Singh’s hard lengths and eventually succumbed to a 6-run defeat in South Africa. Nobody remembers Kumble’s epic opening spell where he made an in-form Gilchrist his bitch.

Years followed and we saw the team grow. The fugitive liquor baron at the helm knew jack shit about cricket but knew a thing or two about building a brand. In pursuit of this brand building exercise, we never invested in building a core and only focused on the latest toy boys in the market. Amidst all the chaos, we found our Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh in Kohli, Gayle and ABD but somehow were also convinced of the theory that a good cricket team consists of 3 batters and 8 people with hands and legs. This is possibly one of IPLs oldest flat-earth notions and it holds true even today. However, today’s 8 come with varied skillsets; there’s a Marathi commentary guy, Cricbuzz expert cum star sports commentary guy, net-bowlers and discarded overseas players. There’s also a cricketer who can play the guitar!

The trimurti of chokes!

15 seasons, 8 playoffs, 3 finals, 0 titles. Apart from the lack of titles, the only thing that has been consistent is our ability to produce horrific bowling performances year after year. Albie Morkel, Kieron Pollard, MS Dhoni, Ben Cutting, Andre Russell, Ravindra Jadeja, Suryakumar Yadav.. fans have worn these scars and showed up game after game. These scars are beyond repair and are often reminders for why God is the 12th player in every RCB lineup. I can dedicate a separate post for our bowlers and I’m not going there. It gives me chills, the ones that make you pee. Yeah, those ones. I’ve had several breakups and a number of pursuits fail but the amount of emotional and mental trauma caused by RCB supercedes everything.

Despite all this, I still can’t get myself to give up on this team. Every time there’s a horrendous defeat, it is followed up with a resounding win and faith gets restored. Brash Delhi batter Virat Kohli is now the ultimate alpha around whom this franchise is built, Captain Faf is just as fantastic after CSK discarded him for Rayudu (thank god for that) and our death agents Siraj and Harshal have become good death bowlers. These people continue to give us moments, moments which cause sudden bursts of euphoria and make you forget about the onslaught you faced. The feeling is almost salary day-like. It makes you fall in love again and why not? The moments have been there - Gayle’s hundreds, ABD vs Steyn, ABD vs Steyn 2 (Electric boogalo), Kohli’s masterful 2016. Hence it is safe to say that it’s the moments this team plays for and we just have to enjoy the ride and bask in the glory of these performances.

That’s us, that’s our fanatic mindset. There’s no greater joy than retiring 333 and 17 permanently and gathering at the Chinnaswamy stadium in huge numbers even before the season begins. There’s no greater joy than trolling Mumbai Indians and CSK and getting counter-trolled. It builds resilience which I will use God knows where. Like always, we live to see another day. We live in a fantasy land where Virat is the PM and ABD is the CM of Karnataka and we kind of are cool with it. 

Enjoy the ride and definitely enjoy trolling those ill-fated RCB fans in your group. They deserve it.

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P.S - I'd like to preface this by saying that this is just is just an elaborate shitpost making fun of RCB at this point LOL

Even the rain tried to give you an out, ya goofs! How you could choke with an in form Faf and Kohli?!?

I digress.

RCB fans, Just switch to CSK at this point.

TBF, I'm a filthy tottenham fan. I have no rights to speak LOL