The Indian Premier League is the most popular and the most-attended cricket league in the world. Every year 8 teams with players from domestic as well as international cricket come together to showcase their talent for one and a half months. Royal Challengers Bangalore is one such team among the 8 teams.  

On paper, the team is star-studded with big names, their captain Virat Kohli has the most runs in IPL history, yet they don’t have a single trophy to their name. However, between 2009 and 2016 they finished second in place. Even though with notable players in their squad they have earned the title of “underachievers” as their lack of success has been consistent over the years.  

ROYAL CHALLENGERS BANGALORE TEAM HISTORY 

At the team auction in February 2008, the Bangalore team was bought by Vijay Mallya. It was the second most expensive team after Mumbai. At the player auction, big names like Rahul Dravid, Anil Kumble, Zaheer Khan, Mark Boucher, Dale Steyn, and Jacques Kallis were acquired. Virat Kohli, the then under-19 Indian team captain was also purchased in the second auction. With such big names, the team’s performance was below par. Out of the 14 matches, they played they won only 4 and finished in 7th place amongst 8 teams. 

For the 2009 season, they bought Kevin Pietersen on board in hopes of a better performance than last time. Kevin Pietersen was the joint costliest that season at $1.55 million. The Challengers finished in third place this season.  

For the 2010 season, RCB reached the semi-finals under the captaincy of Anil Kumble but failed to play in the finals. For the 2009 and 2010 season, Ross Taylor was their top performer. 

ROYAL CHALLENGERS BANGALORE – New Era, New Players: 2011-2019 

For the fourth season of IPL, the Challengers retained only Virat Kohli from their previous squad and released all the other players back into the pool. AB de Villiers, Tillakaratne Dilshan, Daniel Vettori, and Chris Gayle were the big foreign names to be associated with the franchise.  

Bangalore reached the finals but lost to Chennai Super Kings by 58 runs. Though they lost that season, Chris Gayle and Virat Kohli put up an excellent performance with the bat. That year Man of the Tournament was awarded to Chris Gayle and anew IPL record was set by the Challengers for most successive wins by winning 7 matches in a row. 

In 2012, Chris Gayle was injured for the first match of the season, but eventually went on to make 3 centuries in one IPL season and became the first man to do so. The Challengers had a successful campaign that year, but a loss in their last league match failed to make a place in the playoffs.  

RCB’s 2013 campaign started on a high as well. They won 6 matches at their home ground with Gayle and Kohli in excellent form. Chris Gayle scored 708 runs and was the leading run-getter for his team. Towards the end of the tournament, Bangalore played a little dodgily and lost matches and could not qualify for the play-offs again.  

2014 proved to be a bad year for the team as they finished 7th in the team ranking, but next year in 2015, they improved and finished 3rd in the league. In 2016, the 9th season of IPL, after a lot of ups and downs they reached the finals only to lose it by 8 runs against Sun Risers Hyderabad. This was the third time they came so close to winning the trophy and lost.  

Till 2016 the team performed well with star-studded players, but from 2017 their performance has deteriorated. They failed to even win matches at their home ground, while other teams have much performance rates on their home ground. According to the statistics, they have only won 38% matches at home. Compared to other teams they have more losses in matches played at the home venue. 

ROYAL CHALLENGERS BANGALORE CURRENT SQUAD 

Before the annual IPL auction last year RCB had retained 13 players and released 11 players back into the pool. Virat Kohli, AB de Villiers, and Yuzvendra Chahal were the big names retained. Marcus Stoinis and Tim Southee were the big names to be released.   

With an amount of Rs. 27.90 crores RCB went into the auction with the least number of members in their squad. They ended up buying 8 players which got their total to 21 players, the least among the other franchises. The team acquired the likes of Dale Steyn, Chris Morris, Aaron Finch, Kane Richardson, Pawan Deshpande, Shahbaz Ahmed, Joshua Phillipe, Isuru Udana, and Adam Zampa.  

According to analysts, the RCB 2020 IPL squad had more bowling options than batsmen. At the auction, they could not pick their favorites and had to go with backup options. It will take a little bit of trial and error to find the right match-winning combination for the Challengers.  

The full RCB 2020 IPL squad is as follows: 

Virat Kohli (captain), AB de Villiers, Devdutt Padikkal, Gurkeerat Singh Mann, Aaron Finch, Pavan Deshpande, Josh Philippe, Parthiv Patel, Chris Morris, Moeen Ali, Washington Sundar, Shivam Dube, Pawan Negi, Shahbaz Ahmed, Mohammed Siraj, Navdeep Saini, Umesh Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal, Adam Zampa, Dale Steyn and Isuru Adana.