After 2016, RCB’s best year in IPL, which coincided with
Virat Kohli
’s finest season in which he scored four hundreds and 973 runs, the best sequence of results the franchise enjoyed was between 2020 and 2022, in which they made the
playoffs
every year.
And what was common in those years? They did not play a single match at their home venue, the M
Chinnaswamy Stadium
.
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The 2020 IPL was staged entirely in the UAE because of the Covid-19 pandemic and in 2021, the teams were divided between four cities in the first phase and the second phase was held later again in the UAE. In 2022, all the league matches were held in Maharashtra and the playoffs were staged in Kolkata and Ahmedabad.
Their bowlers be it
Harshal Patel
, Mohammed Siraj and Yuzvendra Chahal derived more help from the pitches and made timely strikes to carry the team through to the business end of the tournament. That despite the batters not having 550-plus run seasons.
Glenn Maxwell
’s 513 (2021) was the best.
Normally, home venues are fortresses for IPL teams as they look to win at least five of the seven games scheduled there. For RCB though, playing at the Chinnaswamy is proving to be a burden, despite the presence of their passionate fans.
In 2017, they won one of the seven games there with one game being washed out. In 2018, they won four of the seven. In 2019, they won 3, with a game being a wash out. In 2023, when all teams were back to their home base after a Covid-enforced break, they won just three of the four games.
This season, the situation has hardly improved. They have won one of the four games played at home and even the game they won, against Punjab Kings, came about because of some heroics by
Dinesh Karthik
and Mahipal Lomror as Virat Kohli’s 77 was almost wasted by the rest of the batters.
Teams usually look forward to playing at home. One is not sure if the same can be said about the RCB at Chinnaswamy post 2016. Especially if they prepare flat roads like one saw against Sunrisers.
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