Started the season with belief. Ended with back to back titles. 🏆
This team lived every emotion together. The highs, the pressure, the hurdles, and the unwavering support. It feels extra special because… this place is HOME! ❤️ @RCBTweets
Vaibhav Sooryavanshi said, “I was an RCB fan before, also I'm a huge fan of Virat bhaiya. The way he spoke to me, it didn't feel like I was talking to Virat Kohli, the superstar. He spoke to me like an elder brother”.
ABD is extremely dangerous batter the most one u can say but not even he would come close to Kohli the run chaser.
Slow poison once he plays 20+ balls it's over for u he gets the job done 99/100 times.
Josh Hazlewood played his first T20 match in 2009. He was 18 years old, already 6'4", already hitting a good length like it owed him money. You would think a bowler with his height, his control, his ability to make the ball talk without saying too much, would have been everywhere in the format that was exploding around him.
He was not.
Between 2009 & 2020, Hazlewood played 30 T20 matches. That is less than 3 games a year across 11 long years.
While batters built empires in T20s, Hazlewood watched from the sidelines, or more accurately, he did not watch at all. He was bowling in whites somewhere, taking 5 wicket hauls that nobody remembered by Monday.
Then 2020 arrived. Since then, 102 T20s, 140 wickets, Economy 7.58, Strike rate 16.2. No pace bowler this decade has taken more wickets with better strike rate & economy. Not one.
RCB found him in 2022. The franchise that could not defend totals. That wasted Gayle, AB, Kohli season after season because their bowlers cracked under pressure. The memes wrote themselves.
Hazlewood changed that immediately. 20 wickets in 12 games in his first seasoj for him in 2022. He just landed the ball where he wanted, again & again, until batters ran out of ideas.
Then he disappeared. Only 3 games in 2023 & missed entire 2024 season. But the universe, or perhaps RCB's scouting team, had a plan. They paired him with Bhuvneshwar Kumar. Another man who started in 2009.
Unlike Hazlewood, Bhuvi had played everywhere. Proved himself for multiple teams. Survived the format's evolution while Hazlewood was locked out of it.
Two veterans. Two men who should have been finished. Two men who instead decided to make life miserable for batters in the era of impact players & 220 plus scores.
From 2025, they sit one & two for most powerplay wickets in IPL. Bhuvi with 15, Hazlewood with 14. They are not young. Not too fast in the modern sense. They just know where the stumps & what is the perfect line. And they keep hitting them.
Here is the lingering shame. Hazlewood has played only 44 IPL games. For a bowler of his quality, that number is almost offensive. Yet out of those 32 games made him RCB's most successful overseas bowler in 19 years. 52 wickets in just 32 games. The math is embarrassing for everyone who wore that jersey before him.
RCB will want him to reach 100 wickets. They should. He owes them nothing, but they owe him everything. The man the 2010s forgot is now the bowler the 2020s cannot ignore. And if he keeps going at this rate, the next decade might finally give him the credit he should have had all along.
Lowest total in IPL belongs to RCB but...
RCB is the only team to bowl out teams under 60 twice
Only team to bowl out teams under 75 thrice
And only team to bowl out teams under 95 8 times.