Ee Sala Cup Namdu: RCB End 17-Year Wait With a Maiden IPL Title

For 17 years, "Ee Sala Cup Namde" (Kannada for "this year, the cup is ours") was part rallying cry and part punchline. Royal Challengers had reached three finals, in 2009, 2011 and 2016, and lost all three. Their squads were full of superstars, but the trophy never came.

On the night of 3 June 2025, at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad, the slogan finally changed tense. RCB posted 190 for 9, then held Punjab Kings to 184 for 7 to win by six runs. Fittingly, they had lost their first-ever final by the same margin, 16 years earlier.

How the final was won

Punjab won the toss and chose to bowl. It looked like the right call as wickets fell at regular intervals. Virat Kohli top-scored with 43 off 35 balls, and nobody else settled long enough to take the game away from Punjab. Instead, a string of short, sharp contributions down the order pushed RCB to 190, a total that looked about 15 runs short of par. Arshdeep Singh and Kyle Jamieson took three wickets each for Punjab.

The chase was decided in the middle overs. Krunal Pandya bowled his four overs for just 17 runs and took two wickets, strangling a Punjab batting line-up that had been hitting freely all season. He was named Player of the Match. Once the required rate climbed out of reach, even a late assault from Shashank Singh, 61 not out off 30 balls, could only narrow the margin.

They lost their first final by six runs in 2009. They won their first title by six runs in 2025.

Kohli's long wait

No player has been more closely tied to one franchise than Kohli. He joined RCB as a 19-year-old in the first season and has stayed through every rebuild. Along the way he became the first batter to reach 8,000 IPL runs and set the single-season record of 973 runs in 2016. What he did not have, until 2025, was a winner's medal.

He was in tears when the winning moment came, and it was easy to see why. The trophy did not change his place in the record books. It completed his story.

A new captain, a new approach

RCB rebuilt heavily at the 2025 mega auction and named Rajat Patidar captain for the first time. The squad was built around depth rather than a handful of stars. They had a varied seam attack, spin options in the middle overs, and enough batting that no single collapse could sink them.

It worked straight away. RCB won all seven of their away matches in the league stage and finished in the top two. In Qualifier 1 they bowled Punjab out for 101 and chased the target in just ten overs to go straight into the final.

A season like no other

The 2025 season was also disrupted in a way no IPL had been before. Play was suspended for about a week in May because of military tensions between India and Pakistan. When it resumed, the schedule was reshuffled and the final moved to Ahmedabad.

Joy, then tragedy

The celebrations back home ended in heartbreak. On 4 June, as huge crowds gathered around the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru to welcome the team, a crowd crush outside the ground killed 11 people. It was a devastating end to what should have been the happiest day in the club's history, and it led to searching questions about how such events are managed.

What it means

RCB become the seventh current franchise to win the IPL, joining Mumbai Indians, Chennai Super Kings, Kolkata Knight Riders, Rajasthan Royals, Sunrisers Hyderabad and Gujarat Titans (plus the now-defunct Deccan Chargers). For Punjab Kings, it was a second lost final after 2014. They remain, along with Delhi Capitals and Lucknow Super Giants, one of three current teams still waiting for a title.

Read next: see how RCB's win fits into the full list of IPL champions.