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Last time champions Royal Challengers Bangalore beat Gujarat Titans by 5 wickets to win the IPL 2026 final on Sunday evening. Virat Kohli became the player of the match after playing a devastating innings of 75 not out in this final at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad.
Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) won the toss and decided to field first. Gujarat Titans’ two in-form openers Shubman Gill and Sai Sudarshan both failed on this day, so the team’s runs somehow crossed 150 on this day.
Gujarat Titans ended the innings with 155 for 8. Washington Sundar scored the highest run for the team, he was not out for 50 runs.
Chasing a target of just 156 runs, RCB never had to face such a tough challenge. With Kohli’s 75 and opener Venkatesh Iyer’s 32, they easily won the match with two overs to spare.
Royal Challengers Bangalore were crowned IPL champions by defeating Punjab Kings at this ground last year – ending their 18-year wait for the trophy.
The win in the day’s final saw RCB win the IPL title for two years in a row – a feat shared by no other IPL franchise other than Mumbai Indians and Chennai Super Kings. Now RCB’s name has also been added to that list.
In this year’s league table, Royal Challengers Bangalore and Gujarat Titans both finished with 18 points – but RCB finished on top due to their lead in net run rate.
Then in the first qualifier at Dharamshala, they beat Gujarat Titans by a huge margin of 92 runs to secure their place in the final.
Later, Gujarat Titans also reached the final after defeating Rajasthan Royals at the New Chandigarh Stadium on Friday (May 29). In that match, Gujarat captain Shubman Gill’s innings of 104 runs off 53 balls made the difference between the two teams.
Both Shubman Gill and his partner in the Gujarat team, opener Sai Sudarshan, have been in very good form this season. Both Gill with a total of 722 runs and Sudarshan with 710 runs were also in the race for the highest run scorer or ‘Orange Cap’.
Kagiso Rabada, one of the bowling pillars of the Gujarat team, also won the most wickets or the ‘Purple Cap’ with 29 wickets.
Right behind him was Royal Challengers Bangalore’s Bhuvneshwar Kumar, with 28 wickets at the end of the final.
On the other hand, RCB’s batting line-up consisting of Virat Kohli, Devdutt Padikkal, captain Rajat Patidar, Phil Salt, Tim David and Venkatesh Iyer has overwhelmed the opposition throughout the tournament.
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The tournament will be remembered for Suriyavanshi
Couldn’t lift his team to the finals, but this 19th season of the IPL will be memorable only for one 15-year-old wonder boy – Vaibhav Suriyavanshi.
This Rajasthan Royals batsman also got the ‘Orange Cap’ as the highest run scorer in the entire tournament with a total of 776 runs. As the other two contenders Gill or Sai Sudarshan could not beat him in the final, this title also came to Suriyavanshi.
He also broke Chris Gayle’s record for most sixes in the tournament.
More importantly, his 776 runs came at an incredible strike rate of 237.31 – which shows the improbable marquette style batted by this new prodigy of cricket.
In the first eliminator, he smashed 97 off 29 balls against Sunrisers Hyderabad to almost single-handedly beat them – narrowly missing out on the record for the fastest century in the IPL.
He also scored a century against Hyderabad in the league. He also played a sparkling innings of 96 runs in the second qualifier, but it was not enough to win the team.
Meanwhile, cricket legends like Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Sunil Gavaskar are ecstatic about the praises of Vaibhav Suryavanshi – India’s arch-rival Pakistan’s former and current cricketers are also praising him.
What’s more, the demand for Suriyavanshi to be included in India’s senior national team is also getting stronger.
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The shocking failure of Mumbai Indians and more surprises
Perhaps the most surprising thing about this IPL season has been the failure of five-time champions Mumbai Indians.
Mumbai Indians were one of the first teams to be knocked out of the tournament, eventually winning just 4 out of 14 matches.
A major reason behind their failure is Jaspreet Bumrah’s lack of form.
Bumrah, who is regarded as one of the best bowlers of T20 cricket, has taken four wickets in 13 matches. His wicket-taking average was 102.50, the worst in his IPL career.
The Punjab Kings, on the other hand, cruised into the playoffs with six straight wins (including a washout) in the first half of the season, but then surprisingly faltered.
They then went on to lose six straight matches and eventually failed to qualify for the play-offs despite winning their last league match.
Gujarat Titans, on the other hand, had a shaky start but eventually secured their place in the playoffs by winning six of their last seven matches at the league level.
Another team that was considered to be knocked out almost at the start of the tournament – was the Kolkata Knight Riders or KKR.
KKR have not won a single match in their first six matches this season.
But winning six of their last seven matches left them with slim hopes of making the play-offs until the final day of the league, although Rajasthan Royals finally put water on it.
KKR this time added to their bowling attack Bangladeshi cricketer Mostafizur Rahman, who they bought for Rs 9.20 crore in the last auction.
But at the beginning of this year, they were forced to exclude Mustafiz from the team on the orders of the Indian Cricket Board or BCCI – due to which Bangladesh refused to send their team to India for the T20 World Cup in February.
Many cricket analysts have also blamed Mustafiz’s failure to play this year’s IPL for KKR’s bowling failure and disappointing performance.
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