How do you solve a problem like Royal Challengers?
Royal Challengers Bengaluru (formerly Royal Challengers Bangalore) are one of just three founding franchises of the IPL never to win the trophy. In 16 years from 2008 to 2023, they have never once been successful, while several of their peers - Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata - are multiple winners, and even new franchises (Hyderabad, Gujarat) have muscled in and picked up one apiece. In 2024, they are dead last, with one win in seven games.
Yet RCB is the franchise responsible for some of the IPL’s biggest stars - Chris Gayle, Virat Kohli, and AB de Villiers to pick just three. Kohli has a record eight hundreds and nearly 8000 runs in the tournament; Chris Gayle hammered his record 175 for RCB back in 2013. These are the performances for which the IPL is known and yet - RCB have nothing to show for it.
Big spenders on star names, Royal Challengers are the Manchester United of the IPL - only they lack United’s history. But how have they managed to maintain such a long duck, and what will it take to finally lift that golden trophy?
Batting
If there’s one thing RCB are known for, it’s batting. Their list of greats is enormous: Kohli, Gayle, de Villiers, du Plessis, Kevin Pietersen […].
One thing they don’t have, though, is consistency. Across all 16 seasons of the IPL, there’s been remarkable stability in the average runs per wicket. It’s hovered in the mid-twenties, with a low of 23.43 in the second edition of the IPL, peaking at 28.68 in completed seasons - though in the current 2024 season, the average stands at 30.05.
Compare that to RCB’s batting average, however, and you see a remarkable variation season-on-season:
RCB touched highs of nearly 42 runs per wicket in 2016, but have suffered calamitous lows in seasons like 2008 and 2017 - of the seventeen seasons (including 2024) they’ve had a higher average than the league nine times and a lower average eight times:
Since 2017, RCB have been rather less feast-or-famine, but they’ve only outperformed the league to any significant degree once in that time - hardly title-winning form.
Compare the Royal Challengers to the IPL’s two most successful franchises, Mumbai Indians and Chennai Super Kings:
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd05041a2-4da5-4cc6-a94f-a9a98fc61e69_1432x952.png)
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Not only are these two franchises remarkably stable, but they also have troughs far less deep than RCB’s. It’s this consistency in performance that’s made them the powerhouses they are. They’ve a combined 22 playoff appearences out of 30 opportunities; RCB have eight in 16 seasons. Neither has hit the heights of RCB’s 2016 season, when they averaged 41 - a staggering 13.62 runs more than the league as a whole - but neither has experienced those deep lows.
Average is only one part of the equation, though - what about scoring rate?
Well, they may have stabilised their batting average in the last few seasons, but that’s come at a cost. The above chart shows the comparison between RCB’s scoring rate1 and their economy rate.2 Not since 2016 have the Royal Challengers scored runs more quickly than they’ve conceded them, and this season they’re conceding 1.15 runs per over more than they’re scoring - this works out to 23 runs over the course of 20 overs.
To put that into context, nine matches already in 2024 have been won by smaller margins. The average winning margin for teams batting first in 26.8 runs. RCB may have shored up their average, but they’ve done it at the cost of their run-rate - and that could cost them entire games.
Bowling
OK, so RCB’s batting - for all its current and historic star power - clearly doesn’t have the consistency to win titles at the level of MI or CSK. But to have no titles at all, after 16 seasons of a tournament designed to create teams of roughly equal stature? They have had enough firepower at times during their history to sit the IPL throne. But batting is only one side of cricket - what about its less-fashionable (but equally important) sibling?
The graph below shows how RCB’s bowlers compare to the average IPL attack, in terms of economy rate: that is, the speed at which they allow opposing batters to score runs.
A worrying pattern starts to emerge: in only four of the sixteen seasons of IPL cricket have their bowlers performed better than the league average in restricting opposition scoring rates. In seven of these seasons, this has a value of 0.3 runs per over or more (equivalent to handing the opposition an extra six per innings) and in three of those seasons the gap has been 0.5 or more (an average of 10 runs an innings, every single innings).
So that’s not great, but what if there’s an upside: maybe they go for more runs but also take more wickets, making it easier to bowl sides out? For this tactic to be effective, we’d need to see a lower bowling average - after all, there’s no point bowling more aggressively if it costs you more runs to take a wicket.
The graph above shows how, for most of their IPL history, RCB have taken their wickets at around the average cost, but that they’ve spent more time on the wrong side of the line than the right. Aside from one pretty good season in 2015, when their wickets cost 5.39 runs fewer than the league’s average (and their economy rate was pretty much bang on average too), they’ve more commonly bought their wickets at a higher price.
And that’s where RCB’s problem lies: they’ve been a feast-or-famine batting side, but can’t make the most of their feast years because their bowling is lacklustre. It’s an old adage in cricket, that batsmen set matches up but only bowlers can win them, but it’s true.
Where RCB’s list of great - truly, great - batsmen includes Gayle, Pietersen, Kohli, and de Villiers, alongside Glenn Maxwell, Eoin Morgan and others - their list of great bowlers?
Well, there’s Murali, albeit right at the end of his career. Tim Southee, Mitchell Starc and Dale Steyn are there too. But bowling is a team game, much more than batting. Where fifty balls to Chris Gayle can turn a match on its head, a bowling attack is comprised of at least five bowlers, each of whom can bowl at most 24 balls out of 120. One great performance can give you an advantage, sure, but you need five people to do their jobs, and you need a cross-section of different skills: swing bowlers to open up, spinners to give you control and take wickets in the middle overs, and death bowlers who can bring slower balls, yorkers and other variations when the ball is being caned to all parts. An all-rounder or two wouldn’t go amiss, either.
But RCB have simply never had that. Their bowling unit has performed, at best, as you’d expect an average IPL team to do in any given season - and average? Average simply doesn’t win titles.
For all the furore and focus on Virat Kohli, RCB don’t recognise the simple fact: you can have all the batting you like, but without a bowling attack to match, you won’t be winning any trophies.
Where now?
Stay tuned for a deep dive into RCB in 2024 - what’s gone wrong, and what do they need to put it right?
Spoiler alert: the answer is not just More Virat Kohli.
How quickly they score runs when batting
How quickly they concede runs when fielding