Cricket News: Virat Kohli will undoubtedly be remembered as an IPL legend, despite the fact that he never won the championship as captain. Kohli, who led RCB for eight years before retiring after the 2021 season, came close to winning the IPL in 2016 when his team reached the final but lost to Sunrisers Hyderabad in the final. Kohli had scorched the charts with 973 runs, which remains the greatest by an individual in a single season, but RCB faltered at the final hurdle, falling just 8 runs short of SRH’s total of 208.
Cricket is a game where the smallest of margins may determine the outcome, and RCB was no exception. Shane Watson, who had a poor day, bowled the final over of SRH’s innings and scored 24 runs. The former Australia all-rounder went wicketless in four overs, giving up 61 runs. Watson recalled the IPL 2016 final, almost six years after that night at the Chinnaswamy, and said that delivering the final over left him “shattered.”
“2016 final which I played with RCB was something I was just shattered about. Because I know how much it meant to RCB to win that final. It was at home at Chinnaswamy. RCB had played so well all year, at the backend of that tournament in particular. Virat in particular was on fire. It was his chance, one of the greatest players, to win that elusive IPL title as captain. And bowling that one over just shattered me. It just got it wrong and I felt like the end of time,” Watson said on the Delhi Capitals podcast.
“I was thinking ‘What are you doing? What’s going on?’ You’re ruining it for the team. So those voices were getting quite louder. I got off to a very slow start which means I put pressure of Faf as well. He took a risk he didn’t need to,” Watson said about his slow start. “But that was one of the days you just dream of. Deep down inside me, that 2018 final was something whose demons I had to exercise and that’s why I was so determined to just direct all my energy into every single ball. A few little things fell my way. I was nearly 37. To be able to have a season like that and have a game like that in the final is something you always dream of.”
