Ee Sala Cup Namde — Again. Kohli, RCB, and a Night Ahmedabad Won't Forget

The kind of night you don't watch — you live.

Some finals you remember the score. This one, you'll remember the noise.

A packed Narendra Modi Stadium. One floodlit cauldron in Ahmedabad. And Virat Kohli, 37 years old and somehow still the loudest argument in cricket, walking out with a title on the line and the whole place chanting his name before he'd faced a ball.

Then he just... took it. Took the game, took the moment, took the trophy. 75 not out — his fastest ever IPL fifty, his biggest playoff score — and Royal Challengers Bengaluru are champions for the second year running.

Read that line again, because it's the part that matters. Back-to-back. In nineteen seasons, only Mumbai and Chennai had ever defended an IPL crown. Now there are three. The team that spent a decade as cricket's most beautiful heartbreak has become the team nobody can knock off the top.

How it actually happened

Gujarat Titans never got going. RCB's bowlers strangled them through the middle — Rasikh Salam the chief executioner with 3 for 27 — and 155 for 8 always felt twenty short on a ground where the ball flies. Washington Sundar's unbeaten 50 was a lone candle in the dark; you admired it, you knew it wasn't enough.

The chase was Kohli theatre. No fireworks early, just that familiar, ruthless calm — milk the gaps, punish the loose one, let the asking rate look after itself. By the time he flicked the winning runs away with twelve balls to spare, GT's heads were already down. Five wickets in hand. A second straight trophy in the cabinet. A stadium losing its mind.

Ee sala cup namde. This year the cup is ours. They've been singing it since 2008. Two years running now, it's just been true.

You can't stream this feeling

Here's what the highlights reel will never give you: the half-second of total silence as Kohli takes guard. The roar that follows the winning runs and doesn't stop for ten minutes. The stranger next to you hugging you like family because, for one night, you are.

That's the whole point of being there. The biggest nights in cricket — an IPL final, an Ashes Saturday, a New Year's Test with Table Mountain glowing behind the bowler's arm — were never built for the sofa. They're built for the goosebumps you only get in the stand.

So go and get the goosebumps

This is exactly what we do at Follow On Tours. Tickets, hotels, transfers, the local know-how — the lot — wrapped around the cricket you actually want to see, not some off-the-shelf package. The 2026/27 calendar is already lighting up, from England's tour of South Africa to wherever next year's IPL fireworks land.

If watching Kohli lift that trophy gave you even a flicker of I wish I was there — don't let it fade. That flicker is the best travel advice you'll ever get.

Build your next cricket trip at followontours.com. We'll handle everything but the goosebumps.

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Champions of IPL 2026: Royal Challengers Bengaluru. Take a bow.