Virat Kohli stated that the loss against Sunrisers Hyderabad in the final of IPL 2016 still hurts him and several other players as they had the chance to break the IPL jinx for the first time.
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Royal Challengers Bangalore and the Indian Premier League have had a love-hate relationship in the last 13 years. They reached the final in 2009, 2011, and 2016 but have always finished second-best. Royal Challengers Bangalore have also finished as the wooden spoon team three times. In the last two editions of the IPL, they have lost in the Eliminator against Sunrisers Hyderabad and Kolkata Knight Riders.
Recently, Virat Kohli opened up on the loss that has hurt him the most. Kohli has endured plenty of frustration in the form of ICC World Cup, World T20, and Champions League losses from 2014 to 2021. But, in an interaction with the RCB Podcast, Virat Kohli opened up on the one loss that hurts him even today.
The 2016 IPL final was played between Royal Challengers Bangalore and Sunrisers Hyderabad. Kohli was in the form of his life, blasting 973 runs with four centuries. Chris Gayle, AB de Villiers, and KL Rahul all scored plenty of runs. The final was also at the M Chinnaswamy stadium, their home ground, and fortress. Sunrisers Hyderabad reached 208 and Royal Challengers Bangalore were 114/0. But, a collapse towards the end saw them end eight runs short. Kohli has revealed that this match still hurts him personally.
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“That game, I felt like it was written. How could the finals be in Bangalore, and we played that kind of season, and we play that kind of a game where we are 100 for no loss in nine overs. Even KL, to this day, if there’s a highlight package running, he takes a screenshot and says it still hurts. It does. You had these dejected faces sitting in that amazing victory setup that we had done for the post-victory celebration. There was no music and we had such a big setup. I wouldn’t say it was our day. That is one game where I feel like it hurts,” Kohli said.
The fact that so much was working for them and yet they could not win the IPL 2016 season is something that still haunts Kohli. “It disappoints me. We had opportunities where we came close. At the end of the day, I am not going to call it luck. The opposition is there to play as well and if they are better on the day, you have to accept it that we haven’t been as courageous or as clear in our plans as we should have been in those crunch moments. You could say that the odds were stacked against us – the only expectation was for us to win – but you have to deal with those. You can’t run away from that,” Kohli said.
Virat Kohli stated that it was the season that made KL Rahul a household name. But, despite having four guys in top form, the fact that Royal Challengers Bangalore could not win is still staggering. “That was so amazing in a way that you have four guys performing at their peak game in, game out – which is so rare to see in T20 cricket. We just got on a roll where we were like fine ‘if we are not doing well in the season, we could still make it’. The belief never went away which is really difficult to create. That happened very, very naturally that season. KL also agrees that his career graph changed after that,” Kohli said.
