During an emotional victory address after Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) won their maiden IPL title last year, Mo Bobat, their director of cricket, delivered a succinct message: "Let's be like the hunters."
Eleven months on, RCB are on the cusp of another final, and Bobat has been able to reflect on the weight of his words.
"Because it was such a long wait for us to win that first title, I didn't want it to feel like we had climbed our Everest," Bobat said at the RCB Innovation Lab Indian Sports Summit last week. "I want us to feel like we're not clinging on to anything. We wanted to just keep climbing, keep hunting."
Which is why, as they regrouped ahead of this season, Bobat threw a challenge: "Why can't we be the third team to do it?"
Only two sides in IPL history - Chennai Super Kings (CSK) in 2011 and Mumbai Indians (MI) in 2020 - had successfully defended their title. Bobat wanted RCB to believe they could do it too.
The confidence driving RCB's push for back-to-back titles hasn't come overnight. It goes back to the second half of IPL 2024 - Bobat and Andy Flower's first season in charge together.
Flower arrived with one of the strongest T20 coaching resumes. He was offered more money elsewhere, but the appeal of helping RCB achieve something they hadn't drew him in. Eight games into that first season together, though, RCB were at rock bottom, with one win in eight games.
"There were questions asked," CEO Rajesh Menon remembers. "Do we have the right team? Do we have the right staff? I said the culture is good. The players are good. It's just a matter of time."
Indeed, it was.
RCB won six games on the bounce to make the playoffs that year. While they lost in the Eliminator, they emerged with an identity they had lacked at the start.
"One of the first things that struck me when I got involved with RCB was a phrase used about the England football team - the shirt weighs heavy," Bobat explained. "One of the key tasks was really unburdening them as much as you can, taking that weight off them.
"Instead of thinking, 'when are we going to win this?', the narrative changed to: 'why not us?' My obsession has just been around how we want to play our cricket. If you can immerse yourself in that, you trust success will become inevitable."
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RCB's mid-season transformation began from a defeat. Having been smashed for 287 by Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH), they responded with 262. Bobat and Flower immediately knew this was the batting template RCB needed. It needed a buy-in from their icon; fortunately, convincing Virat Kohli wasn't difficult.
During the first half of IPL 2024, Kohli still largely played the classic anchor role. But from that SRH game onwards, he consciously traded security for greater impact. His strike rate jumped from 141 in RCB's first six matches to 166 across the remainder of the campaign, setting the tone for the batting identity the side carries today.
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Last season, Kohli made 657 runs at a strike rate just under 150. But this year, he has struck 557 runs at close to 164 - his best strike-rate in an IPL season. Importantly, RCB have won each of the seven games where he has batted beyond the powerplay.
Kohli's reinvention has had a knock-on effect within RCB's batting group. No player perhaps embodies this more than Devdutt Padikkal, their No. 3.
When RCB signed Padikkal at the mega auction in November 2024, he was coming off a disappointing stint with Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) - 38 runs in seven innings - and admitted he was unsure whether franchises still viewed him as a serious T20 option.
At the time, Padikkal was seen as a back-up. RCB had gone up to INR 23 crore for Venkatesh Iyer, only to see Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) pip them. In hindsight, missing out may have helped shape the squad they have today.
For roughly the same amount they were prepared to spend on one player, RCB were instead able to bring in Josh Hazlewood (INR 12.50 crore), Bhuvneshwar Kumar (INR 10.75 crore) and Padikkal (INR 2 crore) - three players who have since become central to their plans.
Before the 2025 season, RCB saw in Padikkal a left-hand batter capable of ball-striking from the get-go. "That has been the role for the last two years," he said. "I have to continue the momentum in the powerplay. You cannot afford to slow down after a wicket."
After striking at just 123 across his IPL career before 2025, Padikkal embraced a far more aggressive role last season, scoring at over 150 before injury cut short his campaign. This year has been an even bigger leap: he has scored 433 runs at a strike rate touching 172 - by far his most impactful IPL season yet.
Padikkal credited the faith from the team management and off-season work with Dinesh Karthik, their batting mentor, for helping him emerge as a better T20 batter. "Because it's such a major shift, it's very easy to accept maybe that's not your game," he said. "But the conversations were mainly about them giving me the belief that I'm capable of doing that. I'm not really trying to focus on strike rate. It's about making sure I have that intent from ball one."
The other two top-order batters, Phil Salt and Rajat Patidar, already had similar roles. Salt was hugely successful laying down the marker during the title run with KKR in 2024, and Patidar was the designated spin-destroyer.
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The question around Patidar, however, was if he could continue to be the player RCB wanted without the burden of captaincy weighing him down. If IPL 2025 gave us answers, this season has merely confirmed that notion - he has made close to 400 runs this season at a strike rate of 184.
Where his predecessor, Faf du Plessis, was deeply involved in almost every aspect of the side - from auction planning to team culture - Patidar has led differently. "Rajat's quite a unique character," Bobat said. "I don't know anyone quite like him."
Bobat described Patidar as more trusting and hands-off away from the field, preferring instead to focus almost entirely on the cricket itself: tactics, bowling changes and in-game decision-making.
"He wants to have an input on the team that takes the field," Bobat said, "and then he thinks that when he crosses the line, that's when his job starts."
That trust has become central to how this version of RCB has functioned. Patidar trusts the management to build the environment around him; the management trusts him to control the game once it begins.
"He's got a stronger sense [now] of how he wants the team to play," Bobat said. "He is certainly becoming an even better decision-maker out in the middle when it comes to tactics and bowling changes."
Around Patidar, too, RCB has steadily assembled a stronger support system. Jitesh Sharma has emerged as a capable sounding board and deputy, while Krunal Pandya has contributed across phases with both bat and ball - none more significant than his match-winning 73 this season through cramps and exhaustion against MI in Raipur.
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Krunal was one of their single-biggest match-winners in 2025, and the version that has turned up in 2026 has been a significant upgrade, with his use of variations, bouncers and bankability across phases.
Since the start of IPL 2025, no left-arm fingerspinner has bowled as many balls to left-hand batters as Krunal has or has picked up more wickets against them. All this while maintaining an economy rate under 10. His victims include Priyansh Arya, Venkatesh Iyer, Rinku Singh, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi and Shimron Hetmyer.
Similarly, Bhuvneshwar, who inflicted heartbreak on RCB in the 2016 final when with SRH, is now their bowling leader, and his performances this season have even revived talk of an India comeback at 36.
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Bobat attributed much of this turnaround to a culture change.
"When an organisation hasn't achieved its main goal for 17 years, you have to ask why," he said. "And you have to have the humility to look at your own failings.
"RCB had a history of always having a small number of icon players, and the performance of the team was kind of contingent on those few players doing well. We wanted to have a more even distribution of talent, even distribution of experience, to give ourselves a better chance of having a championship-winning team."
This philosophy has been strongly underlined through their auction strategies.
While teams like MI, CSK and SRH locked away nearly INR 75 crore retaining established match-winners ahead of the IPL 2025 mega auction, RCB chose a partial reset. They retained only two match-winners in Kohli and Patidar for a combined INR 32 crore (Yash Dayal was the third retained player). This gave them flexibility that others didn't have.
Their four biggest buys - Josh Hazlewood (INR 12.50 crore), Salt (INR 11.50 crore), Jitesh (INR 11 crore) and Bhuvneshwar (INR 10.75 crore) - cost a combined INR 45.75 crore. They still had enough room left to add proven performers like Krunal, Tim David and Padikkal.
In previous cycles, RCB often ended up top-heavy: a few superstars surrounded by back-ups considerably thin on experience. In 2025, and ahead of IPL 2026, they prioritised spreading proven quality across the XII, while also eventually being able to sign Venkatesh as a back-up batter for INR 7 crore, a shade of what they were willing to spend on him in 2025.
Venkatesh spent large parts of the IPL 2026 campaign outside the XII as RCB didn't tinker with a settled combination. While he came in as an impact player twice earlier in the season, he had to wait until the 13th game to get going.
Replacing the injured Patidar, Venkatesh made the opportunity count, hitting an unbeaten 73 not out in 40 balls in RCB's 23-run win over Punjab Kings (PBKS). Then, in their final league game, he replaced an injured Jacob Bethell at the top of the order, and scored 44 in 19 balls in RCB's chase of 256, which they didn't even attempt to get at, choosing to get their net run-rate right to top the table instead.
"RCB is the champion side," Venkatesh said. "We're defending champions. So to tinker with a combination that has won you a championship is not always the smartest move. As someone who places the team above everything else, it's my duty to adhere to the environment."
Yet, even while waiting for opportunities, he said the management maintained complete transparency around expectations and roles. "Mo, Andy and DK have been amazing when it comes to conversations about what my role in the team is. They've given me absolute clarity."
Clarity and communication have made RCB better placed to absorb late changes, sometimes forced by circumstances. Like their decision to pull out Dayal from this season because of legal issues.
Dayal had been a key part of RCB's three-pronged pace attack during their title win, but by keeping him contracted, RCB have effectively played with a resource short. His absence, coupled with Hazlewood missing the first few games, could have potentially created hurdles. But their auction pick, Jacob Duffy, filled in for Hazlewood and, in his very first game, picked up 3 for 22 to be Player of the Match against SRH.
Duffy hasn't played in all the games since Hazlewood's eventual entry, but he has been used tactically, like in the league game in Dharamsala against PBKS, where pace and hit-the-deck bowling have historically held greater value than spin.
Similarly, Rasikh Salam - identified as a back-up for Dayal last year - has featured in ten matches and has already surpassed Dayal's tally of 13 wickets from last year. The franchise invested in Salam's training camps, with Krunal even facilitating a move for him from Jammu & Kashmir to Baroda for more opportunities.
Their flexibility hasn't only been visible in personnel and tactics. Over the last two seasons, RCB have also had to rethink one of the oldest assumptions in the IPL: sustained success is impossible without dominating at home.
Last season, they won only two home games but were exceptional on the road, winning nine away from Bengaluru. This year brought an entirely different challenge. Because of scheduling changes, RCB played only five league games at the Chinnaswamy, with two "home" fixtures shifted to Raipur - a venue that had not hosted an IPL game since 2016.
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Ahead of their game against MI, RCB arrived directly off a flight while MI had already trained twice at the venue in Raipur. They went to the extent of gleaning information from scorecards of Chhattisgarh Premier League matches to understand how surfaces behave.
Bobat admitted that when he first arrived at RCB, he viewed the Chinnaswamy simply as a high-scoring venue where teams "fill their boots". It took him time to realise that home advantage had historically been elusive for RCB.
"A lot of people said if you're not dominant at home, you won't win the IPL," he said. "Part of me thought, well, let's just win all our away games then."
In many ways, that became the point. RCB stopped obsessing over where the victories came from and focused instead on understanding conditions quicker, adapting better and building a squad flexible enough to win in different ways.
"You've got to be humble enough to know when you're not doing well," Bobat said. "We weren't playing well enough at home initially. But because we were honest in how we reviewed things, we worked out how we wanted to bowl here, what type of bowlers succeed here and how we wanted to bat.
"The boys have really committed to those learnings."
The results have followed. RCB have won six of their seven home games this season - including the two in Raipur - while continuing to adapt in unfamiliar surroundings like Dharamsala, with the Himalayas towering in the distance and Mt Everest geographically closer than it had been in Bengaluru.
When teams spend a generation waiting for a title, they often treat the first taste of glory as the destination itself. Almost a year on, the hunters clearly want more.