The C in RCB Stands for Chaos

The men's team is a running comedy gag

At some point of high school mathematics, you come across the Knapsack Problem. Imagine this: you’re handed a sack, a weight limit, and a collection of items, each with its own value. The challenge is to pack your sack with the most valuable assortment of items without exceeding the weight limit. Depending on your math teacher, you could either be left wondering why Tom would be packing 25 mangoes, or be taught the key concepts of the problem and its solution.

In sports, we see it play out all the time in the realm of team-building. Consider the football teams that occupy the middle ground, the Aston Villas and Leicester Citys of the world. They neither have the cash of Manchester City nor the magnetic allure of Manchester United or Liverpool. So, they’re forced to rummage through the less glamorous aisles of the transfer supermarket, hunting for hidden gems in places others deem unworthy. And they often find players that eventually become obsessions for teams with bigger coffers. There is a school of thought within the scouting community that the best scouting and resource management happens somewhere in the middle of a league table.

In the Indian Premier League (IPL), the principles of the Knapsack Problem are not just applicable but enforced. There is a budget every team must abide by, and playing rules mandate at most four foreign players in any lineup. The Chennai Super Kings have mastered this art of optimisation. Year after year, CSK take the field with a set of players that you look at and think, "Surely not." And year after year, you hear MS Dhoni and Stephen Fleming sniggering at the back, going, "Told you."

Not to start a Chennai-versus-Bangalore debate here, but the Royal Challengers Bengaluru is the exact opposite of a franchise that looks at building a squad as an optimisation problem. Well, at least the men’s team, because their women’s team is excellent.

At the player auction last year, they had a simple problem to solve. Their squad lacked spinners and big, bulky, murderous batters in the middle overs. In any balanced T20 side, these are key profiles. But instead, RCB bought fast bowlers, en masse, even though they already had a fair share. Why? Because they could. ✌️

It’s like running out of onions and pepper before dinner, and instead of restocking, you buy a mountain of Doritos and strut home with orange crumbs all over your white Nike t-shirt. Peak RCB.

Footprints of these anarchist tendencies can be traced back to when the IPL was taking its first steps. While the other franchises chose grandiose names evoking kings and daredevils, these guys went for the ring of a whisky brand. Good start.

At the inaugural auction, when T20 cricket was dismissed by many as too brash, too uncouth, RCB filled their ranks with stalwarts of Test cricket. Not just any stalwarts, mind you, but a select group known for their measured, risk-averse style of play. Their owner was, of course, a beacon of that same kind of prosaic, risk-averse lifestyle himself. Some of you know him as Vijay Mallya.

Rumour has it that this is a rare image from the scouting and analytics software RCB have built in-house.

The mega auction is one of the unique quirks of the IPL that allows teams to overhaul their roster every few years. In 2011, after three seasons of a sine wave rhythm to their cricket, RCB shed their Test-team baggage and acquired some top-tier white-ball talent in Chris Gayle, AB de Villiers, Zaheer Khan, and Tillakaratne Dilshan. From the original lineup, they held onto one player: Virat Kohli. 

Over the last thirteen seasons, an overarching presence of marquee players has been a constant for RCB. For a significant stretch, it was the troika of Gayle, AB, and Virat. Even the most imaginative fantasy teams would struggle to assemble a top order that formidable. Throw in the occasional dash of Shane Watson and a sprinkle of young KL Rahul, and you’ve got a tantalising question simmering on the stove: “Surely now?”

Ee Sala Cup Namde. In Kannada, it translates to “This year, the cup is ours.” It’s the anthem that underscores RCB’s campaign every year, accompanying them across posters, promos, and some unfortunate puns.

In 2016, they came within touching distance of the coveted trophy, only to inexplicably fumble in front of a home crowd primed for jubilation. And, even in that year, it took the brilliance of Gayle, AB, and Virat to drag them to the doorstep of glory.

Winning teams have a certain look about them: all bases covered, star players firing at the right moments, and a palpable synergy between their tactics and execution. They stride into most games as favourites and are safe bets for making the playoffs. The IPL has a couple of such teams.

Over any three-year window, there are also a few scrappy underdogs who keep the tournament interesting. They seem blessed, as if guided by some unseen force that propels them to achieve more than what logic dictates. Their bowlers seem to develop teeth, fielders pull off spectacular catches, and every now and then, one of their batters will conjure up a 30-ball 85 from thin air.

And then there’s the rest. Not bottom-dwellers, because that would be an insult to the staggering talent some of them possess, but, how to put this, not very good. These teams are perpetually off-kilter, parts of them brilliant while others are conspicuously absent, and they never quite seem to gel.

On a given matchday, it’s anyone’s guess which incarnation of RCB will show up. They can be the most watchable show on TV one day and a slapstick comedy sketch the other.

The only thing they have been consistent with is a high score on the vibe-o-meter. A game at the Chinnaswamy Stadium will have you thoroughly convinced that this is one of the competition’s heavyweights. By sheer fan base, it truly is. And I don’t think I need to elaborate on why that fan base is so… virat, sorry, I mean vast.

Jokes aside, any team boasting players of this calibre will invariably draw a crowd. Ask a fan who spent ten summers watching AB and Virat in action, and she’ll tell you it was time well spent. For seven times every season, the Chinnaswamy is loud and boisterous, and is one of the better places to watch an IPL game at.

But, hilariously, the management at RCB has also spent this time playing fans more than team architects.

The day before I began writing this piece, Shivam Dube salvaged a lacklustre Chennai Super Kings batting effort with the kind of power hitting that lies at the heart of T20 cricket. He embodies the archetype that successful teams fill their squad with, at least in approach if not technical ability. Over the years, one of RCB’s most glaring weaknesses has been the absence of that kind of firepower to steer them through the middle overs. That gap showed up on Saturday too. If only they had… oh, wait. <Checks notes> Of course, they had Shivam Dube and let him slip through their fingers without ever tapping into his full potential.

You’d think RCB’s legacy in the IPL is defined by the towering skyline of Virat Kohli, Chris Gayle, AB de Villiers, and their ilk. Absolute marvels of technique and architecture. But the way they have handled the city’s underbelly, the rest of the squad, has kept the team in the constant state of flux that has now become almost unique to them. Shivam Dube, Yuzvendra Chahal, KL Rahul - the list of missed opportunities is long and gets more absurd with every name.

Ambati Rayudu, former CSK and India player, recently had some strong opinions.

Here’s a fun fact for your next party - Virat Kohli has amassed over 8000 runs for RCB. That’s a staggering number of runs, and no one has more. Fair play. Next on the list of top run-scorers for the team, filtered for Indians, is Rahul Dravid with 1132, and he played his last game for the team in 2010.

Even the scorecard from Saturday’s match tells a story. Virat scored a laboured century, his opening partner managed an even more laborious 44, and the remaining three batters failed to reach double digits. And then their opponents chased down the target with the ease of a leisurely stroll through Jaipur’s backstreets. 

The only logical next step for RCB is to embrace their role as agents of chaos. Go wild in the auction and snap up explosive players who might only deliver one standout performance all season, but will make your day. And then play spoiler for potential title contenders. There’s a certain allure to playing the devious kingmaker, especially if you’re not quite up to the task of challenging for any royalty yourself.