He Sealed It With A Six. Virat Kohli. 75 Not Out. Back-To-Back IPL Titles. RCB Are Champions Of The World Again.

Virat Kohli scores 75 not out off 42 balls as RCB beat GT by 5 wickets in IPL 2026 final at Narendra Modi Stadium Ahmedabad to win back-to-back IPL titles

When the moment came, it came the way Virat Kohli moments always do — with a six.

The ball from Washington Sundar was full, inviting, slightly too straight. Kohli was on 70. RCB needed four more runs to win. He stepped across his stumps, picked up the line early, and launched it over the mid-wicket boundary with a swing that had no doubts in it anywhere. The ball cleared the rope by ten metres. The Narendra Modi Stadium — all 132,000 people of it, the largest cricket ground in the world, packed with Gujarat Titans supporters who had come hoping to witness a title on their home ground — fell silent for just a moment before the RCB fans scattered across the stands erupted.

Back-to-back IPL titles. Only the third team in the tournament's nineteen-year history to defend their crown, after Chennai Super Kings in 2010 and 2011, and Mumbai Indians in 2019 and 2020. And at the centre of it — as he has been at the centre of everything good that has happened to Royal Challengers Bengaluru this season — Virat Kohli. 75 not out. 42 balls. Nine fours and three sixes. His fastest ever IPL half century, brought up in 25 balls. Player of the Match. Player of the Final. The man who refused to let it slip.

RCB won by five wickets with 12 balls to spare. Gujarat Titans had posted 155 for 8 — a total that felt below par on the Ahmedabad surface, despite the quality of RCB's bowling — and Kohli chased it down almost single-handedly, keeping his composure through four quick wickets in the middle of the chase to ensure the title never genuinely felt in danger. The second star is on the badge. The dynasty, if one word can describe two consecutive titles, has begun.

How RCB's Bowlers Set The Platform

Before Kohli could play the innings that won the trophy, RCB's bowlers needed to take the match away from Gujarat Titans in the first innings. And on a surface that had looked flat and true in the afternoon, they did it with a precision and collective discipline that has defined their bowling throughout IPL 2026.

Shubman Gill won the toss and — contrary to what most people expected — chose to bat first. The logic was sound: GT's home crowd, their home ground, the pressure of a final. Better to set a target and let the atmosphere work for them in the second innings. What nobody told GT was that RCB had come to Ahmedabad specifically prepared to take pace off the ball, bowl cutters on a dry surface, and strangle a batting lineup that had been prolific in their high-scoring run to the final.

Bhuvneshwar Kumar, making his first IPL final appearance, was exceptional. Two wickets for 29 runs — Sai Sudharsan caught pulling a short ball at 138 kph that nipped back into him, and Nishant Sindhu stumped down the leg side — and an economy rate of 7.25 in conditions where he found movement that most people watching from the stands could not have predicted. At 38 years old, bowling in an IPL final with the control and craft of someone who has done this a hundred times, Bhuvneshwar was a reminder that IPL cricket is not exclusively a young person's game.

Josh Hazlewood was equally important. Shubman Gill — who had come into this final on the back of a century in the Qualifier 2 against Rajasthan Royals, the man who had made history as the first player ever to score two centuries in a single IPL playoff campaign — lasted ten deliveries. He top-edged a pull off Hazlewood, the ball climbing steeply off a good length, and Rajat Patidar at mid-on took a sharp catch tumbling forward. GT's captain gone for 10. The crowd silenced before they had time to properly warm up.

But the performance of the first innings was Rasikh Salam Dar. The young Kashmiri fast bowler, whose IPL 2026 season has been one of the quiet stories of RCB's title defence, took three wickets for 27 — his best figures of the season in the most important game of the season. He bowled Jason Holder through a gap between bat and pad that Holder had not seen coming. He had Jos Buttler caught at short cover driving on the up. And in the 18th over, he hit Washington Sundar on the back pad for the LBW that brought the RCB fielders together in the centre of the Narendra Modi Stadium for the kind of celebration you only see when something important has just happened.

Washington Sundar, to his enormous credit, counter-attacked brilliantly for his 50 not out off 30 balls — six fours, two sixes, the kind of innings that reminded everyone why GT had backed him throughout the season. He and Rashid Khan added 44 runs for the ninth wicket that took GT from 111 for 7 to 155 for 8. But the damage had already been done. 155 was not 185. And 155 against Virat Kohli in a final, on a flat Ahmedabad pitch, was always going to feel like not enough.

The Chase — And The Moment It Nearly Got Complicated

Kohli and Venkatesh Iyer opened the chase at a pace that immediately made clear RCB had no intention of letting this become a contest. They put on 63 runs in 3.3 overs — the fastest team fifty in IPL final history, surpassing CSK's record from the 2023 final at the same venue. Iyer hit Mohammed Siraj for four and six in the first over. Kohli cut Kagiso Rabada through point for four and then drove him down the ground for another. GT's bowlers, who had been so clinical in qualifying for this final, looked like men who had spent their ammunition earlier in the season.

Then, in the space of eight deliveries, GT almost changed the match.

Siraj dismissed Iyer for 32 off 16 balls — caught at long-on going for a straight six, the kind of dismissal that happens when a batter who has been hitting boundaries all over the ground tries to hit one too many. Rabada, bowling with genuine pace in the very next over, beat Devdutt Padikkal for pace and had him caught behind for 1. Rashid Khan — who had been taken apart by Patidar in Qualifier 1 and had nothing but motivation to respond — bowled Patidar for 15 with a googly that turned enough to find the outside edge, and then had Krunal Pandya caught at slip for 1 off the very next ball. Four balls later, 63 for 0 had become 89 for 4.

In the stands, GT's supporters found their voices. In the RCB dressing room, the calculation was simple: Kohli was still there, on 38, and 67 more runs were needed from 78 balls. The required rate was under nine. As long as Kohli was at the crease, this was always going to be RCB's.

He brought up his fifty in 25 balls — his fastest ever in the IPL, surpassing his previous best of 29 balls set in 2016. Tim David joined him and played his role perfectly — not trying to be the hero, not trying to take the game away from Kohli, simply rotating strike, hitting the loose ball for four, and trusting the man at the other end to finish the job.

And Kohli did finish it. With a six. Over mid-wicket. Off Washington Sundar. With 12 balls to spare. The way it was always going to end.

What This Title Means — For RCB, And For Kohli

Royal Challengers Bengaluru went 18 years without an IPL title. They reached three finals — in 2009, 2011, and 2016 — and lost all three. They built teams around some of the greatest batters the format has ever seen. They had AB de Villiers, Chris Gayle, Virat Kohli at his peak, and still the trophy did not come. The IPL was the one thing missing from an otherwise extraordinary franchise history.

Then 2025 happened. And then 2026.

Rajat Patidar's 93 off 33 balls in Qualifier 1 — the innings that defined this RCB season — set the tone for a playoff campaign that was as dominant as any in recent IPL history. But if Patidar's innings was the statement, Kohli's 75 not out in the final was the signature. The confirmation. The moment where the best player in RCB's history, in the biggest game of the season, at the largest cricket ground in the world, showed exactly why he has played international cricket for seventeen years and is still the first name on every team sheet.

He is 37 years old. He scored 75 not out off 42 balls in an IPL final. His fastest ever fifty in the format came tonight — 25 balls, in a chase, when his team had lost four quick wickets and needed steadiness more than fireworks. He provided both. He always provides both when it matters most.

After the trophy presentation, Kohli stood at the podium in front of 132,000 people and said something that stopped the stadium. "I said last year that this trophy was for every RCB fan who never gave up. Now I say it again — this one is for every fan who came back the next season and believed again. You deserved this. You deserved both of them."

There were grown men crying in the stands. There were RCB fans who had watched those three final defeats — in 2009, 2011, and 2016 — watching Kohli hold the trophy for the second time in two years and feeling something they had waited a very long time to feel. Not just one title. Not just the first one, the relief of finally. Two titles. Back to back. Champions, plural. A dynasty.

For GT — And What Sunday Night Will Feel Like In Ahmedabad

It is worth spending a moment on what this defeat means for Gujarat Titans — because they deserved better than losing an IPL final at their own ground in front of their own crowd.

Shubman Gill made two centuries in the playoffs. He became the first player in IPL history to score two hundreds in a single playoff campaign. He led his team from a 92-run defeat in Qualifier 1 to the final itself through a series of performances that showed exactly the captain he is becoming. He is 26 years old. He will be back.

Washington Sundar's 50 not out in a losing cause was a performance that deserved a trophy. Rashid Khan, who took four wickets in the chase including the crucial double-wicket over, did everything he could. Rabada finished the IPL with the Purple Cap — most wickets of the tournament. This was not a bad Gujarat Titans side that lost a final. It was a very good one that ran into a very great one.

The 132,000 people who came to Narendra Modi Stadium on Sunday went home without the result they came for. But they watched Virat Kohli hit a six to win a second consecutive IPL title — and in forty years, when they are telling their grandchildren about the cricket they saw, that is what they will remember. The six. The celebration. The man who has played this game at the highest level for longer than most of his current teammates have been adults, still finding another gear when it matters most.

The Season In Numbers

Vaibhav Suryavanshi won the Player of the Series award — 776 runs across the league stage and playoffs, the most by any batter in a single IPL season, surpassing the record set by Virat Kohli himself in 2016. We wrote about Suryavanshi's story back in April — the farmer's son, the teenager, the records that kept coming — and even then we could not have fully predicted what his season would become. 776 runs. 15 years old. A record that may stand for a decade.

Kagiso Rabada won the Purple Cap with 24 wickets — the most by any bowler in IPL 2026. Rajat Patidar's 93 off 33 in Qualifier 1 remains the fastest 90-plus innings in IPL playoff history. Abhishek Sharma broke Chris Gayle's records. PBKS chased 265 in a match that should not have been possible. IPL 2026 has been, by almost any measure, the greatest edition of the tournament ever played.

And at the end of it all — through every record broken and every extraordinary innings played — the team holding the trophy is Royal Challengers Bengaluru. Again. Still. Champions.

He sealed it with a six. Virat Kohli. 75 not out. Back to back.

Some things in cricket are simply inevitable.

Follow The Yorker Crew — IPL 2026 is over, but Pakistan vs Australia ODI series starts May 30. We will be there for every ball.

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Monday, June 1, 2026