The 18-year wait has finally ended. Virat Kohli has an IPL trophy to show. He had won everything in all major limited-overs tournaments. The IPL completes the list.

Punjab Kings fell six runs short chasing 191 as Royal Challengers Bengaluru prevailed in the high-voltage final at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad on Tuesday.

They were off to a good start with Priyansh Arya and Prabhsimran Singh putting on 43 in the first five overs. But the dismissals of three batters within 26 runs — Prabhsimran, Shreyas Iyer and Josh Inglis — put paid to their hopes.

RCB’s best bowler in this edition, Josh Hazlewood, proved to be expensive, but Bhuvneshwar Kumar, along with spinners Krunal Pandya (2/17) and Suyash Sharma, put a leash on the run rate. Once Bhuvneshwar removed Nehal Wadhera and Marcus Stoinis in the 17th over, the writing was on the wall for Punjab.

Shashank Singh tried to put up a challenge when 72 were needed off 30 balls. He smashed Hazlewood for 6, 4, 6, 6 to finish the final over, but it was in vain because the first two deliveries, with 29 needed at the start, were dot balls.

Sluggish batting

Punjab’s strategy of bowling short and taking the pace off the ball worked well as the RCB batters struggled to get going. They reached 55/1 in the Powerplay, 90/3 in the middle overs (7-15), and the death overs yielded 45 runs at the cost of five wickets.

Phil Salt and Jitesh Sharma’s promising starts helped them accelerate, but they failed to build on it. The momentum was missing and RCB ended short of what they had set out to achieve. Kohli was content with rotating the strike, and as a result the strike rate suffered.

Kohli struggled for timing with his pull shot during his 43 off 35 balls and eventually fell top-edging one.

Azmatullah Omarzai, the Afghanistan all-rounder, was rewarded for his good work. He had a great day by hitting the hard lengths and swift pace changes. There was only one four in his 2.5 overs.

Jitesh’s strokeplay

The Punjab bowlers’ ploy made the batters struggle with their timing against the tennis ball-like bounce on the pitch. They were extremely successful with this strategy until Jitesh (24 off 10) unleashed his unorthodox strokeplay.

He made room to manufacture a slapped six over the covers and then played a shot straight out of tennis ball-cricket — waited for the bounce, went down and scooped it over the wicketkeeper for a six.

Then he jumped down the pitch to change the length and hammered a big six straight down the ground. RCB took 13 off Arshdeep Singh in the 16th over and then 23 off Kyle Jamieson in
the 17th.