IPL 2025: Bengaluru aim to end 17-yr Chepauk jinx

RCB’s Virat Kohli during his 36-ball unbeaten 59 against KKR in Kolkata last week. Pic/Getty Images

Royal Challengers Bengaluru's (RCB) hopes of exorcising a 17-year jinx hinge on their experienced batting unit finding its range when they face familiar foes Chennai Super Kings (CSK) in their IPL match here on Friday.

The Royal Challengers have beaten the Super Kings only once at Chepauk - in the inaugural edition of the tournament in 2008. In the current RCB squad, only star batter Virat Kohli was part of that moment and now he will like to breach the CSK's fortress for a second time.

But that's easy to dream. As ever, the Chennai outfit is constructed to win their home matches on a pitch that offers considerable help to spinners.

They have the ever-familiar Ravindra Jadeja and have brought back ‘old boy' Ravichandran Ashwin through last year's auction. The Chennai side has also added Afghanistan wrist spinner Noor Ahmad too to the squad, and the troika did well against fellow five-time champions Mumbai Indians a few days back.

The pitch is expected to retain its character for this match as well, and the RCB batters, led by Kohli, will have to lift their game several notches to outwit an experienced bowling unit.

Outwit is the key word here. The Royal Challengers' batting unit should be clever more than downright aggressive to score off CSK's three-pronged spin unit, and Kohli should lead that charge.

Negating spin has not always been a strong point of Kohli's batting but in the last two years or so he has showed massive improvement in that department. Central to that change is his willingness to play more sweep/slog sweeps against spinners, and Kohli will have to bring all those expertise to the table on a blockbuster Friday evening.

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