I’m not much of a sports person even back home in the US. I never really watched any growing up, and to this day, I probably could not name my favorite NFL or NBA player without a good bit of recall effort.
But now, ask me to name my favorite cricket player on any IPL team — I have that information ready to drop. Nitish Kumar Reddy and Abhishek Sharma from the Sunrisers, Shreyas Iyer from the Punjab Kings, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi from the Rajasthan Royals, and of course, none other than King Kohli from RCB: the Royal Challengers of Bengaluru.
Living in my host city, Mysuru, which is only 2hrs from Bengaluru, has taught me that it’s right up there with blasphemy and/or sacrilege to be a resident of Karnataka and not pledge undying, lifelong loyalty to RCB. I had very little choice in the matter, to be honest.
My indoctrination to the cricket world was rather unintentional. I think that it’s almost impossible to live in India — particularly in a city with such a visceral attachment to a team — without finding yourself being absorbed by that attachment as well. Cricket is much more than just a sport in India; it’s an integral part of the fabric of society. I didn’t understand why everyone cared so much — restaurants were constantly screening matches, and if they weren’t, people were watching on their phones — until one day, I did understand. For me, cricket became a way to strengthen my relationships with Mysuru and its people, a way to stitch myself into the social fabric of this city.
It all began at the outset of IPL matches — and, I’ll reluctantly admit — as an infatuation with the players (seriously, what are they feeding these teams?). Cricket reels and stats inevitably began to make their way into my digital footprint, and my team loyalties began to develop. I was following the Sunrisers from Hyderabad at first, until my friends in and around Mysuru informed me I was rooting for the wrong team.
RCB it was.
Luckily, there was one player on RCB who was familiar enough to capture my interest in the team as a whole. Virat Kohli: The Man, The Myth, The Legend. Coincidentally, I’d actually met and taken a picture with Kohli 14 years earlier, at the 2011 IPL final against RCB’s most notorious rivals, the Chennai Super Kings. Sadly, being a jetlagged 3rd-grader with little to no patience for a sport I’d never watched before, I didn’t appreciate how monumental the experience was. More on that later.
Given that I’d only just dipped my feet into cricket, switching team loyalties wasn’t too painful; it was a matter of aligning myself with my new home in Mysuru. I began following RCB in earnest, catching their matches no matter where I was (the number of times that I dual-screened my laptop while working is far greater than I’d care to admit).
Slowly, my love for the players evolved into a love for the game itself. I began appreciating tricky catches and talented batsmen, irrespective of the team. When Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, a 14-year-old player on the Rajasthan Royals, hit the second-fastest century in IPL history, I was watching — and I was crying. Friends and I talked for days afterwards about what a feat it was, and when the Washington Post covered his rise in the cricket world, I felt as though I was the one being interviewed for my rise as a cricket viewer.
The sport had swept me off of my feet with the force of a tsunami. Although I’d finally learned the rules and had begun appreciating players across teams, I was still magnetically drawn to RCB. When they won their semifinal, the restaurant I was at (which, of course, was screening the match) erupted in cheers and chants of “RCB! RCB!”, everyone on their feet, clapping and fist-pumping, hugging strangers and congratulating each other as though they’d played the match themselves. I was one of them.
And finally, after seven months in Mysuru, I felt like I was one of them, a real part of the city, a Mysurian, an RCBian.
I was in a coffee shop at 10pm five days later, watching the last stretch of the final between RCB and the Punjab Kings while working on graduate school applications. The match had been up and down for the entire three hours, but I knew an RCB win was coming. And when it did — when Virat Kohli turned to the camera with tears in his eyes, falling to the ground, crouching — I felt a tidal wave of emotion. Even I knew as a newcomer how special this win was for RCB, qualifying for the final three times in 18 years but never winning the title themselves. And to watch Kohli, who had been on the team since its inception, finally lift the IPL cup after watching him lose the 2011 final live… it was really something special. If only I could’ve taken that picture now, instead of as a clueless 9-year-old!
As I took my rickshaw home an hour later, the streets were thronged with fans and supporters hipping and hollering for the win, shouts of “ee saala cup namduuuu!!!” ripping through the air. Crackers burst in the street in tandem with the fireworks lighting up the sky, and it took everything in me not to jump out of my auto and into the celebrations. I remember texting a friend that the entire city, which was usually on its way to bed by 9pm, was “shor machaoing”, and how incredible it felt to be witnessing an RCB win as a resident of Karnataka.
It was thanks to those fireworks (which I watched from the safety of my terrace) that I finally met my upstairs neighbor, who was, of course, enjoying the RCB win with her friends. They invited me in to have a slice of celebratory cake, and I fell asleep that night to the sounds of a city alive with excitement, passion, and the simple, pure love that comes with believing in a team through all of its ups and downs for 18 long years.
I never expected that I would be sharing in that love, that I would be leaving Mysuru with a newfound passion for cricket and an ironclad team allegiance to boot — but I will always be grateful to RCB, and to cricket as a whole, for making me feel like a true part of this city.
And at the same time, I am so anguished at the fact that RCB has given me yet another reason that I will miss Mysuru — and India — so, so much.
