18 years – that’s how long players, stakeholders and fans of Royal Challengers Bengaluru waited to taste success in the Indian Premier League. It was a charmed campaign which finished with an allround effort against Punjab Kings in the final at Ahmedabad. Front and centre of the victory was Virat Kohli – a player who stayed loyal to the club since its inception in 2008. He has become synonymous with the franchise and was understandably the headline in the team’s maiden IPL triumph.
Even before the victory was secured, Bengaluru was out on the streets celebrating. Fireworks, scores of fans dancing on Church Street, social media abuzz with relieved fans who finally had a trophy to flaunt, all ran alongside the squad lifting the cup at the Narendra Modi Stadium. Players were ready to join the city in festivities but under 24 hours later, proceedings took a deadly turn.
A tragic stampede occurred outside the M.Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru during celebrations for the team’s IPL victory, leaving 11 dead and over 50 people injured.
In this episode of the Sportstar Podcast, host Lavanya Lakshminarayanan is joined by N. Sudarshan and photojournalist K. Murali Kumar from the Bengaluru bureau and Amol Karhadkar and photojournalist Emmanual Yogini who covered the massive victory parade for the T20 World Cup win last year in Mumbai, as we try to make sense of the incident and try and learn lessons from it.
