Whoever designed the schedule for IPL 2025 wasn't even trying to be subtle. They made sure the two biggest games of the season would take place in its very first week. This is excess bordering on gluttony. An ice-cream sundae with not so much a cherry but another ice-cream sundae on top. Tickets for Chennai Super Kings (CSK) vs Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) vanished almost as soon as the window opened.
For a lot of Indian cricket fans, seeing either one of Virat Kohli or MS Dhoni is up there as a bucket-list item. This game puts both of them on the same pitch. The fans come expecting runs, expecting sixes, expecting magic. And whether any of that happens or not, they still leave with a story to tell. Thousands of people explode into cheers when Dhoni or Kohli walk out to bat not for what they are about to do but for what they have already done. They have been common ground. They have been warmth. They have been sweet enduring memory.
CSK vs RCB games also have a tendency to devolve into chaos. It's as if putting them together allows the world to make less sense. Like how in IPL 2013, RP Singh ended up on the losing side even though he took a wicket with the final ball of the match because, as Dhoni tweeted, "When you give Sir Ravindra Jadeja one ball to get 2 runs he will win it with one ball to spare !!" The year before that, the team needing 43 runs in 12 deliveries walked home with the win, leading to a marked inverse of what usually happens in sport. A breathless superstar player raced up into the stands in search of a fan.
By last season, it was clear this rivalry spills into the sidelines with even the players buying into it. Scott Styris made a bet with AB de Villiers and lost it. Now he had to come to work wearing the RCB jersey. Only seeing a former CSK player in red and blue upset the delicate balance of the universe. And it was RCB that had to pay for it. "I must thank @ABdeVilliers17 for making me wear this @RCBTweets shirt every game they play. #0-3 since he did," Styris tweeted. De Villiers replied, "Please stop wearing that shirt immediately!!!!"
Through the silliness and the schadenfreude, there is a theme that emerges. CSK have the wood over their crosstown rivals (22 to 11). In Chepauk, they haven't been beaten since 2008. This is in no small part down to how one side has been able to make their home ground a fortress but the other has been left at the mercy of a venue whose only allegiance is to batters capable of hitting sixes.
Rayudu on CSK fans
That is why when Dhoni hit the first ball of Yash Dayal's 20th over out of the Chinnaswamy in IPL 2024, there was a sinking feeling all around the ground. But once again, there were other forces at work. They always are at CSK-RCB games. A wet ball that was hard to grip could now be replaced by a dry one and this could grip in the pitch. Kohli sensed an opening. He went to Dayal and made sure he went for his slower ball. The lack of pace did for Dhoni. He was caught on the boundary. RCB defended 10 off 5. They made it to the knockouts. CSK didn't. And Dinesh Karthik took the chance to be the first opposition player to ever say "MS Dhoni hitting a six was the best thing that happened to us."
In the aftermath of that finish, there was wildness. RCB fans, who had to content themselves by bringing up CSK's two-year suspension from the IPL, now had better ammo. And they wasted no time in using it, which has heightened the feeling ahead of this match. Some people have already jumped on what Jitesh Sharma said in a travel diary put out on RCB's socials. Those are meant to keep things light, and he was asked questions about beating the heat, so in an effort to be funny he said play short innings, "score 50 off ten or nine balls". But since he is the enemy, those words were superimposed on videos of him getting out for a first-ball duck.
There is so much that unites the supporters of these two great franchises - the faith that their players will come good, the anxiety when the game goes down to the wire, the pride of being home to two of India's best - but that knowledge doesn't exactly sweep you off your feet. Emotion does. The Us vs Them mentality does. The history between the states that these two teams represent does. We live in a world that encourages us to view people who are different from us with suspicion. So, a rivalry that was once about the good, the bad, and the silly, has a little bit of the ugly as well.