Picture Credit: BCCI/IPL
After nearly two-and-a-half months of franchise T20 cricketing action across India, the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 is set to reach its conclusion on Tuesday, June 3. The final of the IPL 2025 is set to go down between Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) and Punjab Kings (PBKS) will be played at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad with a crowd well over 100,000 expected at the venue.
The stakes couldn’t be any higher for RCB led by Rajat Patidar and PBKS led by Shreyas Iyer in the IPL 2025 final with both teams searching for their first title win in their illustrious history. While RCB have faced defeats in the IPL finals in 2009, 2011, and 2016, PBKS have also gone down in the final of the tournament in 2014, and since then, they reached the playoffs for the first-time after a 11-year wait.
RCB vs PBKS Rivalry in IPL
RCB played against PBKS for the first-time in the inaugural edition of the IPL when the latter were called Kings XI Punjab (KXIP), at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru, winning the one-sided contest by six wickets. It took Bengaluru three matches to register their first win over Punjab in the IPL before their rivalry started to grow into something spectacular.
During the IPL 2013-14 season, PBKS defeated RCB on four consecutive occasions before the favour was returned in the 2018-19 season. In the ongoing season of the IPL, Bengaluru and Punjab traded a win each in the group stage before the Qualifier 1 last week which was a one-sided win for RCB over PBKS by eight wickets with 10 overs to spare while chasing down a 102-run target.
Here are some of the salient numbers of RCB vs PBKS rivalry:
|
RCB |
vs |
PBKS |
|
36 |
Matches Played |
36 |
|
18 |
Won |
18 |
|
241 |
Highest Score |
232 |
|
0 |
No Result |
0 |
|
84 |
Lowest Score |
88 |
In the build-up to the IPL 2025 final, RCB have been quite exceptional at chasing totals, while PBKS have done reasonably well in defending totals as well apart from hunting down targets impressively. At the end of the day, the final will come down to crunch moments wherein if the team manages to hold their nerve and execute the skill to the best of their ability, then the trophy is going to be theirs.
