When life gives you a second chance, win it like Yash Dayal

To explain what the win against Chennai Super Kings meant for Royal Challengers Bengaluru was to show you a teaser of a four-hour blockbuster. You can never grasp everything, can you?

You leave Chinnaswamy and see a sea of supporters shouting “ARRRR CEEE BEE” at the top of their lungs. You’d forgive it as a crazy act of fanaticism, but when you see the march going all the way until HSR Layout—a good 10 km from Central Bengaluru—the magnanimity of it all finally dawns upon you. 

Doesn’t matter if the Police want to stop the fans on the road for adrenaline-rushed careless driving; the passion doesn’t deteriorate. That was on May 19 at midnight in Bengaluru, in a nutshell.

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Virat Kohli has always been the biggest calling card for the franchise. But if there’s one franchise that have gone above the personality cult to embrace the city’s psyche as a whole, it has to be RCB. The embodiment of it can be seen across the city’s street food stores, pubs, and even pop culture. They celebrate everyone as their own. They don’t forget even the tiniest of contributions.

To play for RCB also means to embrace the pressure that comes with it. While the fans will root for you for bowling one decent over, nothing seems easy for a cricketer when things go wrong. And remember, things go wrong pretty often. 

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Yash Dayal, the Uttar Pradesh cricketer, has endured a lot in his career. From being cantered around for five sixes by his state teammate Rinku Singh in IPL 2023 to holding off MS Dhoni in the final over in IPL 2024, Dayal had to take the road less travelled. 

On the first delivery of the last over, Dhoni carted him out of the stadium for a gigantic 110m six to bring the qualification equation down to 11 off five deliveries. "Obviously, it got a bit close there... at one stage with MS [Dhoni] there, it felt like 'oh dear, no! Don't let it go his way,” Faf du Plessis admitted in the post-match presentation. 

“He's done it so many times. I thought the way we bowled with the wet ball... we tried to get the ball changed a few times, but it was tough for the bowlers. For me, I dedicate the Man of the Match to Yash Dayal. The way he bowled tonight was unbelievable. That pressure at the back end for a guy who is pretty new to the role, he deserves it."

Dayal admitted Dhoni’s six took him back on a journey when Rinku did what he did. 

Despite his waning prowess, Dhoni is still a giant against pacers. There’s muscle memory to bank on, and more importantly, the equation was right in his alley. It was only natural for Dayal to be under duress. But his great composure to bowl a back-of-the-hand slower ball on the stumps was a sign of his growth as a cricketer. 

“Whatever happened to me last time, there was definitely some nervousness. After getting hit for a six by Dhoni Bhai, subconsciously, I was transported to that over. But I also knew that I’ve been doing well ever since. So, I was only thinking of executing. I wasn’t looking at the scoreboard, but only trying to bowl good balls,” Dayal said in the post-match press conference.

It is one thing to bowl a good delivery, but executing it repeatedly takes some skills. 

"I said pace off on this wicket is the best option," du Plessis said. "Trust your skills, you've been really good, and enjoy this. This is supposed to be what you train for. So he tried to bowl the first one as a yorker, but the whole night the yorker wasn't working, so told him to go back to his pace-off and he did that unbelievably well."

Dayal still had a mountain to climb after getting rid of Dhoni on the second ball. Nothing was sealed yet. Shadul Thakur and Ravindra Jadeja are no small bees either. 

Dayal was part of Gujarat Titans when Jadeja smashed a six and four on the last two deliveries to seal the deal for CSK in the final — and a slight blip in execution here could have put him in a spot that Mohit Sharma found himself in last year. 

Dayal continued to bowl back-of-the-hand slower balls repeatedly, making him so obvious yet tactically shrewd that he did not leave a trace behind. He kept the batters guessing and still bowled on the channel to ensure CSK had no way to tap out.

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Over the years, it has been a predicament to be an RCB pacer. The small cauldron of Chinnaswamy doesn’t allow the pacers to be fully expressive - you got to be hit for a six anyway.

But when things fall in place, bowlers like Yash Dayal become a commodity worth their weight in gold. On Saturday, Chinnaswamy not only witnessed a spectacle from one of RCB’s most impressive performers this season but also put an end to a saga that has cost this young man a lot of reputation and peace. 

The Rinku Singh saga for Yash Dayal is finally over. And what a day he chose to put that behind him. 

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