Ee sala cup 'namde'? Nah. Ee sala cup 'namdu'

“There’s one statement which always comes up when RCB’s name comes - Ee Saala Cup Namde.”

“Now I finally have to say it’s not Ee Saala Cup Namde. It’s Ee Saala Cup….Namdu”

Before Smriti Mandhana uttered the word “Namdu” in the interview after winning the final, she paused extremely briefly. A pause that you generally take when you wish to emphasise that one word. 

There might be only a single alphabet difference between Namde and Namdu. But when the ‘e’ is replaced by the ‘u’, not only the tense, but many lives are changed. 

The cup that was supposed to be ours, is now finally ours. Someone must have told her about it, of course. But that pause was deliberate. She knew its importance. 

You see, that pause between “Ee Saala Cup Namde” and “Ee Saala Cup Namdu” is worth 16 years. 

16 years of wait. 

16 years of anticipation. 

16 years of hope. 

16 years of hope being crushed into pulp and thrown in the face of the passionate fans in red and black.

16 years of carrying that burden. 

16 years of players crumbling under that. 

Smriti might have said in media interactions and interviews that it’s a clean slate for the women’s team, and they don’t carry the burden of Royal Challengers Bangalore's fans’ eternal hope. But one look at her ever so jolly face for the majority of their last year's campaign, and you could see the pressure reflecting in her reluctant smile that failed to reach the eyes. It was almost apologetic. 

When asked about that long, unfulfilled dream this season, all she had to say was that they were taking it one game at a time. “The goal was to not talk about the goal”. 

That’s where her cold, stern face during most of the season starts making sense. The pressure was real. Everything else is just an illusion. The pressure was all that mattered. It was all that there was, is and will be. 

For that reason, and that reason alone, RCB women scripting their own herstory to win a trophy for an eternally hopeful but perennially disappointed fan base has to be one of the greatest cricketing moments of this century. 

And you know what’s the best part? That win wasn’t achieved by utter dominance. That win was achieved by an RCB team that went up, then down, and then up again while being lifted by an all-time great and then carried on the young shoulders of some absolute clutch performers. 

Smriti Mandhana began the initial Bengaluru leg of the tournament with aplomb. First, she was silenced by a crowd chanting her own name, and then she made them shout even louder by just showing what a goddess she is on the offside. Then, her pull shots came out. Her drives came out. The intensity in her bright eyes when she was captained on the field or batted under a helmet showed that this was a woman in need of a redemption arc. 

While Smriti’s performance crashed a bit after the Bengaluru leg, the others rose up, including Shreyanka Patil, who suffered from a sophomore season sickness and a hairline fracture in her finger. Despite, or maybe because of it, she turned her fortune more than she could even turn a cricket ball. When she lifted the trophy, there was a Purple Cap on her head. 

And how can you forget Ellyse Perry - the actual Queen of the Queendom, who activated her superhuman Perry version and showed real levels to the defending champions Mumbai Indians by obliterating their entire batting order single-handedly. If that wasn’t enough, she scored 66 (50) and 35* (37) in the next two games, the Eliminator and the Final. 

But just forget her being absolutely clutch. Forget her unparalleled greatness. This performance gave RCB the belief that by defeating MI, they could beat a near-perfect T20 side that was invincible against them and they could also go on and achieve, you know what. 

Belief. 

You’ll find it hard to find a word more overused in sporting parlance than that. But what power it has! What hope it gives! That’s when something in RCB changed. Something which thrusted their hands towards a trophy no RCB hands had touched before in their 16-year history. 

At this point, it might come to your head that why should the women carry the burden of a trophy that the men failed to win? Why should they be responsible for transforming the hope of millions of RCB fans into happiness?

But now think about this - how do you divorce the fans from this journey? A journey that was painted by their passion and displayed everywhere your eyes could see (or not) and ears could hear. 

Fans who don’t see the gender of the person who’s holding the bat or the ball. Fans who don’t care which nationality the players are from. Fans who are blind to any colour that’s not red and black. Fans who’ll hold their pee in for four-hour games and not change their position because that one time they listened to their bladder in 2016, RCB lost a final they should have won easily. 

If you look at that question in a vacuum, it’s still a fair question because, yes, the women weren’t carrying the burden of the men. Yes, it was their own journey. Yes, it was their own redemption after a lack lustre first season. 

However, nothing exists in a vacuum. Literally nothing. 

Smriti, Perry, Bengaluru girl Shreyanka, Asha Sobhana, Sophie Molineux - all would have felt the pressure of RCB’s passionate fandom the moment one of their legs crossed the threshold of the team hotel. 

They felt it last year, when a team full of superstars failed to shine in the darkness of a woebegone season. They felt it this year as well when Richa Ghosh and Shreyanka couldn’t take their team home in a game that was theirs to win. Their knees fell on the ground, and they didn’t have the energy to rise up and look at the world with a face glistening with tears. 

Today, Richa hit the winning runs to create herstory, with a face glistening with the glow of glory and lit up by a toothy grin that spread from Siliguri to Kolkata. Shreyanka was also there, but just as a red blur running with wide open arms that engulfed both the batters. 

Their passion to perform had triumphed over the pressure of defeat - that same passion which made Bengaluru come out on the streets and celebrate their women’s team. That same passion which burns in fans hearts while their vocal cords exhaust themselves by chanting "RCB, RCB". 

Their redemption arc was complete. Their captain’s redemption arc was complete. RCB’s redemption arc was complete. The trophy was finally here, and it belonged to every RCB fan, whether they be in Lavelle Road, Bengaluru, or Lajpat Nagar, New Delhi. 

Ee Saala Cup Namde had turned into Ee Saala Cup Namdu. 

Ultimately, it all boiled down to the fact that this was a win of the fans, for the fans, and clinched by their women’s team - a team that they made their own by the sheer passion of their loyalty.