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Leading into the game, RCB’s possible qualification was intertwined by a concoction of other themes: MS Dhoni’s potential swansong, the brewing threat of rain and net run rate calculations. Hours before the start, fans had started to queue up in a surprisingly homogenous mix of yellow and red.

By midnight, the yellow had melted away.

Streets turn red

Outside the stadium, the wildly passionate, faithful RCB fans choked the Queens Road-MG Road intersection, flocking in large numbers with little red flags, barely letting vehicles trickle past. All along the entire Queens Road, fans filled up the divider, vociferously cheering in unison.

The streets had been taken over, especially in front of the main gate. Sensing anarchy, the police resorted to lathicharge, but could not dim the fervour.

Everywhere you looked, you could see madness of a different kind. A shirtless man clinging onto an autorickshaw. A band of motorbikes revving their howling engines past the teeming public. A sea of people dancing to their own chants. The scenes were truly incredible.

The ripple effect soon reached the Kasturba Road, which leads away from the stadium. It felt like a mass college-bunking session, chaos leading to more chaos, chants growing into larger, louder chants. Strangers became friends, unified by the same colour and the same three letters, smiling and cheering as they passed by.

“RCB… RCB!”

Celebration gone too far?

The Yellow Army slowly navigated through the little gaps left by the red-and-blue jerseys, heads down, still reeling from the daze of a painful exit. But it wasn’t just the on-field trauma: as the crowd outside turned into a mob, boorishness took over, leaving the away fans vulnerable.

Yet, something was amiss. The disorder became worrying after a point. Over the next few hours, X (Twitter) was flooded with accounts of travelling CSK fans, especially women, calling out ill-treatment in the hands of the home crowd.

The Chennai Super Kings account, while thanking fans for their support, also hoped that they “reached home safe”.

To the same post, the official CSK fan page, with 349,000 followers, claimed that “Bengaluru is not safe for any woman to watch an IPL game in Chinnaswamy if you are not part of the local fandom”.

Saravanan Hari, a CSK superfan who makes regular appearances at Super Kings’ matches, tweeted that fans in Bengaluru had hit “a new low”.

Manya, another CSK fan at the ground, also called out local fan behaviour after the game, alleging that “men had shoved their hands in front of my face”.

At some point later in the night, a group of RCB fans surrounded a car owned by one of their CSK counterparts.

 

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The RCB franchise is yet to issue a statement, but these recollections have left a bad aftertaste in what had been a remarkable redemption story for their team.

There are fans who have cited similar experiences in Chepauk as a defence for these acts. Unfortunately, two wrongs do not make a right.

The Bengaluru franchise takes pride in their fabulous fan support, and rightly so. The RCB have overlooked the barren trophy cabinet to stand firm in their support of their team.

For one of the most passionate fan bases, the line between fandom and boorishness shouldn’t be this thin. The night that could have been about one of IPL’s greatest comeback stories left a bitter aftertaste.

The fans deserve all of that happiness, and more.

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