Two new teams and a court order about water
The ninth IPL began on 9 April 2016 without Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals, both serving the two-year suspension handed down by the Justice R. M. Lodha Committee in July 2015 over the 2013 spot-fixing and betting case. Two replacement franchises were created for the duration: Gujarat Lions, based in Rajkot, and Rising Pune Supergiants. Their squads were assembled from the suspended teams through a draft in December 2015, which is why MS Dhoni captained Pune and Suresh Raina captained Gujarat.
Then Maharashtra intervened. The state was in severe drought, and on 13 April the Bombay High Court ruled that every IPL match scheduled in Maharashtra in May had to be moved out, after questioning the water being used on the outfields at Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur. Thirteen fixtures were affected, including two playoff matches and the final. Mumbai Indians and Rising Pune Supergiants shifted their May home games to Visakhapatnam. Kolkata went to Kanpur, Delhi to Raipur. The final, originally scheduled for the Wankhede, was played at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore.
Kohli's 973
Virat Kohli scored 973 runs in sixteen innings, a season aggregate nobody in any T20 league had approached and nobody has passed since. Four hundreds. His 113 off 50 against Kings XI Punjab in a rain-cut game at Chinnaswamy came in a stand of the kind Bangalore built the whole season on. On 14 May, Kohli and AB de Villiers added 229 against Gujarat Lions, both scoring centuries in the same innings, the first time two batsmen had done that in one IPL match. Bangalore made 248 for 3 and won by 144.
Royal Challengers had four wins from their first ten matches. They then won their last four league games and Qualifier 1 to reach the final. Sunrisers Hyderabad finished third, which mattered more than it sounds: 2016 remains the only season since the playoff system was introduced in which a team outside the top two has won the title.
Cutting's twenty balls
Sunrisers batted first in the final at a full Chinnaswamy on 29 May. David Warner made 69 from 38. Then Ben Cutting, an Australian all-rounder who had played four matches all season, hit 39 not out from 15 balls at the death, and 208 for 7 became a total Bangalore had to chase in front of their own crowd.
Chris Gayle and Kohli put on 114 in eleven overs. Gayle made 76 from 38. When both fell the innings tightened, and Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Cutting bowled the overs that decided it. Bangalore finished on 200 for 7, eight short. Cutting took the man of the match award; Bhuvneshwar took the Purple Cap with 23 wickets; Kohli was Most Valuable Player. Mustafizur Rahman, twenty years old, was named emerging player.
It was Hyderabad's first title as Sunrisers and the second for a Hyderabad franchise after the Deccan Chargers won in 2009. For Royal Challengers Bangalore it was a third final and a third defeat, and with Kohli and de Villiers in that form, the one that still stings.