In a thought-provoking switch, Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB), on Thursday, appointed Rajat Patidar as the captain of RCB, which came as a surprise since rumors since the conclusion of the IPL 2025 auction hinted at a Kohli return to captaincy. However, RCB decided against this by signaling a long-term commitment to Patidar. In the next media briefing, after the captaincy announcement ceremony, the Bengaluru franchise stated that both Kohli and Patidar were ‘options’ for the leadership role since theoretical retentions for the 2025 season had been already announced.
During the auction, RCB did not go all-out by taking a bet on active and former Indian National Team players Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul, and Rishabh Pant, who were renowned as other leadership candidates. The franchise somehow managed to grab Patidar and left Faf du Plessis unattended as well.
“We wanted to focus on building the right team, rather than merely recruitment for an individual to fulfill a role of leadership. It was a question of giving priority, to get the right setup, trusting we had internal options,” said RCB team director Mo Bobat.
Bobat also implied that both Kohli and Patidar were in the running for the captaincy role. Finally, it was a go-ahead for the younger of the two batters.
“If we didn’t recruit anybody from external, we were very happy with both Rajat and Virat as options, and other players that we might recruit. So for us it was never something that needed to be a major constraint. Those guys are all good players and I’m sure they’ll do well at their teams. We were very happy with the options we had internally. We were happy with lots of the other targets that we had and the guys that we brought in. So, it was never really a pressure point or a stress point for our decision making to have to hunt someone or go for them as captain. We had a number of options and we were very comfortable with the options that we had internally as well,” he said.
Patidar doesn’t have much experience in leadership, but he did lead his Madhya Pradesh state team in the Syed Mushtaq Ali and Vijay Hazare Trophy tournaments in this season.
