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Royal Challengers Bengaluru chose Rajat Patidar as skipper over Faf du Plessis and Virat Kohli, with the decision turning out to be a masterstroke.
Rajat Patidar led RCB to their maiden IPL title in June (Picture credit: AFP)
Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s Director of Cricket, Mo Bobat, has revealed that while they had the option of buying back Faf du Plessis and reinstating him as captain, or asking Virat Kohli to lead the team, the team management wanted an Indian skipper and they turned to Rajat Patidar, which turned out to be a masterstroke.
Patidar was with the team from his debut Indian Premier League season in 2021 and enjoyed his best run with the bat last year.
Patidar scored 395 runs at an average of 30.38 and a strike rate of 177.13 in 15 matches in 2024.
“So we were thinking about an Indian captain. I also didn’t want to put ourselves in a position where we go into the auction fixed on a person to buy for captaincy. Because I think that’s quite dangerous because you can’t control what you get at an auction,” Bobat said while speaking on Cricbuzz.
“The options we went into the auction with were that we could obviously buy back Faf if we wanted to have continuity. That was one option. Another option could be that we could go back to Virat,” Bobat added.
Patidar didn’t enjoy the best season with the bat in IPL 2025, finishing with 312 runs at an average of 24 and a strike rate of 143.77 in 15 matches.
Bobat further revealed his conversations with Patidar during IPL 2024 around the latter’s leadership aspirations.
“I spoke to him when we were in Dharamsala. I think he was a little bit surprised because he thought we might just talk about his batting or something. I remember asking him whether he had any aspirations to captain or lead and he was probably a little bit surprised to hear the question, but he said, Yes, he does like the idea of leadership and captaincy,” Bobat said.
“We talked about whether he’d had any experience of it. I did say: ‘Look, for you to even be an option or even to be one of our senior leader four players, it’d be good if you did some captaincy,” Bobat added.
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The post‘We Could Go Back To Virat…’: Mo Bobat On RCB’s Choice Of Rajat Patidar As Skipper | Cricket News appeared first on News18