Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) made a surprising announcement on Thursday regarding the 2025 Indian Premier League (IPL) season. Contrary to the buzz about Virat Kohli possibly returning as captain, the team has appointed Rajat Patidar as the new skipper. After this big reveal, team director Mo Bobat explained why RCB chose not to pursue established captains during the mega auction last November.

With captaincy being a hot topic for many teams, the two-day auction in Riyadh last year was all about who would land Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul, and Rishabh Pant. RCB was in the mix too, having let go of Faf du Plessis, who had been at the helm for the last three seasons after Kohli stepped down in 2021. Despite the speculation that Kohli might take the reins again, RCB didn’t chase any of the big names, which raised eyebrows and led to criticism of their auction strategy.

At a media event in Bengaluru on Thursday, Bobat shared that RCB's priority was to build a winning team rather than just going after high-profile players.

We really wanted to concentrate on putting together the right team instead of just searching for a single person to take on a leadership role. For us, it was all about prioritizing and making sure we had the right group in place, trusting that we had some solid internal candidates. If we didn’t bring anyone in from outside, we were totally fine with Rajat and Virat as options, along with other players we could consider. So, it never felt like a big limitation for us. Those guys are all talented, and I’m confident they’ll shine with their teams. We were really pleased with the internal choices we had and excited about the other targets we were looking at. It never felt like a stressful decision to find someone for the captaincy since we had plenty of good options and felt comfortable with our internal lineup.

Checking out Patidar's skills as a captain

The Madhya Pradesh player is now the ninth captain in RCB's IPL history. While Patidar hasn't captained an IPL team before, he picked up some valuable leadership skills by guiding his state team to the finals of the Syed Mushtaq Ali tournament in the 2024/25 season, and he continued that role in the Vijay Hazare Trophy too.

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