The 31-year-old Rajat Patidar has been appointed as the new captain of the Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) for the upcoming season of the Indian Premier League. On Thursday, February 13, the Franchise announced the decision at an event at the KSCA.
RCB did not retain Faf du Plessis who had captained the RCB in the last three seasons from 2022 to 2024, before the mega auction, who was then acquired by the Delhi Capitals, which led the RCB without a captaincy.
Rajat Patidar, who also led Madhya Pradesh to the final of Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy earlier this season is the eighth captain the franchise will have. Since joining the team in 2021, the middle-order batter has become one of the significant batters of the side, having scored 799 runs in 28 matches at a strike rate of 158.85.
Talking about his leadership, Patidar said, “Last year, I think it was Mo Bobat, RCB director of cricket, who I spoke to about this. Mo asked me, are you interested in doing captaincy? So I told him, before doing captaincy for RCB, I’d like to have captaincy of the state team. So from there, I got a hint that I could get captaincy. So along with that, I was a little happy that from where I started my IPL career, and now that I look at it, I can feel that journey quite well.”
Since Patidar made his IPL debut in 2021, he showcased his ability to dominate pace and spin with equal ease. Apart from Virat Kohli and Yash Dayal, he was one of the retentions that RCB made before the mega auction for INR 11 crore.
Kohli captained the side from 2011 to 2021 and it was under his captaincy that in 2015, RCB made the playoffs and in the following year, played finals, powered by King Kohli’s inhuman batting performance of 973 runs in a single season, a record that is still untouched. Under former Proteas skipper, du Plessis’ captaincy, the franchise made the playoffs in the 2022 and 2024 seasons. Kohli, even after stepping down from captaincy in 2021, captained the team in three matches in 2023, when du Plessis was recovering from a rib injury and played only as an Impact Player.
RCB head coach, Andy Flower said “I could speak for quite a long time about Rajat, but I’ve settled on three main things that I thought might be interesting to share.” He added, “The first one is there’s a calmness and a simplicity to Rajat that I think will stand him in really good stead as a leader and a captain, particularly in the IPL. As we know, the IPL is one of the premier competitions in the world and there’s pressures involved in that, and I think the calm, simple demeanor that inherently lives within Rajat is going to serve him really well in the hurly-burly of that tournament.
Flower further said, “The second thing I’d say about him, he’s inherently quite a quiet guy, but observing him, he cares about the people around him, he cares about the people that he plays with, that he shares a dressing room with. And I think that’s a quality that means that he will instantly have the respect and care from other people. As a leader, those qualities are important. In that people will follow you and get behind you.
“And then the third thing that stands out for me about him is that he’s got a stubbornness and a strength and a steeliness about him. I’ve seen it myself when I’m trying to coach him in the nets and he won’t listen to me, but you see it in the way that he plays. You see the bravery with which he takes on the game and I think that quality within him will be really important for him through the ups and downs, the inevitable ups and downs that come along with playing in the IPL, and now stepping up another gear into leading a big franchise in the IPL.”
Taking about considering Kohli as the team’s skipper, team director Mo Bobat said, “With our retentions, it’s probably worth noting that we obviously retained three players, three Indians, and of those three, it’s worth saying that both Virat and Rajat were obviously credible captaincy options for us going into the auction,” he said. “And then at the auction itself, we spent quite a lot of time thinking about leadership characteristics. We didn’t necessarily want to go into the auction and have our heart set on a captain because we felt that was quite a dangerous approach and then you end up probably overvaluing somebody potentially.”
Kohli was seen congratulating Patidar on his appointment as the skipper in a video released by the RCB. “The way you have grown in this franchise and the way you have performed, you have really made a place in the hearts of all the fans of RCB all over India and they get really excited to watch you play,” Kohli said. “I’ve seen Rajat evolve in the last couple of years as a player. He has got the chance to play for India. His game has improved many levels in the last couple of years.”
RCB Full Squad for IPL 2025:
Rajat Patidar (c), Virat Kohli, Yash Dayal, Liam Livingstone, Phil Salt, Jitesh Sharma, Josh Hazlewood, Rasikh Dar, Suyash Sharma, Krunal Pandya, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Swapnil Singh, Tim David, Romario Shepherd, Nuwan Thushara, Manoj Bhandage, Jacob Bethell, Devdutt Padikkal, Swastik Chhikara, Lungi Ngidi, Abhinandan Singh, Mohit Rathee
