Rajat Patidar Named RCB Captain for IPL 2025

By siliconindia  |  Thursday, 13 February 2025, 03:17:51 PM IST

Rajat Patidar Named RCB Captain for IPL 2025
The 31-year-old middle order batsman Rajat Patidar has been made captain of Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) for the next season of the Indian Premier League (IPL). The franchise made the announcement at an event at the KSCA on Thursday (February 13).
After releasing Faf du Plessis, the captain of the team in the past seasons, the Bengaluru-franchise didn't have any captaincy candidate for the 2025 season. Patidar, who took Madhya Pradesh to the final of Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy this season, will be the eighth captain to lead RCB.
Talking about his captaincy, and remembering when the leadership talks began, Patidar stated: "Last year, I think it was Mo [Bobat, RCB director of cricket] who I had a chat with 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".
Patidar debuted in the IPL in 2021 and has been a member of the team since. With the capability to dominate pace and spin with equal proficiency, he has played 27 games for RCB, putting on 799 runs at a strike rate of 158.85. He was among the three retentions for RCB before the mega auction, besides Virat Kohli and Yash Dayal. He was retained at a price of INR 11 Crore.
But he was let go of the team before the 2022 season and remained unsold in the auctions. A sad injury to Luvinth Sisodia in the 2022 season, gave Patidar a second chance with RCB as a replacement player. He impressed with 333 runs in 8 innings, including one century, and since then became a regular member of the team. I.
Patidar's appointment is a new path for the Royal Challengers, who have been captained by Virat Kohli and du Plessis for years. Kohli initially led the team in May 2011, replacing Daniel Vettori who was unavailable for three games. Kohli took complete charge of the team as captain in 2012 and captained the team until the 2021 season.
Under Kohli's leadership, RCB qualified for the playoffs in 2015 and were runners-up in the next year, a season in which the marquee batter scored a record 973 runs. They also qualified for the playoffs round in 2020 and 2021. Royal Challengers also qualified for the playoffs in two seasons in the 2022-24 cycle, when du Plessis was the team captain after Kohli relinquished the role. The veteran Indian batsman, though, led the team in three games in 2023, replacing du Plessis who was recovering from a rib injury and played only as an Impact Player.
"I could talk about Rajat for a very long time, but I've narrowed it down to three key things that I thought might be worth mentioning", said head coach Andy Flower. "The first is, there is a calmness and a straightforwardness about Rajat that I believe will serve him really well as a leader and as a captain, especially in the IPL. As we know, the IPL is one of the biggest competitions in the world, and there are pressures that come with that. And I believe that the simple, calm nature that naturally exists within Rajat is going to do him really well in the very early, early stages of that tournament".
"And his decision-making will be pushed, like ours all is, but I think these traits will serve him very well. We watched Rajat closely as captain of Madhya Pradesh in the Syed Mushtaq Ali tournament, and we were really impressed with what we saw about those traits. The second thing I'd say about him, he's naturally a very quiet individual, but watching him, he looks after the people around him".
"He looks after the people that he plays with, that he has a dressing room with. And I think that's a trait that means that he will immediately have respect and care from other individuals, and that, as a leader, those are qualities that are important in that people will follow you and get behind you. And then the third thing that impresses me about him is that he's got a stubbornness and a strength and a steeliness about him".
"I've witnessed it myself when I'm attempting to coach him in the nets and he won't listen to me. But you see it in the manner in which he plays. You see the courage with which he approaches the game", said Flower. "And I believe that attribute in him is going to be incredibly valuable for him all the way through the ups and downs, the inevitable ups and downs that go along with playing in the IPL and now taking it up another year of leading a large franchise in the IPL. And I believe those attributes are going to serve Rajat well. We see them".

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