Indian Premier League side Royal Challengers Bengaluru announced on Thursday, February 13, their new captain will star India batter Rajat Patidar. Patidar is a right-hand batter from Madhya Pradesh. he made his IPL debut in the 2021 season. The Bengaluru-based franchise retained him ahead of the IPL 2025 mega auction for INR 11 crore. Thus, he became the eighth captain in the world’s richest franchise cricket league for RCB.
Millions were surprised when Patidar was named RCB’s captain, as they were awfully expecting for Kohli to be back in command.
Rajat made his international debut in December 2023, playing an ODI against South Africa. So far, he has played 27 IPL matches and scored 799 runs in them. He had a good 2022 season, scoring 395 runs in 10 matches, missing out on the 2023 season due to injury.
Speaking on the Hey CB with DK show on Cricbuzz, Dinesh Karthik, the former Indian wicketkeeper-batter-turned-mentor and batting coach at RCB, revealed two ways in which 31-year-old Patidar was chosen for the leadership role.
According to Kartik, Patidar had a great domestic season leading Madhya Pradesh with the players saying great things about how he captained the side, and so the management of RCB decided to give him the charge.
“It was a wonderful match is how he captained Madhya Pradesh the domestic season. The players said a lot of good things about the way he led the team. So this actually motivated us and we could really use a new captain since it is a fresh set of players and we will use this as a starting point for our new cycle. Hence these two reasons motivated us to make Rajat our captain,” said Karthik.
Patidar was the captain of the Madhya Pradesh team that became the runners-up in this year’s Syed Mushtaq Ali T20 Trophy. He scored 428 runs with a strike rate of 186.08 and an average of 61.14 in ten matches to become the second leading run-scorer of the tournament. In the semifinal against Delhi, Patidar scored an unbeaten 66 from 29 balls, including four fours and six sixes, and in the final against Mumbai, scored 81 from 40 balls, again with six fours and six sixes.
