The news is a bitter pill for Royal Challengers Bengaluru: Devdutt Padikkal is out for the rest of IPL 2025 due to a right hamstring injury. Mayank Agarwal is coming in as his replacement; RCB therefore signed him for 1 crore.
Padikkal had a decent season, scoring 247 runs in two half-centuries and helping get RCB to a decent position, currently 2nd on points with 14 from 11 matches. He was praised by Kohli for those performances.
As for Agarwal, he had been Punjab Kings‘ captain before he spent the last two seasons with Sunrisers Hyderabad. The last year, though, he played only 4 matches and scored 64 runs; before that, the IPL 2021 was a great one for him, with 441 runs in 12 innings.
On May 9, Lucknow Super Giants await RCB. The question then is whether they’ll throw Mayank into the cauldron right away or sit back for a few days and watch him at practice.
