There was some discussion at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium at approximately 11.45 AM regarding the selection of Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s (RCB) captain for the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025. The true concern, though, was how they would inform their supporters that Virat Kohli would not be leading the team.
The room genuinely wanted to know that. If it wasn’t immediately apparent when they played the audio and video of RCB’s captains throughout the ages, it became evident shortly after the ceremony began that the team would be handing the reins over to Rajat Patidar, a younger and more experienced leader.
A few minutes later, he was sitting directly between two decision-makers (RCB’s Director of Cricket, Mo Bobat, and head coach Andy Flower) wearing his brand-new, dazzling blazer as the team’s new captain. Patidar seemed almost too at ease in that gleaming blazer, and you could tell he belonged here without breaking a sweat.
This is a tale of perseverance and tenacity for someone who wasn’t even part of the original designs for the business. More significantly, it is a tale of a person taking charge of his destiny and accepting responsibility for the pressure. The third one virtually ended that argument if the first two didn’t earn him the captaincy role.
“It was inspiring to watch Rajat play and skipper MP [Madhya Pradesh] in the domestic circuit. Virat provided us with input. At the occasion, Mo Bobat stated, “There was strong evidence that Rajat was a viable option.”
In the IPL 2024, however, the seed was planted over a year before when the management asked the Madhya Pradesh batsman about the “possibility” of guiding RCB in the future. Although Patidar was prepared, he demonstrated that it was the best approach to end all arguments by guiding Madhya Pradesh to the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy final in 2024–2025.
“Are you interested in taking on the role of captain?” said Mo [Bobat]. I therefore informed him that I would prefer to captain a state team [MP] before taking on the role of captain of the RCB,” Patidar disclosed.
The pressure of captaincy had no effect on Patidar’s batting at any point during the well-known home tournament. The MP captain scored 428 runs in nine innings while maintaining a strike rate of 186.1. Furthermore, the Patidar chants that echoed throughout the Colosseum at Chinnaswamy Stadium were sufficient for the brand RCB.
RCB head coach Flower commended Patidar’s leadership, saying, “The first is that Rajat has a calmness and simplicity that I think will really help him as a leader and a captain, particularly in the IPL.”
With only one whole IPL cycle left in him, Kohli is 36 years old. In stark contrast to Kohli’s fiery demeanor on the field, the team was moving in a direction that the supporters were not familiar with. It wasn’t that they had no other choices. Josh Hazlewood, Krunal Pandya, and Bhuvneshwar Kumar were among them, although none were headed for a long stretch.
Someone in Patidar is continuing the tradition of having ice in his veins, which was started by Faf du Plessis.
“Backing my players is crucial when discussing my style of captaincy. Therefore, I consider myself fortunate to be around by some of the best people. We have a group of leaders as well, and my new leadership position will undoubtedly benefit from their ideas and expertise.
In order to be a part of RCB’s preparations for the 2022 season, Patidar even went so far as to put off getting married during the previous three years. The rest was history, as he gained the fans’ trust by writing a remarkable century against the Lucknow Super Giants in the Eliminator.
He has been a pillar of the RCB batting lineup ever since, and Kohli has even strongly recommended him to be their new captain.