IPL: Royal Challengers unveil Rajat Patidar as new captain

Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) on Thursday announced Rajat Patidar as skipper for IPL 2025, contrary to wide-spread speculations of Virat Kohli returning as skipper of the Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) after the franchise released former captain Faf du Plessis, their captain from 2022 to 2024, before the mega auction.

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Patidar, who was unveiled at an event attended by team director Mo Bobat, head coach Andy Flower in Bengaluru, will be the eighth RCB captain and has played three seasons for the franchise since joining them in 2021 and has grown into one of their key batters, scoring 799 runs in 28 matches at a strike rate of 158.85.

"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. 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 pressure involved in that, and I think the calm, simple demeanour that inherently lives within Rajat is going to serve him really well in the hurly-burly of that tournament," Flower said.