Rajat Patidar To Lead RCB In IPL 2025

Rajat Patidar, the 31-year-old-batter has been appointed as the captain of Royal Challengers Bengaluru ahead of the 18th season of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025. The franchise announced its decision in an event at KSCA on Thursday (February 13th).

The franchise had let go of Faf Du Plessis who led the team in the previous cycle (2022-24), under Faf's leadership RCB went into the playoffs twice while finishing at the 6th spot in 2023. Meanwhile, Patidar who led Madhya Pradesh into the finals of the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy into the finals is set to be the 8th player to lead the franchise.

Meet RCB's New Leader

Patidar made his IPL debut in 2021 and has been a part of the franchise since then. With the ability to dominate pace and spin on an even keel, he has featured in 27 games for RCB, scoring 799 runs at a strike rate of 158.85. He was retained alongside Virat Kohli & Yash Dayal ahead of the mega auctions on RCB's retention list for a prize of 11 Crores.

However, he was released ahead of IPL 2022, and he went unsold in the auctions, an unfortunate injury to Luvnith Sisodia opened the doors for him again at RCB. Patidar smacked 333 runs in 8 innings including a century, since then Patidar has been an integral cog in RCB's wheel.

Patidar's appointment is a new direction for the Royal Challengers towards the future, the captaincy baton at RCB has been held by legends in Faf Du Plessis, Virat Kohli, Shane Watson, Dan Vettori, Kevin Pietersen Rahul Dravid & Anil Kumble. Kohli led the franchise in 2011 as a stand-in skipper when Vettori wasn't available for three matches. Kohli was appointed as full-time skipper in 2012 & led till 2021.

Under Kohli's captaincy, RCB made the playoffs in 2015 and were the runners-up in the following year in 2016 losing to David Warner led-SRH by a mere 8 runs in the finals, a season in which the star batter scored a record 973 runs. They also reached the playoff stage in 2020 and 2021.

Rajat Patidar Captaincy Record

Rajat Patidar led Madhya Pradesh in the domestic 20-over tournament, Syed Mushtaq Ali Tournament in 2024-25 & 50-over Vijay Hazare Tournaments as a full-time skipper. In the 20-over format Patidar led MP to the finals, while in the 50-over format, MP finished third in the group E thus narrowly missing out on a knockout berth.

RCB 2025 IPL Squad

Virat Kohli, Rajat Patidar (C), Yash Dayal, Liam Livingstone, Phil Salt, Jitesh Sharma, Josh Hazlewood, Rasikh Dar, Suyash Sharma, Krunal Pandya, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Swapnil Singh, Tim David, Romario Shepherd, Nuwan Thushara, Manoj Bhandage, Jacob Bethell, Devdutt Padikkal, Swastik Chhikara, Lungi Ngidi, Abhinandan Singh, Mohit Rathee