IPL 2025: Virat Kohli favourite to return as CAPTAIN of Royal Challengers Bangalore, here’s WHY
It’s been three years since Virat Kohli gave up the captaincy of the Royal Challengers Bangalore team, along with the leadership role of the Indian team. Kohli, who notched up his 30th Test ton against Australia at Perth on Sunday, still has an unfulfilled dream of winning the Indian Premier League (IPL) title with RCB.
The way the equations have panned out for RCB after the IPL 2025 Mega Auction, Kohli seems the only viable choice to lead the franchise for the next three-year cycle in the T20 league. The former skipper was retained for Rs 21 crore and one of only three players retained by the franchise along with Rajat Patidar and rookie pacer Yash Dayal.
RCB spent over Rs 82 crore to buy 19 players from the auction. However, among those only Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Liam Livingstone have any captaincy experience apart from some domestic leadership experience of Krunal Pandya.
No one among Bhuvneshwar, Livingstone or Krunal Pandya have any proven pedigree to lead an IPL franchise. The moment RCB decided not to retain Faf du Plessis, all the indications were clear that they were possibly looking at the return of Kohli as the captain of the side.
Kohli had the third-longest stint as captain of a franchise in the IPL during his previous stint between 2013 and 2021. He led the RCB in 143 matches, winning 66 matches, losing 70, with three tied and four matches ending in no-result.
Only MS Dhoni with 226 matches in charge and Rohit Sharma with 158 games have led in more IPL matches than Kohli. Under his leadership, RCB reached the Playoffs at least 4 times and produced their best result in IPL 2016 when they agonizingly lost to Sunrisers Hyderabad in the final.
Du Plessis managed to lead RCB into Playoffs a couple of times in IPL 2022 and IPL 2024 but RCB never threatened to reach the final. The way the auction panned out, it seemed that RCB management were not desperate to look for player who could lead the franchise.
They did attempt to bid for Rishabh Pant and KL Rahul but as soon as the bids crossed Rs 10 crore for these players, they decided to back out. It seems clear that RCB have their mind set on Kohli as their next leader, in spite of what their Director of Cricket Mo Babat might say.
Bobat on Monday did not want to reveal who would the captain be ahead of IPL 2025. When asked about Kohli, he said: “Virat is a central figure, he is a senior member of the team. But we haven’t made any decision when it comes to captaincy. We will decide later on. He dropped a few hot text messages to us yesterday, giving us feedback.”
But as things stand, IPL 2025 is set to witness the ‘Return of the King’ with Virat Kohli set to assume the role of RCB captain again!
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Head Coach Andy Flower gets into the technicalities and explains the skill sets of our new recruits, talks about having clarity on player availability and bids farewell to released players.#PlayBold #ನಮ್ಮRCB… pic.twitter.com/1ycU37kPfX
— Royal Challengers Bengaluru (@RCBTweets) November 26, 2024
Here’s how Royal Challengers Bangalore looks after IPL 2025 Mega Auction –
Squad Strength: 22
Indian Players: 14
Overseas: 8
Retained Players (3): Virat Kohli (Rs 21 crore), Rajat Patidar (Rs 11 crore), Yash Dayal (Rs 5 crore)
Players bought in the auction –
| S. No. | Name | Country | Price | Speciality |
| 1. | Liam Livingstone | England | Rs 8.75 crore | All-rounder |
| 2. | Phil Salt | England | Rs 11.50 crore | WK- Batter |
| 3. | Jitesh Sharma | India | Rs 11 crore | WK-Batter |
| 4. | Josh Hazlewood | Australia | Rs 12.50 crore | Bowler |
| 5. | Rasikh Dar | India | Rs 6 crore | Bowler |
| 6. | Suyash Sharma | India | Rs 2.60 crore | Bowler |
| 7. | Krunal Pandya | India | Rs 5.75 crore | All-rounder |
| 8. | Bhuvneshwar Kumar | India | Rs 10.75 crore | Bowler |
| 9. | Swapnil Singh | India | Rs 50 lakh | All-rounder |
| 10. | Tim David | Australia | Rs 3 crore | All-rounder |
| 11. | Romario Shepherd | West Indies | Rs 1.5 crore | All-rounder |
| 12. | Nuwan Thushara | Sri Lanka | Rs 1.6 crore | Bowler |
| 13. | Manoj Bhandage | India | Rs 30 lakhs | All-rounder |
| 14. | Jacob Bethell | England | Rs 2.60 crore | All-rounder |
| 15. | Devdutt Padikkal | India | Rs 2 crore | Batter |
| 16. | Swastik Chikara | India | Rs 30 lakh | All-rounder |
| 17. | Lungi Ngidi | South-Africa | Rs 1 crore | Bowler |
| 18. | Abhinandan Singh | India | Rs 30 lakh | Bowler |
| 19. | Mohit Rathee | India | Rs 30 lakh | All-rounder |