Did RCB instigate captaincy change at Madhya Pradesh to help Rajat Patidar gain experience? – Firstpost

Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) recently created history as they won the Indian Premier League (IPL) for the first time in history. RCB beat Punjab Kings in the final of IPL 2025 to end their 18-year-long title drought. It also marked the rise of Rajat Patidar as captain.
RCB’s Director of Cricket, Mo Bobat, has now revealed that the journey began much earlier than many would think. Speaking to Cricbuzz, Bobat explained that the idea of Rajat Patidar as a leader came to him midway through IPL 2024, when they were not having a great season.
Bobat revealed that he wanted Patidar to be a part of their plans for captaincy and felt the batter needed some exposure at the domestic level before he could be handed the command.
“Actually, if I’m totally honest, the thought on Rajat was even earlier than what people might have thought. So midway through the 2024 season, I think we were playing Punjab at Dharamsala, I remember being sat with him at practice, and I first spoke to him about captaincy and leadership. But the reason it was on my mind was we were midway through a season, we had just started to play well, which was good. And obviously, I was very aware of Faf being a leader and a captain that we were very happy with. I also knew we had a big auction coming up, and we were going to have to make a decision about captaincy,” Bobat said.
“The options we went into the auction with was we could obviously buy back Faf if we wanted to have continuity. That was one option. Another option could be that we could go back to Virat. He’s captained before, one of the best leaders that India’s ever had. I’m pretty sure if we asked him to do it, he would have gone, ‘yeah, let’s give this a go’ because he cares so much about the franchise. The other internal retention option we had was Rajat, and I was sure that we were going to retain him.
“So, I spoke to him when we were in Dharamsala. I think he was a little bit surprised because he thought we might just talk about his batting or something. I remember asking him whether he had any aspirations to captain or lead, and he was probably a little bit surprised to hear the question, but he said, yes, he does like the idea of leadership and captaincy,” he added.
Bobat added that he suggested to Patidar to try captaincy at the state level to get an idea of how capable he could be as a skipper.
“So, we talked a little bit around what type of leader he might want to be. We talked about whether he’d had any experience of it. I didn’t talk specifically about ‘we want you to be captain’ because we didn’t know at that stage, but I did say: ‘Look, for you to even be an option or even to be one of our senior leader four players, it’d be good if you did some captaincy. So, go to your seniors, see if they would be prepared to make you captain, even if it’s just for the white-ball stuff – the Mushtaq Ali or the Vijay Hazare trophy. And then let’s see how that goes, see if you enjoy it, we can talk about it’,” Bobat added.
“So, he spoke to Chandu [Pandit], his coach at MP, and thankfully for us they allowed him to captain the team. And then Andy and I, before going into the auction, we also wanted to identify other potential captaincy options that we might recruit. So, we met a number of players, some of them we recruited. We met with Jitesh, we met with Krunal, we met with a number of other players. We wanted to recruit a number of leaders into this environment, and not worry about who the captain is. Then going into the auction, we thought, okay, we’ve got a number of options available to us, let’s focus on recruiting the best team. After that, let’s get a captain,” he concluded.
Patidar went on to lead Madhya Pradesh in the 2024-25 Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, impressing RCB’s think tank with his performance. He led the side to the finals, where MP eventually lost to Shreyas Iyer’s Mumbai. Patidar scored 81 not out off 40 balls. He finished as the second-highest run scorer of the tournament, scoring 428 runs in 9 innings at a strike rate of 186.08.
Meanwhile, former India cricketer turned commentator Aakash Chopra questioned the move on social media, suggesting it was unusual for a franchise to “nudge” a state team into giving someone captaincy experience.
“A franchise can’t possibly ‘nudge’ someone to lead in ‘domestic cricket’. Right?? One could understand if someone is a seasoned State Team captain and is asked to continue (in case, he’s offered the captaincy by the state team again).
A franchise can’t possibly ‘nudge’ someone to lead in ‘domestic cricket’. Right??

One could understand if someone is a seasoned State Team captain and is asked to continue (in case, he’s offered the captaincy by the state team again). Rajat was a first-time skipper at MP.… https://t.co/RtQHkqyjXm
“Rajat was a first-time skipper at MP. This math isn’t mathing,” Chopra wrote on X.
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