It does help having winners: Malolan Rangarajan on RCB’s strong core of retained players

The WPL 2026 Mega Auction is almost upon us, and with a strong core of four retained players locked in, RCB Head Coach Malolan Rangarajan offered an insight into how the retentions fit right into the franchise’s vision of wanting to excite and inspire.

Speaking with Mayanti Langer on the latest episode of RCB Bold Diaries, Malolan said, “See, you look at our retentions. The brand of cricket we're talking about is how we conduct ourselves on the field of play. If you're batting, there's a vision that RCB has that will excite fans, it will excite people who are seeing the sport.”

On how the retained quartet will give RCB a strong base to build on, Malolan said, “So, that's the vision, that you want to inspire people to take up the sport. Not to forget, why are we here? We're here to win the WPL. So, you try to build a team that helps you achieve that. So, in our retentions, we believe we've got a good core. We're able to have a clear vision of where we want to go into the auction, what we need to get there are.”

He added, “It really does help when you have three World Cup winners in our three players (Smriti Mandhana, Richa Ghosh and Ellyse Perry). And Shreyanka, again, she's a WPL winner. She played a very, very key role in us winning the WPL in 2024, winning the Purple Cap.”

Malolan spoke further on how picking players who can deal with the demands of pressure is a focal point of selection, and said, “It does help having a lot of winners because under pressure moments, you want people who are able to handle pressure.”

He concluded, “What is pressure? It's pressure when you don't know what's going to happen. At the time, if somebody is able to take a breath and just control what they can do, that comes out of experience and resilience. So, we want to be able to pick players who we think will fit our style of play. If they happen to be World Cup winners, very good. But we want to have as many players who fit our style of play.”