RCB Podcast: Mo Bobat reveals how Rajat Patidar was picked as captain ahead of IPL 2025
After a long wait of 18 years, RCB lifted their first IPL trophy, magnificently led from the front by skipper Rajat Patidar. As the players pulled off a phenomenal show on the field, Mo Bobat, RCB’s Director of Cricket, played an instrumental role from the sidelines, offering valuable insight in building the perfect team in partnership with head coach Andy Flower.
Talking on the latest episode of Big Basket presents RCB Podcast: Bold & Beyond, Mo Bobat opened up on how Rajat Patidar was chosen as the captain of the team. Taking over the reins from Faf du Plessis in the opening season was a herculean task already but Patidar came out with flying colours.
Shedding light on the captaincy transition and Faf as a human being, Patidar said, “Faf was a brilliant captain for this franchise and one of the best people I've ever worked with. If you make a decision on captaincy at the start of a cycle, you’re set for three years and Faf, bless him. He's not getting any younger. Uh so it was always in my mind last season that this is a decision on the horizon. I didn't have an idea of which way that we were going to go.”
Bobat further added, “Andy and I would talk about it, but you knew it was an important decision on the horizon. So, you start to think about options. You start paying attention to opposition players that you might be interested in and whether they show leadership behaviors. You start interrogating your own squad a little bit more and going, "Do I think this guy's got leadership that he's not showing yet?" So, I suppose with Rajat in mind, we started looking at him that way last year.”
Speaking on Rajat’s innate ability to lead a side, Bobat added, “You know, much of his personality is that he's a calm guy. He's pretty relaxed. He tends to one of the things I really admire in sportsmen is if they get braver under pressure as opposed to getting timid under pressure, he’s exactly the latter. So I really liked that. So we just got a bit curious about leadership and I remember speaking to him in Dharamshala where he and I just spoke at the side of a practice because the opportunity arose and I pushed him a little bit on captaincy and leadership.”
Bobat further added, “I think he was a little bit surprised. He might have felt like it was a bit of an interview. I don't know but then I pushed him. It wasn't an interview. He had an interview later but that wasn't one. But then I kind of pushed him to go and do a bit of captaincy at his state and he said look I'll do that as a first step. I said great and then he did. Then obviously we had quite a thorough process to identify our captain eventually but that was probably the start for him.”
