“Strength, depth and competition for places”: Mo Bobat explains RCB’s IPL 2026 Auction blueprint

RCB entered the IPL 2026 Auction with a purse amount of INR 16.4 Cr to spend and eight slots to fill, and having retained a majority of the title-winning squad from the IPL 2025 season, the focus was on signing strong backups.

On the latest episode of RCB Bold Diaries, Director of Cricket, Mo Bobat, shed some light on the blueprint behind the think-tank’s approach at the auction, and the driving factors behind some of their strategies.

Mo said, “We've talked a little bit around trying to back up last season's success with another trophy. Now, we know that's not easy. We're only going to do that if we turn up at the next IPL better than we were last year, and that's a tough challenge, given how well we played. So we wanted to make sure that we had enough strength and depth that we could really generate competition for places.”

He elaborated, “We held on to the core of our team, and our strongest 12 that played for most of last season. You know, we used a few of our spare players last year, and we used, I think, 19 players in the end in our championship-winning season. But we kept the core of that group together.”

Speaking on the surface area approach, Mo emphasized, “So going into this auction, it was always from the start about trying to strengthen the squad and trying to make sure we've got backups for all roles where we might need them. Still, you've got to go into an auction and you've got to be clear on your priorities. Now, we were thinking we might recruit six or seven players. We ended up with eight.”

Going deeper into the overall strategy, Mo explained why they spent almost one-thirds of the purse on signing Madhya Pradesh’s up and coming all-round sensation Mangesh Yadav for INR 5.2 Cr.

He quipped, “And amongst those different roles and players, we had three real standout priorities. Number one was we wanted an Indian left-arm quick bowler. We obviously have Yash (Dayal) in our squad. He's a player that we rate hugely. He's done brilliantly for us. But having some backup for him was always going to be really important to us.”

On roping in the services of Jacob Duffy, who is the No.2 ranked T20I bowler in the world, Mo said, “We wanted to have an overseas fast bowler. We said goodbye to Lungi (Ngidi), who obviously did really well for us last year. But having somebody that could back up Josh Hazlewood was going to be really important, alongside Nuwan (Thushara), who, again, a player who did well for us last season.”

Highlighting one of RCB’s headline buys at the auction in Venkatesh Iyer for INR 7 Cr, Mo explained, “And then, you know, the third real priority that we had was Indian batting cover. And in particular, probably, you know, having somebody that could really challenge for a place in the team and getting Venky Iyer in as somebody who strengthens that batting roster is really, really good for us.”

He finished by saying, “So they were our main priorities. We obviously had a few other roles as well that we filled. But we felt like if we got high-quality people in those three roles in particular, we could really add value to this squad and this team.”