Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) COO Rajesh Menon was asked a very interesting question ahead of the IPL 2025 season. Will Virat Kohli be back as RCB captain for the IPL 2025 season? And he gave a very safe answer.
After parting ways with Faf du Plessis, who led Royal Challengers Bengaluru in the previous three Indian Premier League seasons, RCB will play under a new captain in IPL 2025.
Many fans and experts predict Virat Kohli, who stepped down as RCB captain in 2021, will lead the team again in 2025. The Bengaluru-based squad, which is still seeking its maiden IPL victory, is yet to make a formal announcement on this matter.
Kohli captained RCB in 143 IPL matches between 2011 and 2023, winning 66 of them. RCB lost 70 games under his leadership, and he guided the franchise to the IPL final in 2016, scoring 973 runs with the bat.
RCB’s COO Rajesh Menon was asked if Kohli will captain the franchise in the 2025 edition of the IPL.
“Currently we have not decided anything. We have multiple leaders in the team. 4-5 leaders are there. We have not deliberated on what we need to do. We will deliberate, and we will come to a conclusion,” Menon told SportsTak.
In the IPL 2025 mega auction, RCB signed Phil Salt, Liam Livingstone, Jacob Bethell, Tim David, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Jitesh Sharma, Devdutt Padikkal, Josh Hazlewood, Romario Shepherd, Nuwan Thushara, and Suyash Sharma, among others.
When asked about RCB’s assembled squad for IPL 2025, Menon said, “We were very clear in terms of what kind of gaps we have and what all we need to fulfill and what is the Indian core that we require to build, and if you want to play in M Chinnaswamy (Stadium), what kind of bowling attack we require. And that is what we did."
“If you see Day 1, it was low-key for us. People thought we were not participating in the auction, but at the end of Day 2, everybody, right from fans to experts, felt saying what we have done is the best because we have covered all the gaps, and I think we have got one of the best teams,” he added.
RCB is one of the original IPL franchises never to have won the IPL. They reached the finals thrice in 2009, 2011, and 2016, but failed to win the trophy.