Rajat Patidar, the newly chosen captain of Royal Challengers Bengaluru, said on Wednesday that he wants to pick superstar Virat Kohli's brain to learn the nuances of leadership and highlighted the necessity of "standing with players" in all circumstances.

Patidar has been a regular in the RCB lineup since 2022, alongside Kohli and former captain Faf du Plessis. Patidar made his IPL debut in 2021 and has been with the franchise ever since.

He has played 27 games for RCB, scoring 799 runs at a strike rate of 158.85, and can dominate both pace and spin. He was one of three RCB retainers before the major auctions, alongside Virat Kohli and Yash Dayal. He was retained for INR 11 crore.

“I'm not that much expressive, but I'm aware of the situation of the matches. So, I think it's important to back my players and stand with them in all situations and give the sort of environment where they feel relaxed and confident," Patidar said in a press conference by RCB.

Patidar said the experienced names in the RCB dressing room can navigate him through the challenging job of IPL captaincy.

"We have a group of leaders, where their experience and ideas will definitely help me in my new leadership role and grow as an individual also. And it's a great opportunity for me to learn from one of the best of cricket (Kohli).

"I think his ideas and experience will definitely help me in my leadership role. I've done a lot of (batting) partnerships with him. I know him very well. We're looking forward to that partnership with the bat as well," he said.

Patidar also addressed the speculation surrounding RCB captaincy ahead of the new season, stating that he was a part of it.  However, the 31-year-old stated that he wanted to gain experience as a skipper with his state team, Madhya Pradesh, before taking on the more demanding post with the RCB.

Patidar captained MP in last year's Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy and Vijay Hazare Trophy; however, a significant portion of those tournaments were played after the auction.

"Last year, I think it was me and Mo (Bobat, the Director of Cricket at RCB) who spoke about it (captaincy). Mo asked me, are you interested in doing captaincy? I told him that before doing the captaincy of RCB, I'd like to have the captaincy of the state team. So, I got a hint from there that I could get the captaincy. So when I got the information that either Virat or myself could do the captaincy, I was very happy about it," he added.

Here is the video:

(PTI inputs)