Rajat Patidar, who has been appointed as the new Royal Challengers Bengaluru captain, expressed his desire to learn leadership skills from Virat Kohli. He shared his thoughts during a press conference on Thursday.
Patidar has succeeded Faf Du Plessis as the RCB skipper after the latter was released before last year’s mega auction.
“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.
The new captain believes that experienced players in the RCB team will help guide him through his IPL captaincy role.
“We have a group of leaders, where their experience and ideas will definitely help 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).
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“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 was involved in discussions about RCB captaincy before the new season. The 31-year-old wanted to gain captaincy experience with Madhya Pradesh before taking on the RCB role.
He led Madhya Pradesh in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy and Vijay Hazare Trophy last year, with most matches taking place 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.
RCB head coach Andy Flower explained the pre-auction captaincy discussions.
“Actually, in our (captaincy) discussions with Virat, I thought the integrity and maturity he showed as a man were of the highest calibre.
“One of the things that stood out was the energy and enthusiasm that he is looking forward to do this IPL with RCB.
“He obviously likes and respects Rajat, both as a person and as a player. I think that relationship will be very important.
“My experience with him last season and the way he supported Faf when we were struggling in the first half of the season, and it only made my respect for him grow. I’d say the same thing about our discussions over the captaincy of RCB,” said Flower.
When asked about considering other players like KL Rahul, Rishabh Pant, and Shreyas Iyer for captaincy, Flower provided clarity.
“All those guys are obviously fantastic players and excellent leaders. They have captained or are captaining elsewhere. But we wanted to focus on assembling the right team, rather than just hunting for an individual that might fulfil a leadership role.
“So for us, it was simply a case of trusting the internal options that we had. If we didn’t recruit anybody from external, we would be very happy with both Rajat and Virat as options,” said Flower.
The Zimbabwean coach expressed satisfaction with RCB’s auction outcomes.
“We were happy with lots of the other targets that we had, and the guys that we brought in. So, it (buying big names) was never really a pressure point for our decision-making.”
