Follow UsIndia conjures up mythologies from its dusty subtropical air like a magician pulling pigeons from his hat.
Whether it's increasingly preposterous politics, movies or cricket, India needs stories to thrive on, to be deluded from its stark realities. And every such story has to have a hero — the central figure who gathers everyone around.
That's how the mythology and popularity of Royal Challengers Bengaluru also began. Today, its defining image is of a team stacked with superstars because franchise cricket allowed them to do so.
Chris Gayle, Virat Kohli, and AB de Villiers became their Brahma, Vishnu, and Mahesh.
However, they still didn’t have a trophy to show. ‘Ee Saala Cup Namde’ became a trolling statement used by other IPL team fans. Meanwhile, RCB’s popularity continued to grow due to the superstar culture around the team despite their failures on the field. RCB wasn't just a team anymore. It was a brand and a rather successful one.
The RCB brand was working, the team was financially successful, and the mythologies and heroes had done their jobs—except the war still had to be won.
Others on the team lived and were overlooked under the shadow of the three giants, and eventually, the strategy changed with Mike Hesson’s entry as the Director of Cricket Operations.
Since 2020, RCB have shifted focus from just being a team of a few big names and has made four out of five Playoffs since then. Post 2022, Kohli also left the captaincy, and Faf du Plessis (who’s still a big shot but not in the same league as Gayle, ABD or Kohli) became the skipper. Now, in the 2025 season, the RCB skipper is an even more lowkey player — Rajat Patidar, who hasn’t even played a T20I for India yet.
At first glance, it might seem like a breakpoint moment in RCB history, where they have left behind the days of hero worship and are going for an image overhaul. However, a closer look at it will tell you that it’s just the next step in their franchise's evolution, which is something that the other franchises have realised as well.
There are two reasons behind it.
The first one is obvious — Patidar has been RCB’s best batter since 2022, without a doubt. He has scored 728 runs at an average of 38.32 while striking at 165.1. While Kohli, who’s the leading run-scorer in this period, averages roughly six runs/dismissal more, he strikes only at 139.9. Similarly, Dinesh Karthik and Glenn Maxwell have strike rates in the 170s, but their averages are in the 20s.
Patidar has not only given RCB runs but also has done it consistently without compromising on the speed of run scoring. That's simply gold dust in a format as fickle as T20 cricket.
Moreover, he averages 63.5 and strikes at 186.8 against spin. Only one other batter in the biggest T20 league of the world, who averages more than 50 against spin since 2022, even comes close to Patidar’s strike rate — Heinrich Klaasen, who averages 61 and strikes at 187.
The second reason behind his anointment as RCB’s skipper in their ‘Hosa Adhyaya’ (new chapter) is that once Kohli stepped down, he was their best option for the job. He has leadership experience at the domestic level, and going for a big, renowned skipper in the auction could have cost RCB a lot of money, especially since other teams were aware that they lacked one.
Making Patidar the skipper ensured that they don’t have to necessarily splurge on a big name like KL Rahul (who went for ₹14 crore in the Mega Auction) and can focus on shoring up their bowling which has been the biggest pain in their arse right from the inception of the league.
Moreover, with so much data being used in cricket to decide bowling changes and matchups, a lot of the strategic planning that used to be done by the captain on-field earlier is now being done in the backroom itself. Andy Flower, the RCB coach, is an experienced campaigner in the franchise circuit, and he would also immensely benefit from having a skipper who is more of an ice-cold but sensible executive rather than a big shot with his own big ideas and indefatigable ego.
Flower, the shrewd man he is, can then hold a lot of control in his hands and run the show from behind, and Patidar, their young Indian skipper, can be the face of the franchise, leading them on the field.
Of course, Kohli will always be there as the elder statesman, ambassador, and side's talisman.
It’s a win-win for RCB’s 'Naya Raj', where they emerge out of the shadows of individual greats and build something that is collectively stronger than the sum of its parts.
Coincidentally, this similar pattern of young skippers is visible in the other teams of the league as well. In fact, six out of the nine Indian skippers (including Patidar) in IPL 2025 — Ruturaj Gaikwad (CSK), Ajinkya Rahane (KKR), Shubman Gill (GT), Shreyas Iyer (PBKS) and Rishabh Pant (LSG) — aren’t even a part of India’s current T20I setup.
Teams have clearly understood that in the shortest format of the game, most things are decided in the backroom. In most situations, what happens on the field is an enactment of those plans. So why create two power centres within the team when it eventually creates chaos?
Look at how KKR won the tournament last year, where Gautam Gambhir and Chandrakant Pandit held their franchise's reigns in their hand, and Shreyas Iyer was their executive on the ground. No wonder when Iyer lifted the trophy, the credit went more to Gambhir and his team than him.
RCB's following suit in the same pattern is the stamp of authority needed for us to assert that IPL teams have understood that on-field captains aren’t the most valuable cog in the wheel of a T20 team. It’s the backroom staff and their planning that runs the show. The heroes and their myth-making will still be there, but they have now taken a backseat and are slightly divorced from the on-field strategies.
When the franchise, which gained feral popularity and became a brand recognised even by Somalian pirates on the back of its world-beating superstars, decides that the time has come to choose pragmatism over popularity, you know something has transformed about the IPL intrinsically. The IPL has matured as a competition.
After all, it’s the 18th edition of the league. It was time that it came of age.
