RCB's IPL reckoning: Part 1 - The dream designed

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW RCB's IPL reckoning: Part 1 - The dream designed Kaushik Rangarajan Share Tweet

After 18 long years of wait, RCB did the unthinkable in 2025! ©BCCI

In the first part of an in-depth interview on RCB's maiden IPL triumph, Director of Cricket Mo Bobat tells Cricbuzz about the benefit of the franchise's struggles in 2024, the process of appointing Rajat Patidar as captain, and how they approached the mega auction ahead of the 2025 season.

Mo, before we get to the cricket, it would be remiss not to speak about the day after the final, the stampede at Chinnaswamy during the victory celebrations...

Cricket and the IPL is so much about passion and enjoyment, and one of our biggest motivators is our fans. We talked during the competition that we want to win it for our fans. They've been the patient ones. Some of us are new. These fans have waited 18 years, so we wanted to do it for them, and for some of them to have lost their lives just feels incredibly sad. We look forward to being able to recognise those people and their families. Their stories become a part of our history now. Every sports team has a history, and it has a heritage. What they've experienced becomes a part of our heritage and history, and we have to honour them.

I want to pick up from around the midpoint of your first season at RCB, just before that home game against SRH in 2024, when they smashed 287. You did media then, and someone asked if the rest of the 2024 season was a free hit for 2025. Looking back now, was that actually a pivotal moment in setting up what came next?

Well, it is a very good place to start. Naturally a lot of people have asked me questions about this season, and I usually start with the season before. Because that was my first full season and Andy's [Flower] first full season with RCB. And it was a steep learning curve. I'm very grateful for that learning curve, actually. I wouldn't change that season. We ended up being one win from eight games. I remember doing the media, and I hopefully gave the impression that we hadn't given up on the season. Because that is the truth.

Myself and Andy were pretty proud and satisfied that despite the fact that we weren't winning or playing that well, the culture and the environment that we had created with the senior players and captain was still strong. I've been in environments where you're losing and you feel it in the environment. But I've also experienced times when you're losing and everyone is still striving and working together. And it felt like that last year, so I was confident that we were holding the group and holding the environment.

Andy and I are pretty honest guys. If we're not playing well and we're losing, we will look at what we can do first. We won't blame pitches or conditions or our position or umpires. We were hunting really hard for how we could improve. And we were confident that if we kept sticking to that and kept focussing on improving the way we play, that we could turn things around.

Obviously, it was great to then go on that run and to win six in a row and qualify. And we finished where we deserved to finish at the end of the day. We weren't good enough to go any further unfortunately. But we were good enough to finish fourth, which was probably a fair reflection on the group and the season we had had.

Let's go right back to the start then... you were with England cricket for more than a decade, won two white-ball World Cups, helped set up the transition into this 'Bazball' era. Why RCB?

Obviously, I worked for England for a long time. I did 12 years in various roles, and my last four years were as performance director. That was a role I really enjoyed. I could have done that for many more years. It was a great job working with brilliant people and brilliant players, and we were having real fun turning around our Test team, and working closely with the likes of Baz [McCullum] and Ben [Stokes] was really good fun as well.

But I had spent two to three years consulting with RCB in a very remote capacity. Nothing too detailed, nothing too heavy. Working closely with Mike Hesson, who was obviously Director of Cricket then. And Sanjay [Bangar]... two people that I admire. I enjoyed helping out and learning a little bit more about the IPL, because obviously when you're working in international cricket, dealing with franchise cricket and auctions is very different.

When their contract came to an end at the end of the 2023 season, and both Sanjay and Mike parted ways with RCB, the franchise asked me whether I wanted to be Director of Cricket. My initial response was that it wasn't the right timing. We were in the middle of the Ashes at home, and everyone will know the Ashes is a big deal for England cricket. You want all the concentration to be on that. So at that stage we just said, 'Look, let's just pause on it for now. I'll have some time to think about it.'

The more I thought about it, the more I discussed it with a few people. I spoke to Andy, someone I really trust and I've enjoyed working with. I think the statistics back it up, but I think he's the most impressive and the best head coach in the world. I spoke to him and said, 'Look, I'm thinking about doing this. What do you think? Do we want to have a go at this together as a project?'

There might be some people that would be daunted by the challenge of RCB. They hadn't won the trophy. They have big icon players. There's huge expectation. Andy and I, our personalities are like: those things are all attractive; none of those things are daunting. We thought if we're going to do something together, let's take on a big challenge and try and bring success to a franchise that is really craving it. Then obviously we both came on board within a few months.

Andy was head coach at Lucknow Super Giants then, right?

He was coming towards the end of his contract with Lucknow. And to me, if I was going to be Director of Cricket, I couldn't think of a better coach than Andy to be with me. There are obviously loads of brilliant coaches out there, but he's the guy that I wanted to work closely with. Because we have a very trusting relationship.

What I mean by trusting is... anyone who's seen his work will know that that doesn't mean we're just agreeing all the time. It actually means that we are prepared, both of us, to do whatever it takes to win. We have similar values in how we want people to feel and the environment to feel. And we will support each other to make sure that we do everything that it takes to deliver the sort of success that we want. And we both like challenges. So, yeah, he was the obvious candidate I had in mind to be our head coach.

"If I was going to be Director of Cricket, I couldn't think of a better coach than Andy to be with me." - Mo Bobat ©AFP

That you joined RCB a year before the mega auction... In hindsight, did having that full season help you get under the hood, figure out what wasn't working for RCB, and build towards a new cycle with experience in the bank, rather than walking in cold?

Absolutely. My job as Director of Cricket is to have one eye on the short term and also one eye on the medium to long term. And I remember saying to Andy when we were one win from eight, and he probably thought I was a little bit mad, 'Look, this is a great challenge. This is what we came here for. We've got to get excited by this challenge.'

But I also said to him that this was proving very helpful for me in my understanding of what it takes to win IPL games and the IPL. It was giving me extreme clarity on things like the type of environment and culture you try to create that helps people to play well, the type of support staff you want and the expertise you need in your coaching group. That was really helpful. How you might want to approach your planning and reviewing of games and your tactics, the type of squad and play group that you need, some of the key roles, some of the disciplines, how you might approach the auction. Also, some of the lessons that RCB needed to learn, maybe, about how we've spent our money in the past, the things we prioritise, winning at the Chinnaswamy.

There's a number of things that, whilst we were losing, we were taking note and interrogating every detail to go, 'Right, we've got to correct some of these things.' Because there were mistakes we were making and maybe there were mistakes that others might have made in the past as well. So, I think that season being the way it did really enabled us to learn and it meant that from the moment the 2024 season ended, I felt very clear on what our priorities were going into the auction, crystal clear.

And in this first year it's worked for us and, you know, what worked this year might not work next year. I'm very aware of that. We've got to keep adapting and evolving.

Did you feel the need to address the elephant in the room early on, the fact that RCB had never won a title? Or were you more focused on shutting that noise out and just putting the right processes in place?

The answer is a little bit of both. If 'not winning it' is the elephant in the room, you can't ignore it and pretend it's not there. You only have to come to Bengaluru for five minutes and somebody will ask you about RCB winning the trophy. So you have to reference it, but you have to frame it appropriately. And our framing was, we didn't want the shirt and the expectation to weigh heavy on people. We wanted to look at it as an opportunity.

The fact is, RCB were going to win the IPL at some stage. That's a fact. In another 100 years, they'll win it once, right? So, why not us? That's the opportunity.

We did a little bit of work with somebody called Owen Eastwood [a Performance Coach]. You may have heard of him. He has spent time before with the New Zealand All Blacks, Cricket South Africa, with England Football. He's a bit of an expert on culture, environment, leadership and messaging. I knew him from elsewhere. He gave us a bit of advice on how we might message those sorts of things. How we might frame winning to the players in a way that they can get excited but not daunted by it. We paid attention to all of those things. That's why I think in that first year, even though we lost our first few games, we kept the environment quite strong because people were buying into what we were talking about.

And then once you get into your season, you do have to do what you said. You have to focus on processes. You have to focus on the way you're playing. I feel very strongly about that. That was my experience with England. When Eoin Morgan did special things with the England white-ball team, he was really obsessively focused on how the boys played. The same is true now for Baz and Ben. They spend a lot of time focussing on mindset and the way they play. And I was really keen for us to do similar with RCB. If we really focus on how we want to play and the mindset, you've got to trust that the results over a period of time will take care of themselves.

From a cricketing or cultural point of view, what stood out to you as things that weren't quite working at RCB? What were these priorities you felt needed addressing?

So, one of the things that struck me quite strongly is we needed to have a greater clarity on how we wanted to play. And whenever you think about how you want to play, you've got to think about mindset. You have to think about roles and skills. You also have to think about the sort of players that might be available, because you can't have a view of how you want to play and have it void or separate from the players you've got. You know, sometimes the players you've got will dictate the way you play, not necessarily the other way around.

But I was clear we needed a greater understanding and sense of how we wanted to play and how we wanted to win games, and particularly what that might look like at home. So, we invested some time in trying to understand that. And actually, the second half of that 2024 season, it started to turn. There were a few things we did in the season. Faf [du Plessis] and Virat [Kohli] led some of the changes we made to the way we were batting, going hard at the top. The bowling attack became a bit more aggressive and wicket-taking, which we wanted to prioritise. So, there were a number of things that we did that people probably saw in that season that we started to shift the way we played.

We also knew that we had to think about the way we spent our money. And RCB in the past had spent a lot of money on top-order batters. They'd probably overspent on batting relative to bowling, and not spent enough on Indian domestic talent and Indian domestic experience. So, there were a number of things there that we thought: 'Let's try not to make some of those same decisions.' So, we didn't want to spend quite so much on our top-order at the cost of the middle-order or lower-order, for example. We wanted to balance out bowling versus batting and make sure we had a bowling attack that was good enough to win games, particularly at a difficult place like the Chinnaswamy. We wanted to make sure that we had a strong Indian core and we really prioritised that Indian core.

I'm guessing a big part of that Indian core you've spoken about also ties into having an Indian captain in place: was that a deliberate priority in search of this balance you talk about?

Yes, a big part of that Indian core was also a difficult decision on captaincy. We obviously had Faf as captain, who is a brilliant leader and a brilliant captain, and somebody that both Andy and I admire hugely. And if I'm honest with you, we could have stuck with him as captain. He's someone I trust a lot. Unfortunately, his age was probably working a little bit against him. Being a big auction cycle, you've got three years to make that kind of decision. Because if you make a decision in year one and you don't quite make the right call, it's three years before you can undo it. That's not easy. So, had it not been a big auction, we may well have stuck with Faf because we trusted him so much.

We made the decision to move on from him as captain and we were quite keen on an Indian captain. And given that we were trying to do things a little bit differently, we felt like a new RCB needed a new leader as well. So, having someone like Rajat [Patidar] lead the team, ensuring that he had support from people like Virat on the field, someone like Dinesh Karthik off the field, Andy as well, and some other really good senior players like Jitesh [Sharma], Krunal [Pandya], Bhuvi [Bhuvneshwar], Josh Hazlewood, Phil Salt. There's a lot of experience there, guys who have captained their countries.

RCB gave captaincy to Rajat Patidar with support and blessings from Kohli ©AFP

When did you zero in on Rajat Patidar as captain? Once the auction was done, from the outside it felt like there were maybe three main options: going back to Virat Kohli or take some left-field calls with Krunal Pandya or Patidar. How did that decision take shape?

Actually, if I'm totally honest, the thought on Rajat was even earlier than what people might have thought. So midway through the 2024 season, I think we were playing Punjab at Dharamsala, I remember being sat with him at practice, and I first spoke to him about captaincy and leadership. But the reason it was on my mind was we were midway through a season, we had just started to play well, which was good. And obviously, I was very aware of Faf being a leader and a captain that we were very happy with. I also knew we had a big auction coming up, and we were going to have to make a decision about captaincy.

So we were thinking about an Indian captain. I also didn't want to put ourselves in a position where we go into the auction fixed on a person to buy for captaincy. Because I think that's quite dangerous because you can't control what you get at an auction. You might decide you want Rishabh Pant, and then you realise that someone is prepared to pay a lot more money than you, and you're in trouble. But for me, I didn't want us to go into the auction with only one option. I wanted us to go into the auction with several options.

The options we went into the auction with was we could obviously buy back Faf if we wanted to have continuity. That was one option. Another option could be that we could go back to Virat. He's captained before, one of the best leaders that India's ever had. I'm pretty sure if we asked him to do it, he would have gone, 'yeah, let's give this a go' because he cares so much about the franchise. The other internal retention option we had was Rajat, and I was sure that we were going to retain him. So, I spoke to him when we were in Dharamsala. I think he was a little bit surprised because he thought we might just talk about his batting or something. I remember asking him whether he had any aspirations to captain or lead, and he was probably a little bit surprised to hear the question, but he said, yes, he does like the idea of leadership and captaincy.

So, we talked a little bit around what type of leader he might want to be. We talked about whether he'd had any experience of it. I didn't talk specifically about 'we want you to be captain' because we didn't know at that stage, but I did say: 'Look, for you to even be an option or even to be one of our senior leader four players, it'd be good if you did some captaincy. So, go to your seniors, see if they would be prepared to make you captain, even if it's just for the white-ball stuff - the Mushtaq Ali or the Vijay Hazare trophy. And then let's see how that goes, see if you enjoy it, we can talk about it.'

So, he spoke to Chandu [Pandit], his coach at MP, and thankfully for us they allowed him to captain the team. And then Andy and I, before going into the auction, we also wanted to identify other potential captaincy options that we might recruit. So, we met a number of players, some of them we recruited. We met with Jitesh, we met with Krunal, we met with a number of other players. We wanted to recruit a number of leaders into this environment, and not worry about who the captain is. Then going into the auction, we thought, okay, we've got a number of options available to us, let's focus on recruiting the best team. After that, let's get a captain.

After the auction finished, and we had the squad that we had, we started to think about some of those players. And we wanted to get a little bit more serious on thinking about Rajat. Andy and I, we stayed to watch the Mushtaq Ali Trophy. We scout players, but we also wanted to watch Rajat's captaincy. And we wanted to tell the coaches and players about him, so we did that. And we were impressed with what we saw.

He did a great job captaining them. He looked very calm under pressure. He looked like the sort of captain that was going to give his players confidence. He was very calm when the opposition was hitting boundaries, for example. And most impressively, it didn't affect his batting. He batted brilliantly in that campaign. So, we met him a bit more formally, bit of an interview almost. He had shown a real hunger to captain at that stage, so that was really good. And then we had a few discussions internally, obviously myself, Andy, DK, some of the other coaches.

Did you have to talk to Kohli about the captaincy?

Andy and I went and visited Virat. He was playing in Ahmedabad for India at the time. We told him what we were thinking, and he really liked the idea as well. Virat has a huge amount of respect for Rajat as a player, as a person. He knows that Rajat understands the franchise and understands what it takes to be an RCB player, which can be deemed as pressure for others, but these guys are there and they take it in their stride. So, he was confident that Rajat was accustomed to that.

And also, we spoke with Virat and we talked about the fact that Rajat was going to be new to captaincy. He was going to need all of our help. That's the reality. And Virat said, 'Look, 100%, I'm there to help. It's in all of our interests if Rajat succeeds. Let's give this a go.' So, it's brilliant to have Virat's blessing and his approval because he's an important person and player in our environment.

And it was brilliant this year watching Virat support him and be there for him. He empowered him. He let Rajat make his decisions, but he was also on hand with ideas and suggestions on and off. And others stepped up as well. Jitesh was brilliant. It was great seeing him and Rajat really form a close partnership and friendship. Krunal was brilliant, a real leader. Even some of the overseas guys, you know, Hazelwood, Salt, Tim David, there's a lot of leaderful characters there and they all did their bit to help Rajat out.

We'll get to the mega auction, but before that, along with captaincy and Faf, you had to make big calls on two other big names from the last cycle: Mohammed Siraj and Glenn Maxwell. How did you approach them?

Yeah, well, there were definitely big decisions. You know, Glenn Maxwell and Mohamed Siraj are proven international cricketers, both who have done brilliantly for RCB. Maxi may have had a poor year for us in the first season, but largely his time at RCB was very successful. He's also a character I really enjoy because he's an aggressive player and he takes the game on, always looking at ways to win. I like those types of players. So it was not an easy decision for us to release him because the fans really liked him and he had a good history and heritage with the franchise.

Similar with Siraj, another person I really admire and respect and it's been brilliant seeing him do well in the Test series here [in England] and he had a pretty decent season in the IPL too. He's probably the player that we spent the longest deliberating over. Indian international bowlers aren't that easy to get. We spent a lot of time weighing up whether we wanted to retain him, release him, would we consider trying to go back for him at the auction, is he a Right To Match? We discussed every eventuality with him. But both were tricky decisions and for various reasons, we obviously decided to move on from those guys and try something different.

We were keen to try and get Bhuvi [for two ends of the innings] and we felt like hanging on to Siraj would make it difficult to get Bhuvi, so that was something that we thought about as well. A number of things come into it, it's never just one reason.

And there were a couple more. Had he been fit, we would almost certainly have retained Cameron Green. Will Jacks was a tricky decision, you remember his 100 at GT... And he was one that we were keen to try and recruit back at the auction. So there's always a number of variables, it's not that straightforward.

"We were keen to try and get Bhuvi and we felt like hanging on to Siraj would make it difficult." - Mo Bobat ©AFP

The guys from MI even came over to your table to thank you for Jacks...

Yeah, my understanding of what happened was they were probably just expecting that we would Right To Match. As much as we really liked Will, and were keen on having him back, the moment we recruited Phil Salt, we had filled a slot. And it didn't make sense to stockpile talent when you can't roll for it. So the benefit we got off Salt was great for us, but the downside was it meant that we couldn't bring Jacksy back, which is a real shame.

Talk us through how you approached the auction in terms of the style of play you wanted to build. What were the key things you were looking to put in place through the squad you assembled?

I know it's my interview and not yours. But I'll ask you, what did you see? What did you see in the way that we played or how we assembled?

From my side, what stood out was that you seemed to prioritise lower risk on wickets, power through the order against both pace and spin, and depth, spreading resources across all 20 overs. But I did wonder during the auction about the left-hand balance. You had fewer left-handers to exploit short boundaries. Devdutt Padikkal at No. 3 hadn't quite clicked at RR or LSG before, and Krunal was going to be down at 8 and hadn't batted much in recent years...

[Smiles] Well, look, firstly, in all the things you've said, you've done a very good job of describing the way we play. I talk about mindset, I don't talk about the details because it should be there for people to see. So, I don't need to cover that any more than you have. But look, the left and right-hand thing, ideally we would want a balance of right and left-handers. But I've never had that as a focus to the point where I get fixed on it because what's more important is you get the best players that are available to you. Right or left-handed. I wouldn't compromise on player quality to recruit left-handedness.

I would start with, who are your best players? If they all happen to be right-handers, great. If they all happen to be left-handers, that's fine. If you get a bit of a mix, even better. But for me, I think a bit too much emphasis goes on right and left-handedness. I think it's useful but not essential. What's more essential is that you've got good players, with the right mindset and the right skills.

You pushed until INR 23.50 crores for Venkatesh Iyer...

So, to understand what we were doing with Venkatesh Iyer, you have to understand what didn't happen for us with Yuzi Chahal. We were very keen on Yuzi Chahal as our first spinner, as our wrist spinner. We bid up to, it might have been INR 14 crore or something in the end. We actually set our budget at around 12 or 13 [he'd never gone past six] and we crept a bit above it to try and get him. Our second choice was Suyash and we knew that we didn't need a 12 or 13 budget for Suyash. We might have needed three or four or something like that.

So, the moment we didn't get Yuzi, we thought we'll give ourselves a chance of guaranteeing Suyash. We had extra money to put towards the left-handed Indian batter that we were after. So, Venkatesh Iyer came up. We had set a bit of a budget for the player, but the money we hadn't used for Yuzi, I was thinking we would allocate that towards Venky Iyer and get a left-handed Indian batter and somebody who's got experience in IPL.

Our original budget was something like 14 or 15 for him, as probably a maximum number, hoping we'd get him for less than that. And then, obviously, the bidding gets a little bit out of control. When we were bidding, we were thinking we still weren't compromising the rest of our squad, because we're just using the money we didn't spend on Yuzi. And then we did get closer to a point where we weren't just spending the Venky Iyer budget and the money we didn't spend on Yuzi. We were starting to eat into these other roles, and that's when we pulled out.

Venky was someone we were really interested in. Andy and myself and DK met him before the auction. He's a player that we like in terms of his skills. He's a character that I really respect. I think he would have been another one of those really senior, leaderful kind of characters that we recruited. So, we were really keen on him. And then, when we didn't get Venky, we prioritised making sure that we would lock in Phil Salt.

When we got Phil Salt, that means that we didn't have space for either Faf or Will Jacks. They're the consequence of that. And then, obviously, from that point onwards, we managed to get all of our other targets that we set out. Yuzi and Venky were probably the two that we didn't get. But pretty much everybody else that we desperately wanted, we got. So, we're pretty happy with how that played out in the end. Hopefully, that adds a bit of context to the auction.

Krunal added leadership, Padikkal tactical heft to RCB's title-winning season ©AFP

And eventually, that left-handed Indian batter turned out to be Devdutt Padikkal in the accelerated round. Was that always part of the plan, or more of a late opportunity that opened up during the auction?

So, when we didn't get Venky, we still wanted a No. 3, and ideally a left-handed batter. We bid for Priyansh Arya, as people will probably remember. He was a player that we were very interested in. And then Dev was also a player we were interested in. We obviously know Dev from previous seasons at RCB. He's a player that's been in the franchise. He's somebody that I know Virat rates hugely. He was a big fan. Virat certainly had him as one of the people we should consider, so his input was helpful. DK knows him from before as well. He's another player that we spent quite a lot of time talking to, and we were confident that we could help him find some of his best forms.

I have a view that talent doesn't disappear just because someone has a bad season or a bad few games. The environment has to find a way to get the best out of him, and we were confident that we could with a head coach like Andy. He did brilliantly this year, and I think he's still got so much more improvement to go. I think over the next few years, we could get a really special player in Dev. So we never had any doubts about that, and actually having him later in the auction was a little lighter on the insurance policy for us. We knew we could always get him.

**Part 2 of this interview where Mo Bobat talks more about the title-winning season will be out soon

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