IPL Auction 2025: RCB’s director of cricket opens up on Virat Kohli captaincy, says ‘he dropped a few hot text message’

Royal Challengers Bengaluru retained superstar cricketer Virat Kohli ahead of Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 for a whopping ₹21 crore.

Apart from this, the RCB also retained , Rajat Patidar for ₹11 crore and Yash Dayal ₹5 crore.

It was expected that by retaining Kohli, RCB may have indicated they have would seek the former Indian skipper to lead the team. This was even indicated by former RCB skipper Faf du Plessis.

Though RCB's director of cricket Mo Bobat decided not to reveal when asked about RCB's captaincy.

Speaking about Kohli, he said, as quoted by Hindustan Times, "Virat is a central figure, he is a senior member of the team. But we haven't made any decision when it comes to captaincy. We will decide later on. He dropped a few hot text messages to us yesterday, giving us feedback."

Meanwhile, RCB bought Aussie pacer Josh Hazlewood and England all-rounder Liam Livingston for ₹8.5 crore in the IPL Auction 2025.

Hailing the franchise on buying Hazlewood, former cricketer and RCB batting coach Dinesh Karthik said, "Everybody from RCB and all the fans have all said let's go for Josh Hazlewood and here we have him. Josh Hazlewood, it was all about who can we get and we got Josh Hazlewood. I think all the Bengaluru should be smiling at that option because we have seen what he can do in the year that he came, we qualified and he was such a major and integral part of that attack."

RCB bought these players at IPL Action 2025 till now:

Capped players: Liam Livingstone ( ₹8.75 crore), Phil Salt ( ₹11.50 Crore), Jitesh Sharma ( ₹11 crore), Josh Hazlewood ( ₹12.50 crore), Krunal Pandya ( ₹5.75 crore), Bhuvneshwar Kumar ( ₹10.75 crore), Tim David ( ₹3 crore), Romario Shepherd ( ₹1.5 crore), Fazalhaq Farooqi ( ₹2 crore), Jacob Bethell ( ₹2.6 crore), Devdutt Padikkal ( ₹2 crore)

Uncapped players: Rasikh Dar ( ₹6 crore), Suyash Sharma ( ₹2.6 crore), Swapnil Singh ( ₹50 lakh), Nuwan Tushara ( ₹1.6 crore), Manoj Bhandage ( ₹30 lakh), Swastik Chikara ( ₹30 lakh)