Mo Bobat, who is RCB’s director of cricket, decided not to reveal when asked about RCB’s captaincy. Regarding Kohli, he said, “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.”

Other than Kohli, RCB also retained Rajat Patidar for ₹11 crore and pacer Yash Dayal for ₹5 crore.

RCB’s IPL Auction 2025 activity

During the ongoing IPL Auction 2025, he broke the bank for Phil Salt and Jitesh Sharma. In mega-bidding wars, they splurged ₹11.50 crores on the England opener and 11 crores on the Indian wicketkeeper-batter.

They also roped in England all-rounder Liam Livingstone for ₹8.75 crores, and Aussie pacer Josh Hazlewood joined them for a second stint for ₹8.75 crores.

They also went big for Bhuvneshwar Kumar, spending ₹10.75 crores on the veteran bowler. Their acquisitions are Rasikh Dar ( ₹6 crore), Suyash Sharma ( ₹2.6 crore) and Krunal Pandya ( ₹5.75 crore).

Former cricketer Dinesh Karthik, who is also a RCB legend, hailed their signing of Hazlewood. In release, he 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.”