The auction dynamics forced RCB to go the other way.
The Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) had a pretty decent Indian Premier League (IPL 2025) auction, managing to touch almost all their bases. However, RCB team director Mo Bobat has now opened up about not being able to secure their top Indian targets at the event in Jeddah.
Prior to the auction, the RCB management had retained three players – their Indian core comprising Virat Kohli, Rajat Patidar and Yash Dayal.
Along with them, RCB had Kolkata Knight Riders’ (KKR) Venkatesh Iyer and Punjab Kings’ (PBKS) Yuzvendra Chahal on their radar.
Despite that, the auction dynamics forced RCB to go the other way, missing out on both their top choices for Indian players.
Notably, Venkatesh Iyer’s IPL salary shot up 40x after he was sold for a whopping INR 23.75 crore to KKR. In the 2021 auction, Knight Riders bought the allrounder for his base price of INR 20 lakh.
Speaking to ESPNCricinfo, Bobat revealed, “[Among] those we had identified to add to the three retained players as part of our Indian core were Yuzi and Venky Iyer, who was a high priority for us for a number of reasons. One, he’s someone that can bat in the top order, and he’s left-handed – there aren’t too many of those. He’s very experienced and he’s got a very consistent track record and he very strongly fit with how we want to play.”
Similarly for Yuzi, who is the highest wicket-taker in IPL history, he went for a staggering INR 18 crores (three times his average price over the years).
Bobat reasoned, “Now Yuzi came up quite early. I don’t think Yuzi in IPL history had gone for more than six [crore INR, $700,000] in auction, so we set a pretty healthy budget for him, more than double that was our budget for him.”
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