Mo Bobat, the director of cricket for Royal Challengers Bengaluru, praised captain Rajat Patidar for fully embracing the philosophy and emphasized his team’s determination to continue playing an aggressive style of cricket in the 2026 Indian Premier League.
After winning their first IPL championship under Patidar last year, RCB has had a successful season this year, winning four of their last six games to take third place in the standings.
“I want us to play aggressive cricket. I want us to be brave. Brave when those moments really require bravery. When the game is on the line or things get a little bit difficult, if we’re aggressive and brave through every phase, I think we’ll play the way we want to play,” PTI quoted Bobat as saying on the eve of Friday’s match against Gujarat Titans.
In that regard, Bobat stated that Patidar has aggressively moved pieces on the field while adhering to the team’s philosophy.
“We plan with aggressive tactics as our preference. But Rajat has to make his own decisions out there and he’s very good at that and one of Rajat’s biggest strengths is he’s incredibly calm.
“When it gets a little bit chaotic, he’s quite good at just remaining calm and just sticking to the things that he thought he wanted to do. With the bat, that means that he’s quite good at leading from the front.
“In the field, he’s always trying to take wickets, which is great. That is part of our identities, the way we want to play and he’s a good fit for that,” he added.
Bobat did not place a lot of emphasis on the Chinnaswamy pitch, which has been a combination of sticky and serene this year.
“We’ve got a BCCI curator here (in Bengaluru) who’s leading the pitch preparation, so, to put it simply, we don’t have a huge amount of influence on it. It’s a home venue in terms of city and stadium, but by surface, we exert no influence.
“It’s been a fairly different wicket, I suppose, over the last two and a half years that I’ve been involved. We feel like we’ve got a decent grasp of it. It isn’t always the same, but we feel like we’ve got a decent grasp of it. For us, it doesn’t change the way we prepare for games, though,” he said.
Bobat’s counterpart at the Gujarat Titans, Vikram Solanki, stated that their confidence has not been affected by their crushing 99-run loss to the Mumbai Indians in their last game.
“I don’t think we’ll suddenly change, given, you know, one or two results. We’ll remain consistent in the way we go about our batting and our bowling and our cricket altogether. We trust in a method, in a formula, we trust in the players that we have in delivering that method and that formula,” PTI quoted Solanki as saying in the pre-match press conference.
Rahul Tewatia, a middle-order batsman, hasn’t been playing well in the 2026 IPL, but Solanki predicted that the left-hander would eventually rediscover his rhythm.
“Rahul has been an exceptional player for us, there is no question about that. I do quite fondly recall some of his performances. So that sort of thing, as it just put more of a smile to your face, it does to ours. And we must just try and instill confidence in all of our players, and we do exactly that,” he added.
