According to Mo Bobat, director of cricket for Royal Challengers Bengaluru, franchises cannot win a tournament at the auction alone, but they can lose one. He emphasizes that the team management was very confident in the group they had selected at the most recent IPL mega auction.
After ending their 18-year drought last year, RCB defeated Gujarat Titans in the IPL 2026 final on Sunday in Ahmedabad, validating their auction selections once more and winning the trophy for a second time in a row.
“I don’t know whether you can win a competition at the auction. I think you can probably lose one at the auction,” PTI quoted Bobat telling reporters in a virtual press conference organised by the franchise on Monday.
“… it’s quite hard to undo things that you then either regret or don’t like about your team structure or even personnel, once you’ve got through your first mega auction.”
“And then, you’re only dealing with mini auctions in the subsequent years, and it gets quite difficult in the mini auction years,” he added.
Bobat recalled that RCB had a clear idea of what they were building, but they were ranked near the bottom when it came to teams based on their performance in the most recent mega auction.
“It’s funny when we finished our mega auction, I think we were ranked second bottom for the quality of the squad by quite a lot of broadcasters and a lot of experts, and many people had us to finish last,” Bobat said.
“That was certainly nothing that affected our thought process or psychology. We were clear on what we were trying to build as a squad in terms of team structure. We were quite clear on the attributes and characteristics that we wanted from players – a combination of skill and character.
“Both of those things are really important. We got pretty much everything we wanted and more at the auction. We came out of that auction very happy – like most teams tend to do after an auction – but pretty confident that we could do the things that we wanted to do,” he said.
According to Bobat, his main responsibility during the competition was to continuously motivate the team to strive for a top-two group stage result.
“I always had it in my mind that once we won that first one (title), we needed to not settle for that, because like any sports team, you want to have almost like a bit of an infinite goal that you’re just always striving towards achieving something that constantly inspires your fans,” he said.
“From the moment we finished last season, we’ve tried to push people to be ambitious about going again. Across both seasons, I’ve probably been personally quite keen and fixed on trying to achieve top two, and if you can put yourself in a position to finish top two, everybody knows historically what that means for your chances,” he added.
Skipper Rajat Patidar said his captaincy style has been to keep everyone — from coaches to players — on his advisory board.
“When I got a new role in 2025, I was pretty clear that I don’t have to change myself if I’m coming in the new role,” Patidar said.
“… because that’s my strength, being calm (and) composed. I have an awareness of the game situations. If you have a great management, great (set of) players behind you who always back you, they always try to give ideas (and) inputs to me.
“I always like to back my instincts, but I (also) like to go and communicate with the coaches and the experienced players, where I can get ideas. Overall, this is my way of captaincy,” Patidar said.
