"I don’t want to go away from the truth with hero worship like fans"- Sanjay Manjrekar rejects the idea of Virat Kohli returning as RCB captain
Former Indian batter Sanjay Manjrekar has dismissed the idea of Virat Kohli returning as Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) captain in IPL 2025. The 35-year-old was the highest retained Indian player ahead of the 2025 IPL auction at ₹21 crore on Thursday, October 31.
Kohli was RCB's permanent captain until the 2021 season after which South African veteran Faf du Plessis took over for the next three years. While the franchise qualified for the playoffs in two of those three seasons, they did not name Du Plessis as one of the retentions for the upcoming three-year cycle.
This prompted fans and experts to wonder if Kohli could return as RCB skipper in the upcoming season, to which Manjrekar told ESPNcricinfo via India Today:
"This is my problem because I don’t like being emotional. I don’t want to go away from the truth with hero worship like fans. In Test cricket, Virat Kohli is out of form, but India need him. But in T20s, I don’t think he is that great a player as he was seven to eight years ago."
"So, as a T20 player, can Virat Kohli make an impact? Because he is Virat Kohli, 95 percent fans want him to be the captain. But if you look at his performances, then his contributions haven’t been impressive enough," he added.
Kohli has a losing record as RCB skipper with 66 wins and 70 losses in 143 games (seven ties/no results). Yet, he was the last captain to lead RCB to the final in the 2016 IPL season.
"Remove Virat Kohli and his stature from your mind and only look at his performances in the Indian Premier League" - Sanjay Manjrekar
Sanjay Manjrekar called on the fans to remove Virat Kohli's stature in the game and look only at performances before insisting on the star becoming RCB's captain once again.
The champion batter enjoyed an incredible 2024 IPL season with the bat, finishing as the leading run-scorer with 741 runs at an average of almost 62 and a strike rate of 154.69 in 15 outings.
"Remove Virat Kohli and his stature from your mind and only look at his performances in the Indian Premier League, his performances as a batter, and his performance as a captain. And think whether it’s the right decision to make him the captain again. Last season, he had a strike rate of 150 and in the 120s in the previous seasons," Manjrekar said in the same interaction.
Despite Kohli's heroics last season and over the years, RCB have failed to clinch their elusive IPL title.