Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) put an end to their 18-year drought and won their maiden IPL title. But ahead of that season, during the mega auction, RCB were seen bidding aggressively for KKR batter Venkatesh Iyer. However, they eventually could not buy him. They even released Mohammed Siraj and later secured the veteran pacer Bhuvneshwar Kumar in the auction.
Now, in an exclusive interview with Cricbuzz, RCB Director of Cricket Mo Bobat revealed why they went hard for Venkatesh Iyer.
“So, Venkatesh Iyer came up. We had set a bit of a budget for the player, but the money we hadn’t used for Yuzi, I was thinking we would allocate that towards Venky Iyer and get a left-handed Indian batter and somebody who’s got experience in IPL,” he said. “Our original budget was something like 14 or 15 for him, as probably a maximum number, hoping we’d get him for less than that. And then, obviously, the bidding gets a little bit out of control. When we were bidding, we were thinking we still weren’t compromising the rest of our squad, because we’re just using the money we didn’t spend on Yuzi.”
“And then we did get closer to a point where we weren’t just spending the Venky Iyer budget and the money we didn’t spend on Yuzi. We were starting to eat into these other roles, and that’s when we pulled out,” Bobat added.
Eventually, Iyer was picked up for a mammoth INR 23.75 crore by Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR). But he endured a poor IPL 2025, scoring only 142 runs in 11 matches at an average of 20.29, with just one fifty to his name.
Bobat also explained that RCB’s decision to release Mohammed Siraj was linked to their desire to bring in Bhuvneshwar Kumar. “We were keen to try and get Bhuvi and we felt like hanging on to Siraj would make it difficult to get Bhuvi,” he said.
Bhuvneshwar had a strong season and played a huge role in RCB’s title win, taking 17 wickets from 14 matches.
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