Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) had a pretty decent Indian Premier League (IPL 2025) auction, managing to touch almost all their bases. However, RCB team manager Mo Bobat has opened up about failing to secure his top Indian targets at the Jeddah event.

Before the auction, the RCB management had retained three players – their Indian core consisted of Virat Kohli, Rajat Patidar and Yash Dayal.

Along with them, RCB had Venkatesh Iyer of Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) and Yuzvendra Chahal of Punjab Kings (PBKS) on their radar.

Despite that, the dynamics of the auction forced RCB to take the opposite route, losing their two best options for Indian players.

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RCB director reveals why they missed their main targets in IPL 2025 auction

Notably, Venkatesh Iyer’s IPL salary shot up 40 times after he was sold for a whopping INR 23.75 crore to KKR. In the 2021 auction, Knight Riders bought the off-roader for its base price of INR 20 lakh.

Speaking to ESPNCricinfo, Bobat revealed: “[Among] The ones we had identified to add to the three retained players as part of our Indian core were Yuzi and Venky Iyer, who were a high priority for us for a number of reasons. First, he is someone who can bat in the top order and is left-handed; There aren’t many of those. “He has a lot of experience and a very consistent track record and he fits perfectly with the way we want to play.”

Similarly, for Yuzi, who is the highest wicket-taker in IPL history, he went for a staggering INR 18 crore (three times his average price over the years).

Bobat reasoned: “Now Yuzi arrived quite early. I don’t think Yuzi in IPL history has been around for more than six [crore INR, $700,000] at the auction, so we set a pretty healthy budget for it, more than double our budget for it.”

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