Former Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) all-rounder Moeen Ali recently revealed that the club considered replacing Virat Kohli as captain in 2019. Moeen reported that Parthiv Patel was on the verge of being named RCB captain during Gary Kirsten’s coaching tenure.
Virat Kohli, one of RCB’s most recognized leaders, succeeded Daniel Vettori as captain in 2013 and will continue to do so until 2021. Despite his strong batting statistics, RCB struggled under his leadership, particularly between 2017 and 2019, placing last in two of those three seasons. The bad seasons followed RCB’s sad defeat in the 2016 final. Ali, who was part of the RCB setup from 2018 to 2020, said that discussions regarding replacing Kohli were serious. He stated that Parthiv was being strongly considered for the post.
“Yes, I think he was. I’m quite sure he was. In the final year when Gary Kirsten was there-after the first year, I believe-Parthiv was in line to become captain. He had a brilliant cricketing brain. That was the talk at the time. I don’t know what happened or why it didn’t materialise, but I’m sure he was seriously considered for the role,” Moeen told Sports Tak.
Although the team had discussed captaincy change, it never transpired. Kohli was to remain captain and was leading the team in 2021 when he was the one to voluntarily relinquish the job owing to workload. In 2020, he also took RCB to the playoffs and ended the season with the best run-scoring, becoming the best run-scorer of the franchise. In the year 2021, Kohli resigned and the South African veteran, Faf du Plessis, succeeded him in subsequent seasons.
RCB ended the long title era drought in 2025 under the captainship of Rajat Patidar. With the bat, Kohli was very crucial, he has scored 657 runs in 15 matches. In the case of Parthiv, the one who played with RCB until 2019, and there was no participation in the IPL after that year.
