Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s director of cricket, Mo Bobat, opined that one may not win IPL at the auction, but they can certainly lose one there. RCB won their second consecutive title and became the third team, after Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians, to successfully defend their title.
RCB were able to top the league phase as they won nine out of their 14 games. They were able to come up with a collective effort and played with an aggressive approach throughout the tournament.
In the final, RCB defeated GT by five wickets at the Narendra Modi Stadium, Ahmedabad, on Sunday. After the triumph, RCB all-rounder Krunal Pandya said they were able to win because they had a good auction. However, Bobat downplayed it, but credited the success to having a strong structure in the squad.
“I don’t know whether you can win a competition at the auction. I think you can probably lose one at the auction. 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. So I would probably say, in my still fairly limited experience, that I’m not sure you win a competition at the auction, but you can certainly lose one there, and then it gets quite difficult in the mini auction,” Bobat said in the RCB dressing room.
Bobat said they were very clear on their plans in the auction and they were able to get experienced players to make a good squad.
“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. That’s a combination of skill and character. Both of those things are really important. And we got pretty much everything we wanted and more at the auction. So 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,” Bobat said.
RCB would look to continue their dominant show in the next season.
