Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) strongest playing XI for IPL 2025

RCB reached the playoffs last season but couldn’t make it to the final.

At the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 mega auction, the Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) didn’t buy any mega superstar of world cricket and didn’t splurge over INR 15 crores on any player. This seemed to be a conscious effort from the RCB think-tank: instead of going big on one particular player, they went after several and bought plenty of T20 match-winners under their budget.

They had previously retained Virat Kohli, Rajat Patidar, and Yash Dayal. At the mega auction, they bought back two world-class bowlers who had been with them before: Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Josh Hazlewood.

Liam Livingstone, Jitesh Sharma, Suyash Sharma and Krunal Pandya are other impressive buys made by RCB at the mega auction.

They roped in Nuwan Thushara and Lungi Ngidi as back-up seamers, and Tim David and Romario Shepherd as finishers.

Phil Salt, who took the IPL 2024 season by storm and played a big role in Kolkata Knight Riders’ title-winning campaign, was bought by RCB at the mega auction. Another Englishman in RCB’s squad is the talented Jacob Bethell, who has had an impressive start to his England career.

One interesting and quite questionable buy from the Challengers was of Devdutt Padikkal, who had two fruitful seasons with them in 2020 and 2021 but since then had fallen off terribly in the IPL as Rajasthan and Lucknow used him in the middle-order while his best seasons with RCB were as an opener. So if he plays, he must open. With Phil Salt also an almost certain starter, this would push Virat Kohli back to No. 3.

RCB have replaced the retired Dinesh Karthik with Jitesh Sharma.

It is not yet clear who will lead RCB in IPL 2025. Virat Kohli seems the front-runner to take the job again. Livingstone and Salt also now have experience in leading England, both having captained the white-ball teams recently.

RCB best XI for IPL 2025:

Devdutt Padikkal, Phil Salt, Virat Kohli, Rajat Patidar, Liam Livingstone, Jitesh Sharma (wk), Krunal Pandya, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Suyash Sharma, Josh Hazlewood, Nuwan Thushara. (Impact: Yash Dayal)

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