Bangalore: Former South Africa skipper Faf du Plessis on Saturday was elected as the captain of the Royal Challengers Bangalore team for the upcoming season of the Indian Premier League (IPL).
The announcement was made on RCB's twitter handle. The RCB team was previously led by Virat Kohli who decided to relinquish captaincy in September.
Du Plessis, one of the consistent performers for Chennai Super Kings, was an obvious choice after Virat Kohli decided to call time on his leadership role for the franchise after a decade during which their trophy draught didn't end. He was bought for Rs 7 crore by RCB and is available for the whole season.
Du Plessis was handed over the cap by team's chairman Prathmesh Mishra and director cricket operations Mike Hesson in an event here.
"Obviously coming in as an outsider, I'm deeply grateful for the opportunity," Du Plessis, who gave up South African captaincy across all formats in 2020, said.
A four-time IPL winner, the 37-year-old Du Plessis has so far played 100 games, scoring 2935 runs at a strike-rate of 131-plus. He scored 633 runs for CSK in last year's IPL-winning campaign.
"I have played a lot of IPL cricket. I understand the dynamics and it's no small thing to trust an outsider which is an overseas player to do the job of the leader," Du Plessis, who has now retired from all forms of international cricket said.
He made it clear that he will depend a lot on experience of domestic players and someone of Virat Kohli's calibre.
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“Happy to pass on the baton to Faf! Excited to partner with him and play under him” - A message from @imVkohli for our new captain @faf1307. 🤩#PlayBold #RCBUnbox #UnboxTheBold #ForOur12thMan #IPL2022 pic.twitter.com/lHMClDAZox
— Royal Challengers Bangalore (@RCBTweets) March 12, 2022 " class="align-text-top noRightClick twitterSection" data="
">“Happy to pass on the baton to Faf! Excited to partner with him and play under him” - A message from @imVkohli for our new captain @faf1307. 🤩#PlayBold #RCBUnbox #UnboxTheBold #ForOur12thMan #IPL2022 pic.twitter.com/lHMClDAZox
— Royal Challengers Bangalore (@RCBTweets) March 12, 2022“Happy to pass on the baton to Faf! Excited to partner with him and play under him” - A message from @imVkohli for our new captain @faf1307. 🤩#PlayBold #RCBUnbox #UnboxTheBold #ForOur12thMan #IPL2022 pic.twitter.com/lHMClDAZox
— Royal Challengers Bangalore (@RCBTweets) March 12, 2022
"I will rely heavily on the amazing experience that we have in our domestic players but also the International players."
Du Plessis further said he would look to work in tandem with their former captain Kohli who led the side since 2014.
"We've got great captains. We've got one of the great leaders in the game in Virat. That will be my shadow and making sure that we bounce off everything of each other.
"I'm really excited to get going, and hopefully we can put on some good performances for the fans," the veteran South African added.
The Indian great Kohli, who is currently playing in the Day/Night second Test versus Sri Lanka currently underway here only, also congratulated Du Plessis in a recorded video message.
"I couldn't be happier to pass on the baton to a good friend, someone I've known over the years," Kohli said.
"We've been in touch for many years now. He's one of the few guys I've gotten to know a little bit more apart from cricket. My partnership with Faf is going to be exciting. The squad we've put together is amazing. Our team looks balanced and strong, and I can't wait to get started," Kohli added.
That Du Plessis would lead the franchise was apparent when RCB aggressively bid for the South African in a bidding war with his former franchise CSK and Delhi Capitals at last month's auction.
Asked whether they bid for the South African great keeping in mind the captaincy, director of cricket operation Mike Hesson said it was a little bit of both.
"It was a little bit of both. We obviously had Maxwell and Virat to have huge captaincy experience that we retained. We felt within our leadership group we wanted to expand on that and also Harshal Patel as well. Who we wanted to buy back. So it was more about growing our leadership group and carrying on from that.
"Obviously, Faf was right up the top of that list in terms of whom we were wanting to get. It was little bit of both. I know how well respected he is. I know tactically sound he is. We have the likes of Virat, Maxi (Maxwell), DK who is new to the group."
Being an overseas captain may make the team combination less flexible as only four foreigners allowed, but Hesson said Du Plessis is good enough to play every game.
"When you look to decide who's the most suitable candidate for the role, you don't necessarily decide whether they're an Indian player or an overseas player. Sure the seven Indians and there's four overseas -- we know the maths.
"The reality is that Faf is good enough to play every single game anyway. So that's not a question. Therefore you just look at who's the guy you gonna work with the leaders in the group and get the best out of the younger guys, build relationships and help develop that RCB culture that we want.
"We just want the best candidate for the job. And there's no doubt in our mind that Faf is the guy for that," Hesson added.
The three-time runners-up RCB are yet to win a title as the Du Plessis-led side will now look to build on their back-to-back playoff appearances in 2020 and 2021.
Eyeing an elusive IPL title, RCB will open their campaign against Punjab Kings in Mumbai on March 27.
With PTI
