Royal Challengers Bangalore captain Virat Kohli has announced that he won’t lead the team in the next season of the Indian Premier League. With this, the questions have been going around who will lead the team and former South Africa pacer Dale Steyn said that KL Rahul could be the next captain of RCB in the 15th edition of IPL as well.

Notably, Steyn has played a lot of matches for RCB under Kohli. While talking about this, Steyn told ESPNCricinfo: “If RCB are going to look at a long-term contender as captain, they should be looking within their own borders. The name I’ve got is an ex-Bangalore player. It’s KL Rahul. I just have a feeling he is going to return back to Bangalore in next year’s auction.”

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KL Rahul, who is currently captaining Punjab Kings in IPL, was earlier a part of the RCB in the 2016 IPL and had done well at the top of the order with Kohli. However, he didn’t feature in the entire 2017 IPL due to injury and he was eventually released by the franchise before the 2018 season. In that auction, Punjab Kings bought him for ₹11 crore as well. Rahul was appointed as the captain in 2020 when the franchise decided to trade Ashwin as well.

Meanwhile, there will be a mega auction taking place with two new teams adding to the competition. While the BCCI has not given any formal announcements yet, as per the reports, the eight existing franchises won’t be allowed to retain more than two players as well.

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Apart from KL Rahul, AB de Villiers is another player who can lead the team. But when Dale Steyn was asked about this, Steyn said that AB  Villiers is a very good captain but RCB might want to look at the future and appoint an Indian captain as well.

“I don’t think AB de Villiers is the right way to go. I think he is a phenomenal player. But he is at the end of his career. I think he is a great leader,” Dale Steyn concluded.