Former Indian player turned commentator Sanjay Manjrekar has dismissed the idea of Virat Kohli returning as RCB captain in IPL 2025. The veteran was the highest retained Indian player before the 2025 IPL auction at ₹21 crore on Thursday, October 31. However, Kohli was RCB’s permanent captain until the 2021 season after which Faf du Plessis took over for the next three years as well.

Meanwhile, many believe Kohli could return to RCB as the skipper in the upcoming season, to which Manjrekar told ESPNcricinfo via
India Today: “This is my problem because I don’t like being emotional. I don’t want to go away from the truth with hero worship like fans. In Test cricket, Virat Kohli is out of form, but India need him. But in T20s, I don’t think he is that great a player as he was seven to eight years ago.”

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“So, as a T20 player, can Virat Kohli make an impact? Because he is Virat Kohli, 95 percent fans want him to be the captain. But if you look at his performances, then his contributions haven’t been impressive enough,” he further added.

However, Sanjay Manjrekar also called on the fans to remove Virat Kohli’s stature in the match and look only at performances before insisting on the star becoming RCB’s skipper once again as well. He had a great 2024 IPL season with the bat, finishing as the highest run-scorer with 741 runs at an average of almost 62 and a strike rate of 154.69 in 15 games as well.

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“Remove Virat Kohli and his stature from your mind and only look at his performances in the Indian Premier League, his performances as a batter, and his performance as a captain. And think whether it’s the right decision to make him the captain again. Last season, he had a strike rate of 150 and in the 120s in the previous seasons,” Sanjay Manjrekar concluded.