Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) captain Rajat Patidar played a stunning knock in the Indian Premier League (IPL), where his 33-ball 93 in the Qualifier 1 clash against the Gujarat Titans on Tuesday made headlines. Though Patidar also had luck favoured early on, as GT dropped a couple of chances, he truly produced a match-winning knock for his side. However, RCB’s Director of Cricket, Mo Bobat, revealed an intriguing story where he called Patidar a “spin basher” and now he is out to prove a point.

“I remember at some point last season, I think I called him a spin-basher, and I think he got quite annoyed with me because I was implying that it was only spin. So I think he’s probably trying to prove a point to me. But look, he’s worked very hard on his game. He works incredibly hard with both DK and Andy. And, you know, one of the things about Rajat is he tends to middle the ball quite often. And I think that’s a good sign. So whether he’s facing pace bowling, spin bowling, off the front or back foot, the ball hits the middle of his bat quite a lot. So I think he’s got some really good and sound basics,” Mo Bobat said.

However, Rajat Patidar seems unaffected by the situation around him. He continued his stunning show even after RCB had lost a few wickets quickly in between. Bobat was in awe of this ‘fearless intent’ being shown by the captain as well.

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“He’s got a pretty fearless intent, which is great to see. And we’ve tried really hard over the last couple of years to try and let that be the identity of our team. You know, you’re not going to win every game. We know how good this competition is, and you’re going to come up against good sides,” Bobat further said.

“But if we play true to our identity and we play true to the way, you know, the way we’ve tried to play over the last couple of years, and we can do that under pressure, then I think that’s the thing that we will be proud of. So we’re just trying to do that game by game. And that’s with the bat and ball. You know, we want to score runs aggressively and we want to take wickets, particularly early in the innings,” he shared.

“So yeah, the boys deserve the credit for that. They’re the ones who are developing this sense of identity. You know, we’ve recruited them because we believed we could do this, and they’re going out and they’re proving it. So they deserve the credit for that,” Mo Bobat concluded.