IPL 2025: Why RCB’s Surprising Call on Siraj Left Fans Stunned?

For the IPL 2025, the Indian fans won’t be able to watch out for the dynamic duo of Virat Kohli and Mohammed Siraj representing Royal Challengers Bangalore. Siraj, who played for RCB from 2018 to 2024, picked up 83 wickets in 87 matches, including a key role in India’s T20 World Cup 2024 title win.

Despite expectations that RCB would use one of their RTM options for Siraj, they chose not to, and he was acquired by Gujarat Titans for Rs 12.25 crore in the IPL 2025 mega auction. RCB’s Director of Cricket, Mo Bobat, revealed that the team prioritized signing Bhuvneshwar Kumar, which led to the tough decision of letting go of Siraj. He said:

It is important to recognize what Siraj has done for RCB over a number of years. He’s been a champion player for us. Not retaining him was one of our tougher decisions, if not the toughest. We had Bhuvi (Bhuvneshwar Kumar) quite high on our list, and we wanted to give ourselves a chance to get him. Unfortunately, the way auctions work out, with Bhuvi coming quite late, it’s like a game of poker, to hold your nerve and see whether you can hold on and wait for a player, and sometimes you do and sometimes you don’t. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out for us to get Siraj just because of our priorities, auction order, and spending pattern. That’s again quite similar for a couple of other players; both Faf (du Plessis) and Will Jacks were definitely guys we were considering right-to-matching (RTM) if things fell a certain way. I’m incredibly fond of Will, and he was brilliant last year when he came into the team. He was definitely someone we were thinking of right-to-matching, but if you wait as deep as he was coming up in the auction, having not filled a role, that is a risk, and given the way the spending pattern works out and given that we missed one or two of our targets and we had probably a bit more money than we anticipated, you have to make decisions. So regrettably, Faf, Jacks, and Siraj were guys we had in our minds for right-to-matches, but it just didn’t fall that way, and you end up building your team slightly differently, which is a shame.

Other players like Faf du Plessis and Will Jacks were also considered for RTM, but the auction dynamics and spending patterns didn’t align with RCB’s strategy, leading to changes in their team composition.