Royal Challengers Bangalore reveal the auction strategy behind their acquisition of Faf du Plessis

Royal Challengers Bangalore managed to acquire the services of former South African captain Faf du Plessis for INR 7 crore during the IPL 2022 mega auction. Du Plessis spent eight of the last 10 IPL seasons with Chennai Super Kings and was involved in an unprecedented era of dominance with them.

Despite obvious heavy interest from Chennai Super Kings and later from Delhi Capitals, RCB were able to beat the competition and sign Du Plessis. It’s been a week since the auction and the franchise finally shared their plans and strategies regarding the seasoned opener in a mock auction video that the posted online.

RCB Director of Cricket Operations Mike Hesson insists that Du Plessis has all the qualities of a ‘leader.’ This facet of his game is especially important given that Virat Kohli decided to relinquish the captaincy after IPL 2021.

“With the options we have in our current squad and the uncertainty surrounding those, and the options we have at the auction, where we think we can gain a real advantage is with Faf du Plessis who is highly experienced. He has captained South Africa for long, won the IPL many times and is a very consistent performer in terms of how he operates. He’s a strong character and highly respected. These are a lot of attributes you want in a leader,” said Hesson.

Hesson also shed light on how the management were confident that CSK would go after him. Chennai Super Kings are known to stick to a strong core group of players who are all able to elevate their game under captain MS Dhoni. They did the same with Ambati Rayudu, Robin Uthappa and Deepak Chahar in the mega auction as well but failed to beat the competition to re-acquire Faf du Plessis.

“It’s pretty clear that CSK will likely try and get him back, as they do with all their players. He’s also in the marquee group; for us to have some structure going forward, we need to allocate some budget to get that. We would want to go through teams who might look at him. CSK will obviously make a bid, no one will expect us in terms of who we are likely to go for,” Hesson further added.