Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 mega auction is less than two weeks away. There are a few Indian captaincy candidates who will go under the hammer and play for a new franchise this year. Former Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) captain KL Rahul is one of them. Meanwhile, there is chatter around Rahul returning to Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB), the franchise where he made his IPL debut. Ahead of the mega auction, Rahul is happy to return to RCB if they manage to rope him in.
"I most enjoyed playing at RCB. It's also home," he said in an interview on Star Sports. "You get to spend a lot of time at home, and I know the Chinnaswamy [Stadium] really well. I've grown up playing on that ground. So yeah, I really enjoyed my time in RCB."
Rahul is also excited at the prospect of playing in home conditions where he grew up playing the sport.
"Yeah, of course like I said, it's kind of home and the people there know me as a local Kannada boy, and it would be nice to go back there and get an opportunity again. But yeah, it's an auction year so you can go anywhere."
Rahul's only regret at RCB
Rahul made his IPL debut in 2013 and played at RCB till 2017 before he was snapped up by Punjab Kings (then Kings XI Punjab). In IPL 2016, RCB came close to winning their maiden title but fell short of it by a whisker. Rahul reveals that he has had conversations with former RCB skipper Virat Kohli on how different things would have been had one of them stayed longer in the middle.
"Me and Virat in the last 5-6 years we have spoken about it so many times and there's always that reminder that 'Kaash'. If one of us had played a little longer and won that game, it would have been different. That year was very, very special. It would have been a fairytale, to be right at the bottom and to win seven games to qualify and go into the finals and win the final at Chinnaswamy. There wouldn't have been a better story or better ending, but unfortunately that didn't happen for us."
Rahul has opted for a base price of Rs 2 crore. Even his former teammate AB de Villiers has predicted that RCB is likely to go all out for Rahul on the bidding table.
