Faf was right: RCB fans wanted Kohli as captain. The numbers say they were wrong

Faf du Plessis has finally said out loud what every RCB captain who was not Virat Kohli must have felt. Speaking to ESPNcricinfo, the South African looked back on his three seasons in charge at Bengaluru, 2022 to 2024, and described a job where a single bad night brought the same chant from the stands.

He was not complaining. He was explaining why the job was survivable at all: the man he replaced was on his side from the first day.

As ESPNcricinfo tells it, the offer came from Mike Hesson, RCB's director of cricket, after the 2022 auction. Before Faf had settled into the idea, Kohli messaged him to say he "couldn't be happier to get a better captain to take over from me".

Du Plessis says that message was the difference between arriving terrified and arriving sure of himself. He also told Kohli plainly that the job would fail without him, because one sentence from the former captain could finish him.

That is the real story here. Franchise cricket loves to talk about the captain. At RCB, the captain's authority was on loan from the player at No. 1 or No. 3, and Faf knew it.

The lighter half of the interview is about luxury watches. Du Plessis credits Kohli with turning him into a collector and calls their friendship "the most expensive relationship of my life".

The cricket half was not bad either. ESPNcricinfo notes the pair batted together in 41 matches and added 2032 partnership runs, the third most for RCB. Two players who had only ever met as opponents became one of the franchise's best opening pairs almost overnight.

Faf's point is that the crowd wanted Kohli back in charge. Our ball-by-ball IPL database says the crowd had it backwards. Split RCB into three eras, the nine seasons Kohli held the job (2013 to 2021), Faf's three (2022 to 2024) and Rajat Patidar's two (2025 and 2026), and both the team and Kohli the batter improve each time the armband moves further away from him.

RCB won 59 and lost 74 in Kohli's seasons, a 44.4% win rate with one final and no title. In Faf's seasons it was 23 wins and 22 defeats, 51.1%. Under Patidar it is 22 wins and 9 defeats, 71.0%, and two titles: the 2025 final against Punjab Kings by 6 runs and the 2026 final against Gujarat Titans by 5 wickets.

Kohli's own batting follows the same line. As captain he averaged 42.3 at a strike rate of 134.3. With Faf in charge that rose to 45.3 at 139.9. Under Patidar he is averaging 55.5 at 154.7, and his 675 runs in 2026 came at 165.8.

The fair caveat: these are whole-season team records, so they include the few games someone else led, and the Impact Player rule, in force since 2023, has pushed strike rates up in both later eras. But the direction is not close. Faf's honesty about the pressure is the useful part. The lesson for IPL 2027 is that RCB found their best Kohli by giving him less to carry, and nobody in Bengaluru should be asking for the armband back.

Kohli turned 38 this month and is still RCB's most important batter. Faf's account is a reminder that his influence at the franchise never depended on the title of captain. The numbers suggest the best use of that influence is exactly what Faf described: backing the man in charge, then batting.