IPL 2022: Veteran spinner Ravichandran Ashwin, who will play for the Rajasthan Royals (RR) this year has made a wild prediction about Virat Kohli's captaincy. He said that King Kohi might pick up the reigns of captaincy at Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) again next year, in 2023.
“I feel that since Virat Kohli has undergone a lot of stress as a captain in the last few years, this year will be like a break for him and they might appoint him as a captain next year is my guess," Ashwin said on his YouTube channel.
Virat Kohli had stepped down from RCB's captaincy after the 2021 season of the IPL. Faf Du Plessis was declared captain to replace Kohli. Ashwin said that Faf is at the fag end of his career and thus, he won't have a lot of years under his belt as the captain of RCB.
“Faf is more like towards the end of his IPL career. Maybe, he has two-three years left with him. And they have made him the captain, which is quite a good decision. He brings in a lot of experience and in fact, he has himself said that we can see a bit of MS Dhoni’s touch in his captaincy skills,” Ashwin said.
Ashwin also predicted his playing XI for RCB. His RCB Playing XI goes like: Virat Kohli, Glenn Maxwell, Faf Du Plessis, Mahipal Lomror, Sherfane Rutherford/Fabien Allen, Harshal Patel, Hasaranga, Mohammed Siraj, Jason Behrendorff.
Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB): Virat Kohli (R), Glenn Maxwell (R), Mohd. Siraj (R), Faf du Plessis, Harshal Patel, Wanindu Hasaranga, Dinesh Karthik, Josh Hazlewood, Shahbaz Ahmed, Anuj Rawat, Akash Deep, Mahipal Lomror, Fin Allen, Sherfane Rutherford, Jason Behrendorff, Suyash Prabhudessai, Chama Millind, Aneeshwar Gautam, Karn Sharma, Siddharth Kaul, Luvnith Sisodia, David Willey