RCB comeback gave me clarity: Padikkal on career revival

Back in familiar surroundings, Devdutt Padikkal has credited his return to Royal Challengers Bengaluru as a defining phase in his career, saying it helped him rediscover clarity and purpose in his approach to the game.

After a few challenging seasons away from the franchise, Padikkal rejoined RCB during the IPL 2025 mega auction, a move that, according to him, reshaped both his mindset and his game. The left-hander responded with a strong showing, scoring 247 runs in 10 matches at a strike rate of 150.61, before carrying that momentum into IPL 2026, where he has already piled up 111 runs in just two matches at an explosive strike rate of 201.82.

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Reflecting on that turning point, Padikkal said, “I feel that auction was probably the turning point of my career in a lot of ways. I was at that stage of my career where I needed to really commit to the type of cricket I want to play, the kind of cricketer I wanted to be. And coming back to RCB paved my path towards the brand of cricket I wanted to play.”

The Karnataka batter explained that his return to the Bengaluru-based franchise gave him the push he needed to fully commit to his process, regardless of results.

”When I got that opportunity with RCB, I feel that’s the day I decided that there are a lot of things that I need to do and I needed to really commit to working on those things regardless of what the outcome may be, what the result may be,” he added.

Padikkal had first made his mark in the IPL with RCB in 2020, when he scored 473 runs and won the Emerging Player award. However, subsequent stints with Rajasthan Royals and Lucknow Super Giants did not quite go according to plan, leaving him searching for answers.

“I moved to LSG for that one year, and obviously, that didn’t go great either. It was really hard. I felt that everything comes down to money. When a franchise is putting their faith in you in terms of that much money they are paying you, you feel like you are letting them down when you don’t perform. At that point, honestly, I didn’t have any answers either,” he said.

The difficult phase, however, became a source of motivation for the young batter, pushing him to reflect and improve.

“I did not understand it enough. The way the season went, it really dampened a lot of things that had happened that year. But at the same time, that gave me that motivation and that real fire in me to try and get better, and sometimes you need that. You need those failures along your journey to remind you how much harder you need to work to get to where you want to get to,” he added.