Online Sports Desk
Former India batter Parthiv Patel has revealed that Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) ignored his advice to sign Jasprit Bumrah in 2014. Patel said that in the middle of that year’s mega-auction, after the team picked him, he recommended the management look into Bumrah, who came from the same state, Gujarat, but was strongly rebuffed.
Bumrah had made his debut for Mumbai Indians in 2013, with then-RCB skipper Virat Kohli his first wicket. But MI re-signed him in 2014 for ₹1.20 crore after a bidding war against Rajasthan Royals. From being a bowler with the most ludicrous bowling action of the time, Bumrah emerged as arguably India’s greatest pacer, a T20 phenomenon, and one of the biggest success stories of MI’s scouting network.
“In the 2014 mega auction, I was picked on the first day, around lunchtime. When I received a message from them, I told them, there is a player here, look into him. Perhaps the way I told them wasn’t right, kyuki reply waisa tha ki, ‘yeh Bumrah-wumrah kya karenge‘ (because the reply was such that ‘What would these guys like Bumrah do?’)
RCB didn’t win their first title until 2025, struggling for those 11 years, especially with their pace resources. Bumrah added four more titles post 2013 and Parthiv served as MI’s scout for years.
The former India wicketkeeper said he regretted talking about the story once during a live broadcast and reacting to its virality with a post on social media platform X.
“I maybe shouldn’t have said it like that. They didn’t think that he could be worth buying at that stage. That is okay. But that went very viral. So I wrote (on X), ‘Neem patta aur sach dono kadwa hai‘ (Neem leaves and truth are always bitter), and people made of it what they wanted to,” he added.
