IPL 2025 final: Shreyas Iyer’s leadership vs Rajat Patidar’s collective

sp-1 — Shreyas Iyer (L) Rajat Patidar (R). Image: BCCI/IPL

The IPL 2025 summit clash in a way offers a throwback to last season’s Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy (SMAT) final — Shreyas Iyer versus Rajat Patidar. Shreyas’s Mumbai defeated Patidar’s Madhya Pradesh in that game. The context here is different, so are the teams. Only domestic cricket nerds cared about the SMAT title showdown. On Sunday, when Shreyas was shining like a star in the Ahmedabad night sky, JioHotstar logged 40 crore concurrent viewers.

Two deserving teams are in the final, and it is good for the IPL and cricket. Royal Challengers Bengaluru under Patidar has finally gotten over their hero-worship culture to embrace the collective. The result is there for everyone to see. Commercially, Virat Kohli still remains the franchise’s MVP. On the field, he is another cog in the wheel, making serious contributions to the team’s cause. A paradigm shift in the team culture has brought RCB on the cusp of their maiden IPL crown.

Shreyas, along with head coach Ricky Ponting, has made PBKS greater than the sum of its parts. He is unquestionably the captain of the IPL 2025, his team’s ‘Sarpanch’ for whom they all rise. In a knockout fixture, Mumbai Indians boasted winning pedigree and a constellation of stars. PBKS’ top six had four uncapped players. Shreyas’s leadership glowed resplendently.

RCB decimated PBKS in Qualifier 1. “We lost the battle, not the war,” Shreyas had channelled his inner khadoos of the Mumbai maidans, as he spoke to the host broadcaster after the game. His message to his teammates, as the PBKS skipper would reveal later, was simple — one bad game didn’t a paradigm make. His innings on Sunday was reminiscent of Suresh Raina’s tour de force in the Qualifier 2 in 2014.

Leader, fighter and match-winner

In terms of pure aesthetic, Raina’s 87 off 25 balls against Kings XI Punjab would still trump Shreyas’s 87 not out off 41 deliveries against MI. Raina’s innings was of such beauty that it made spectators feel as if time was standing still. It, though, didn’t take Chennai Super Kings over the line. Shreyas saw his team through, against a bowling attack comprising Jasprit Bumrah, Trent Boult, Hardik Pandya and Mitchell Santner. It was, in fact, Shreyas-or-bust (Nehal Wadhera and Josh Inglis deserve honourable mentions) for PBKS. “I love such big occasions and I always say to myself and my colleagues that the bigger the occasion, the calmer you are and you will get the best results,” Shreyas said at the post-match presentation.

The 30-year-old also revels in his ‘rope-a-dope’ (borrowed from Muhammad Ali) approach. You put him on the ropes and land punches. He will respond with a knockout blow. When his central contract was taken away last year, ostensibly because he had skipped one domestic fixture at a time when his back was developing spasms after facing just 60 balls at the nets, Shreyas went to Kolkata Knight Riders and led the team to the IPL title. Gautam Gambhir, KKR’s erstwhile team mentor, was given all the credit, as the franchise ended their decade-long title drought. Shreyas’s role was undervalued. KKR didn’t retain him even. The player didn’t mind. He took charge of PBKS and has guided his team to an IPL final.

Earlier this year, during a home ODI series against England, Gambhir had dropped Shreyas from the playing XI. Later he was included only because Kohli was unavailable for the game. The middle-order batsman responded with such consistency that after India’s Champions Trophy triumph, Rohit Sharma singled him out for special praise.

Shreyas’s match-winning knock yesterday royally mocked a lot of people in Indian cricket. Irrespective of the outcome of the IPL final, it would be remiss of the BCCI not to hand over India’s white-ball reins to him going ahead.