The 2025 season of the Indian Premier League (IPL) may have ended in heartbreak for Shreyas Iyer and Punjab Kings as they lost the final to Royal Challengers Bengaluru by six runs. However, the season has turned out to be a bit of a shot in the arm for Iyer as he was hailed for his captaincy and had his best IPL season with the bat by some distance.
Arguably Iyer’s most famous innings of the season came in Qualifier 2 against Mumbai Indians and Punjab Kings assistant coach Brad Haddin has revealed that the 30-year-old went against the tide of the coaching staff’s opinion when he chose to bowl first. “You do all your planning for the game and at the stadium in Ahmedabad, everything says bat first. The analytics and the match-ups, go through your team stuff, everything says bat first. And this is where our captain hasn’t got enough credit and I hope, when they come down to pick an Indian captain, they really start to consider Iyer. He was outstanding throughout the whole tournament,” said Haddin on The Grade Cricketer.
“We say to him, ‘Yep, we are batting first.’ But he goes, ‘No, we’re bowling.’”
Haddin then said that head coach Ricky Ponting then agreed to stick to the decision made by the captain. “Punter goes, ‘okay let the captain make the choice.’ [Iyer] then said, ‘No, I’ll win the game and I’m going to bat second. Everything leads to batting first, but we bowl. Then the captain comes out in the second innings and plays one of the best knocks in IPL I have ever seen and got us into the final,” said Haddin.
It had looked like Iyer’s decision may have backfired when MI set up a target of 203/6. PBKS then lost both of their big-hitting openers inside the powerplay. However, Iyer anchored the chase with a monumental knock that has since been described by many as the greatest of all time in an IPL playoff. He smashed an unbeaten 87 in 41 balls blasting eight sixes and five fours. As many as four of those sixes came in the 19th over of the chase, which also turned out to be the last of the match.
Iyer’s knock and his performance as captain and as batter throughout the season, has now led to him suddenly being in the conversation for taking over as India captain in any of the three formats. On the eve of the final, an influential decision maker in Indian cricket said: “Right now he just plays ODIs but after this IPL we can’t keep him out of T20 internationals and even Tests. Plus he also has now officially joined the white-ball captaincy race.”
