BENGALURU: THERE has been a growing clamour for Shreyas Iyer to be called up to the T20I squad. Not without reason. Shreyas has not only been dazzling but his overall package — leadership qualities on and off the park and how he has marshalled a youthful side filled with uncapped Indians — has won him a lot of admirers. So much so that he may be a leading contender to be India's next captain in the shortest format.
The Mumbaikar is in position A1 to make the XI and it won't be any surprise if he finds his name in the upcoming T20I assignments to Zimbabwe, Ireland and England. That he was included in Grade B in the Board of Control for Cricket in India's latest contracts list tells you how highly the current regime rates him even if he has featured in only six games across formats in the last year.
As part of the same queue to make the XI is Rajat Patidar. Like Shreyas, he's also a middle-order hitter who gets going from the first ball. Like Shreyas, he also captains an IPL franchise. And their teams are currently first and second in the standings and look odds on to face each other in the first qualifier later in the season. This isn't just recency bias even if delivering Royal Challengers Bengaluru's first ever IPL title in 2025 is a handy line to have in your resume while waiting outside the selectors' door.
Of course, Suryakumar Yadav is going nowhere. At the post World Cup press conference, he spoke about the desire to not only defend the title in Australia but also about leading at the Olympics a few months earlier. However, they are not his decisions to make. He will be 38 when the next World Cup comes around and there will be a decision to make in the near future.
If they decide to twist, Shreyas will be the favourite but Patidar is making a strong dash. And he's making it by being multi-dimensional. In the middle overs with the bat, he's a destructive force (one of the very few hitters to strike at over 150 from overs seven to 16 in the history of the league).
He's destructive in this phase of the game because of his ability to hit all kinds of spin from the first ball. He strikes at 172 against the slower bowlers in the history of the league. But he manages this while averaging 51.25. It basically means he's preserves his wicket while going at an extreme tempo. A Patidar in the middle-order also allows Virat Kohli the leeway to look for singles against spin through the middle overs.
Josh Hazlewood, speaking on the eve of RCB's next home match against Delhi Capitals, sang Patidar's praises. "His (Patidar's) batting has been unbelievable, I think, " he said. "He's walked in and often hit the first ball for four or six and not just probably changed the momentum but has taken it to another level. I think that period in the middle phase, he's just really dominated that phase in the game he's scored runs in. We are getting every part of him at the moment which is nice."
The Aussie pacer also complemented his leadership skills. "He's just learning on the go," he said. "There's so much going on out in the middle, it's so loud and hard to communicate. I feel he progressed (right through) last year. He just kept getting better and better and more confident in himself and this year he's picked it from there."
In this format, you have an army of people working behind the scenes but you need to know how to absorb all that information given to you. It's evident the 32-year-old has done well here as well. "He keeps improving all the time," Hazlewood said. "I think it's about taking that information that's coming from the bench, coming from players, coming from vice-captains and bowlers just to filter through that. He's a pretty calm character out there, which is nice for me I think."
'Calm' was a word Andy Flower also used in an earlier press conference. "It's pretty amazing that in Rajat's first year of captaincy he led RCB to the trophy," the side's coach had said. "He'd only a little bit of captaincy experience before that I think for Madhya Pradesh. But we did like what we saw when we saw him leading. He's obviously a very likeable man and he's well respected in the dressing room. He's got high integrity, he stays nice and calm which I think the bowlers like a lot and he's got a good deputy in Jitesh (Sharma)."
Within a span of 12 months, he has come in and made an infamous trophy shy team champions. If he can captain them to another title in 2026, the selectors may have a headache.