Shreyas Iyer, India T20 Captain: An Idea Whose Time Is Approaching Fast

“No power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come.”

Dr. Manmohan Singh quoted this line from the famous French laureate Victor Hugo in 1991 when he was presenting the Union Budget in the lower house of the Indian Parliament as the Finance Minister in the P. V. Narsimha Rao government. 

Not only was India's former Prime Minister just right, but he was bang on about the need to liberalise the Indian economy; so much so that had it not happened, I probably wouldn’t be writing this article for a cricket website as my full-time profession 34 years later. 

Now, after seeing the way Shreyas Iyer has captained and performed in the Punjab Kings setup during this 2025 season of the Indian Premier League, it won’t be an exaggeration to say the same thing about a man who hasn’t played a T20 match for his nation in eons. 

And frankly, that was for a very good reason, as Iyer was adding one more anchor to India’s batting order, which was already burdened with high average and relatively low strike rate players. However, this 2.0 version of Iyer, the T20 batter, has completely upended that narrative. 

514 runs in the season at an average of 51.4 while striking at 172.5 is not something people would have expected from the Iyer whose T20I strike rate is 136.12 while averaging 30.66. 

Not only that, Iyer has taken a perennially confused and underperforming side like PBKS out of their usual rut, and along with coach Ricky Ponting and others, has transformed this team that play for a collective before the individual. Not only have their strategies been more potent, but Iyer’s setting-an-example kind of leadership style has done wonders for the side who have reached the playoffs only for the second time in their history, and are two wins away from their maiden title. 

Shreyas Iyer 2.0 is a beast 

While his overall numbers already look stellar after playing 10 innings this season and reaching Qualifier 1 as the top team in the group stages, Iyer’s brilliance stands out even more when you compare him with the other batters who have scored more than 500 runs this year in the IPL. 

Iyer’s strike rate is the second-highest amongst these batters (after Nicholas Pooran), which includes the likes of Suryakumar Yadav, Mitchell Marsh, and Jos Buttler, among other stars. Not only that, he has hit as many as 31 sixes and is hitting a boundary every 4.3 deliveries he faces this season, which is the same as Buttler! 

If someone had taken Iyer and Buttler’s names in the same sentence while talking about T20 batters before this season, people would have called them a nincompoop along with some more flavourful words preceding that term of endearment. 

But here we are! 

So good has Iyer been this season for Punjab that he has scored the most for them. He has ensured that the great momentum imparted by the uncapped openers Prabhsimran Singh and Priyansh Arya is further enhanced when he arrives at the crease.  Moreover, this has also helped PBKS because these three together have already scored more than half the runs for the team this season.

Amidst all this, what would please Iyer and his fans the most is the fact that the pull shot has been the second most profitable shot for him this season. Not only has he not shied away from employing it as teams went after him with their bouncer strategy, but he thrashed those deliveries while getting out only once. 

While his attacking intent against short deliveries was already noted long ago as a method he uses to combat such deliveries, his low dismissal rate now is proof that the Punjab skipper has worked hard on this aspect of his game, and the results are there for all to see. 

While the Indian T20 team seems full of high-ceiling batters, Iyer’s performance this season certainly gives him a shoo-in on the side after the 2026 T20 World Cup in India, if not right after the England Test tour. With T20I skipper Suryakumar Yadav being on the wrong side of the 30s at the end of the tournament, Iyer can be the rising star whom the management can trust beyond 2026.

And of course, Gautam Gambhir has already won an IPL with Iyer leading the side he was coaching. 

Skipper Iyer’s Selfless Swagger Stands Out 

Which batter on Mother Earth would leave the opportunity to score an IPL hundred after he is on 97*, and an entire over is left just because he knows the guy on the other end is a better finisher than him?

Shreyas Santosh Iyer is the answer, and exactly this happened in the very first game played by PBKS this season against Gujarat Titans. 

“Saale, maarna hai, har ball boundary maarna hai, mere sau ka mat dekh,” this is what Iyer told Shashank Singh, as quoted by ESPNCricinfo. Shashank smashed 23 runs in that last over, and PBKS ultimately won that game by just 11 runs. 

In fact, Shashank has also recounted an incident from the pre-season camp where he couldn’t score runs in the practice games. That’s when Iyer and Ponting both called him to tell that he is their best finisher and he’s gonna play all 14 games this season. Since then, Shashank has gotten out only once this season. 

Selflessness, followed by astute awareness and communication of the strengths and weaknesses of not only others in his team but also himself, is one of the most important attributes in a cricket skipper. 

Iyer didn’t only tell it. He showed it.  

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There is no doubt about the fact that Iyer is a clutch player. A cursory glance at his record in the last two ICC tournaments he played for India (albeit in the ODI format) tells you that much.

Now add to it his new batting avatar, and the enviable captaincy CV he has already built — everything points towards the fact that Indian men’s cricket has a potential white ball leader in their hands who has all the wherewithal to lead the nation. 

With Rohit Sharma’s retirement from ODIs being quite probable after 2027 (if he plays until then), Iyer might even have a chance at ODI captaincy. 

However, before I oversell and we get ahead of ourselves, hardly anything in Indian cricket goes to plan. It's undeniable that many things will have to go in his favour for it to actually happen. But whatever happens from here on, Iyer seems a timely and apt choice for the T20 skipper.

But when has improbability stopped an idea whose time has come? Shreyas Iyer as India’s T20 captain seems exactly like that idea.