In total, five captains — six including Riyan Parag — enter this season with no more than a year’s experience leading in the IPL ©BCCI/IPL A little more than a month ago, RCB head coach Andy Flower took time to extoll the many virtues that made Rajat Patidar an ideal captaincy candidate for their coming season. Calmness, simplicity, empathy and steeliness were all mentioned as RCB confirmed the outcome of what must have been a tricky decision, given they had released a seasoned leader in Faf du Plessis before the IPL 2025 mega auction. There had been two clear paths ahead of Flower and the RCB brains trust: get Virat Kohli to reprise a role he had performed 143 times in the league previously, or take a punt on 31-year-old Patidar, with all of 16 T20s to his name as captain. The move they settled on was ballsy in more ways than one. Patidar may have blazed a trail to the SMAT final with Madhya Pradesh, but stepping into the cauldron of IPL captaincy, especially at RCB, where frenzied fan expectation meets a legacy of heartbreak, is a test of fire few can truly grasp. Given it was the start of a new cycle in the tournament, there were other teams in a similar decision-making space. Defending champions Kolkata Knight Riders, for example, went the other way. Patidar’s state-mate Venkatesh Iyer, a big-money recruit, was considered but eventually named deputy to Ajinkya Rahane, a peer of Kohli’s with a lot of leadership experience, in the IPL and international levels. And Rahane was still someone, who until the latest SMAT, might not have been assured a place in a T20 starting XII in 2025. The two approaches speak to how teams view captaincy in T20 cricket, with RCB’s decision perhaps reflecting a movement away from the traditional notion that you pick a captain and build a team around him. “There’ll be other teams that will go: ‘Yeah, right, we’ll just go in and try and get the best squad we can possibly and then figure out who the best candidate is when you get to the end of that process,’” says Simon Katich, who has been part of squad-building exercises at KKR, SRH and RCB. There is merit to this line of thought. If a captain has to be picked at a mega auction, then he automatically has had no role to play in the core of the squad being picked for him to lead in the cycle. Muddying the waters of what a captain means in T20 cricket is the fact that there is no objective way to gauge his input and impact. A win-loss record, or titles won/lost do not provide a tell-all picture, since they don’t take into account the strength of the team or the opposition, and leave both inordinate credit and criticism at the captain’s door. What’s more, in the modern era of T20, his role could increasingly be diluted to pruning the squad to a playing XII, and maintaining intangibles like team ethos, culture and body language and going out for the coin toss. Because, at the high-end of T20 cricket like the IPL, even in-game plans are pre-decided, players are aware of their roles down to a ‘T’, and have become more and more responsible for themselves. It is true that everybody likes the idea of having that one boss to make the big calls at the big moments with whom the buck ultimately stops, but does that have to be the captain? It would seem like the time may have come when T20 teams can be run from just beyond the boundary where a coach has real-time and emotion-free data and information available to enable clear decision making. Relaying that information within the constraints of time isn’t an issue either. The IPL already offers two ‘strategic time-outs’ in an innings. For more real-time communication, there are coaches like Ashish Nehra, often spotted in Gujarat Titans’ games prowling just beyond the boundary cushions, barking out instructions like a football manager. In a conversation with Cricbuzz last year, Mike Hesson – a data-driven tactician and former IPL coach – warned against stripping captains of their autonomy, calling it a disservice and a disrespect of those trusted to make instinctive calls in high-pressure moments. He opined it would change the very ethos of cricket, which is afterall played by humans. His point holds weight; after all, coaches aren’t out in the middle, and understanding the ‘feel of the game’ from within is often more crucial. It is true that Hardik Pandya produced just the perfect wide slower-ball on a 6-to-8 metre-length to Heinrich Klaasen as had been discussed before last year’s T20 World Cup final in Barbados, but even Rohit Sharma has since apportioned some credit for that pivotal moment to an act of gamesmanship from Rishabh Pant in the over break for disrupting the star batter’s momentum. There is no data to measure such cause and effects. But cricket captains haven’t all shied away from leaning on tactical support. Hansie Cronje famously walked out to a World Cup game more than 25 years ago with a transmitter-receiver setup through which he could receive tips from coach Bob Woolmer. “The coach sits at a different angle from me and he can give me different options when we’re batting or bowling. It’s always nice to hear another voice,” he said. Eoin Morgan – who, despite being a World Cup-winning leader, openly embraced in-match inputs like match-up cards from analyst Nathan Leamon, both with England and at KKR, even when they occasionally backfired. “I know when I was at RCB, I think we played them [KKR] early on in Chennai and I’ll never forget, [Varun] Chakaravarthy knocked over Virat and Patidar early on in the powerplay and then the card starts going up for the match-ups for Morgan,” remembers Katich. “When [Glenn] Maxwell went out, Chakaravarthy got ripped off and Shakib [al Hasan] came on, it changed the whole complexion of the match. “I think there will be modern captains that embrace it like we saw with Morgan and are happy to trust another set of eyes off the field, particularly someone they’ve worked with and like who they work with. But there’ll be other captains that, you know, will feel that they can take control of things out in the middle.” KKR have placed their bets on the experience of Ajinkya Rahane to lead the side ©BCCI In fact, as recently as the last IPL, a young captain regularly had his own instinctive in-game plans quickly vetted by those sitting beyond the ropes before putting them to use. Vikram Solanki, Director of Cricket at Gujarat Titans, believes ultimately it will boil down to the personnel picked to play and coach, and the now-seasoned team owners, who don’t like to see red on either their balance sheets or the points table, prefer to run their cricket teams. “I think we cannot make such a generic assumption about where the game is going because different teams will operate in different ways,” says Solanki. “I think my view on this is you have to be mindful of how you intend on operating as a team, what personnel you have available to you – both from a player point of view and a coaching staff point of view. “Then you have to make a decision as to how to get the best out of the resources you have. If the make-up of your side and how you’re planning your team is around data, then so be it. Who is to say that it is right, who is to say that is wrong. There might be a totally different way, which might be coaching on instinct, which might be run on traditional ways of planning as cricket was played in the past. There might equally be an appreciation of both – of data and the traditional way of how we would’ve seen cricket played for a number of years.” The traditional pre-tournament captains’ photo-shoot ahead of IPL 2025 painted quite the picture. Seated between Patidar and Rahane was Axar Patel, Delhi Capitals’ choice for captain. Another team chasing an elusive first championship made the call to appoint someone with only 17 games of T20 captaincy experience, only one of which was in the IPL – filling in for Rishabh Pant last year. It’s important to note however that while Axar’s captaincy experience isn’t extensive, it’s a little different to the Patidar case as he is an all-format regular for India and was named T20I vice-captain in January this year. Interestingly, last season also saw the introduction of three new IPL captains: Shubman Gill at Gujarat Titans, Ruturaj Gaikwad at CSK, and Pat Cummins at Sunrisers Hyderabad. While Gill and Gaikwad offer promise for the future, Cummins’ appointment followed the old-school playbook – a pedigreed international leader with the presence and tactical acumen to galvanize a side. In total, five captains – six including Riyan Parag – enter this season with no more than a year’s experience leading in the IPL, underscoring a new leadership landscape that is still finding its feet and one that could be moulded very differently. Ultimately, as franchises navigate a landscape shaped by data, instinct, legacy and innovation, the captaincy question becomes less about who holds the title and more about how well a team functions. When Patidar’s new role was feted at the Chinnaswamy earlier this week, he was handed a plaque that read: “Enjoy it and we’re all behind you.” With a bevy of analysts and coaches ready to offer input and even instruction, the statement could not have been more true. Whether the recent appointments chart a new roadmap of T20 leadership or not, they reflect a league unafraid to rethink tradition, and a high-stakes game that continues to evolve at a pace where even the captains may be captained. ShareTweet
