The bus to Dharamsala leaves before midnight. If you have made the journey, the kind where you board in the plains and wake up somewhere in the middle of the Himalayas, you will know the driver. Not by name, but by instinct. He is not the flashy one. He does not announce the hairpin bends. He simply reads them, one at a time, foot on the brake when the road demands it, pressure on the accelerator when it opens up. There is craft in it. There is experience in it. And if you watch closely enough, it is beautiful.
I thought about that driver on Tuesday evening, sitting in the stands at the HPCA Stadium in Dharamsala, watching Rajat Patidar bat.
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At the start of the 14th over, with the floodlights carving the Dhauladhar range into a silhouette behind the scoreboard, RCB were 140 for 4. Patidar was 14 off 10 balls — watchful, unhurried, absorbing. A total of somewhere around 200–220 seemed on the cards. At this ground, in this tournament, in this absurd IPL where scores of 230 have been chased like they were club cricket totals, that might not have been enough. Dharamsala had already seen two games this season, and both had been won by the chasing side. The wicket, the altitude, the outfield — everything here conspires to make batting second an advantage.
Patidar knew all of this. And then, quietly, he changed everything.
CARNAGE IN THE HILLS
What followed those 10 cautious balls was 23 balls of something close to violence. He was dropped twice in that 14th over — the universe offering gifts, and Patidar accepting both without ceremony. He drove Prasidh Krishna back over his head. He pulled Mohammed Siraj off the front foot. He swept, he lofted, he carved through the off side with a kind of controlled ferocity that the Gujarat Titans bowling attack simply had no framework to handle. By the time RCB reached 254 for 5 off their 20 overs, Patidar had made 93 off 33 balls — five fours, nine sixes, a strike rate of 281.82. Gujarat Titans were bowled out for 162 in reply. Royal Challengers Bengaluru won by 92 runs and marched into the IPL 2026 final.
And when Patidar walked off the field, his teammates rose to a standing ovation. The Dharamsala crowd, already stirred by the cricket and the cool mountain air, began to chant. Patidar. Patidar.
It was the knock of a man who had learnt every bend in the road that was ahead of him.
PICKING HIS MOMENTS
There is a particular quality to Mo Bobat when he talks about Patidar. The RCB director of cricket chooses his words carefully in press conferences — precise, measured, never overselling. But when the question turns to his captain, something shifts. The language becomes warmer. The compliments feel earned rather than performed.
“That was a really special knock,” Bobat said after the game.
“The sort of knock we’re becoming accustomed to seeing from him now. Some outrageous shots, but really aggressive intent. And I think that’s leading by example.”
What Bobat describes as leading by example is something Patidar has been constructing, quietly and systematically, over the course of two seasons. It is not just the power hitting. It is the reading of situations — knowing when to anchor, knowing when to attack, knowing, as the bus driver knows where the road opens up.
“One of the things I think he’s done well this year is he’s picked his moments quite well,” Bobat explained. “A game like today — he took his time to get in, we lost a couple of quick wickets. Rajat recognised those moments and understood that he needed to build a mini-partnership and then go through the gears again — that’s the thing that I’ve enjoyed seeing. Him reading situations and conditions and knowing when to go to his top gear and when to go down is a really, really impressive part of his development.”
Not once does Bobat point to a specific shot, a specific technical fix, a specific drill in the nets. Because the improvement is deeper than that.
“I wouldn’t necessarily reference specific shots or areas of his game,” he said. “He’s a pretty well-rounded player.”
THE STORY OF RCB CAPTAIN
The story of how Rajat Patidar arrived at this moment is, like most good cricket stories, one of rejection and resilience.
He was picked up by RCB in the 2021 auction at his base price of 20 lakh — a relative unknown from Madhya Pradesh who had been quietly accumulating runs in domestic cricket for years. He made his debut that season, played four games, scored 71 runs, and was released. At the 2022 mega auction, no franchise bid for him. Not one. He went unsold.
Then, mid-tournament in 2022, RCB’s uncapped wicketkeeper Luvnith Sisodia was ruled out with an injury. Patidar was signed as his replacement — again for 20 lakh, again with nothing guaranteed. What he did with that second chance is now part of IPL folklore. He scored 333 runs in 8 games, including an extraordinary 112 not out off 54 balls in the Eliminator against Lucknow Super Giants at Eden Gardens. He became the first uncapped player to score a century in the IPL playoffs. RCB won that match. A heel injury wiped out his entire 2023. He came back in 2024 and scored 395 runs at a strike rate of 177.13. By the time the 2025 mega auction came around, RCB retained only three players — Virat Kohli, Yash Dayal, and Rajat Patidar.
And then they handed him the captaincy.
It came as a surprise to many. Kohli was right there, one of the greatest ever to play the game, a man who had captained RCB for years. But Patidar had already been captaining Madhya Pradesh in domestic cricket — leading them to the final of the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, scoring 428 runs in the tournament at a strike rate of 186. The franchise saw something in him that went beyond batting average. They saw a leader.
In IPL 2025, captaincy in hand, Patidar led RCB to their first-ever IPL title. An 18-year drought, ended. He scored 312 runs that season at a strike rate of 143 — not gaudy numbers by his own standards, but the innings that mattered arrived when they needed to. That is the thing about Patidar. He tends to be at his best when the road gets difficult.
SPIN BASHER ONLY?
This season, the batting has gone to another level entirely. 486 runs at a strike rate of 196, playing with a fearlessness that has become the team’s identity. He has broken open games in the middle overs, absorbing pressure early and then detonating. Against Rajasthan Royals earlier in the season, RCB lost early wickets and Patidar spent the first part of his innings absorbing, containing, refusing to give his wicket away. Then he shifted gears. “That was really encouraging to see,” said Bobat, “because that takes a real level of discipline and sophistication to your thinking and planning.”
There has also been an image to correct. For a long time, Patidar was labelled a spin-basher — a batter who prospered against turning deliveries but was less comfortable against pace. Bobat laughed at this in Tuesday’s press conference, with the good humour of a man who knows he had a hand in creating the label. “I remember at some point last season, I think I called him a ‘spin basher’ and I think he got quite annoyed with me because I was implying that it was only spin,” Bobat said. “So I think he’s probably trying to prove a point to me.”
On Tuesday in Dharamsala, against Gujarat’s pace attack, the point was made comprehensively. Siraj, Rabada, Prasidh Krishna — all were treated with equal ferocity. “Whether he’s facing pace bowling or spin bowling, off the front foot or back foot, the ball hits the middle of his bat quite a lot,” Bobat noted. “So I think he’s got some really good and sound basics.”
What drives it all, Bobat says, is an almost preternatural management of energy and self. “He’s very good at managing his own energy, which I think is serving him well right now — saving his energy for his batting, and also saving his energy for when he needs to get his tactics right out in the middle. He keeps things pretty simple. He’s somebody that wants to focus on doing his job when he gets on the field, and he’s pretty relaxed with everything off the field.”
The calm, in other words, is not indifference. It is a system.
“Any team that’s got the captain playing well, it fills them with even greater confidence,” Bobat added. “With every game he captains, he gets more and more experience and that will only add to his own confidence and resilience under pressure.”
SUPERSTAR OF A DIFFERENT KIND
Patidar does not have the air of superstardom. He does not court the limelight the way Kohli does, does not carry the mythological weight of an MS Dhoni or the easy charisma of a Rohit Sharma. He gives few interviews, says little that is particularly quotable, and lets the batting do the announcing. In a league that runs on personality as much as performance, he is something of an anomaly — a man who has made himself indispensable almost entirely on the strength of his cricket.
And yet, standing in those Dharamsala stands on Tuesday evening, listening to the crowd chant his name as he walked off having turned a match, turned a total, turned an entire evening on its head — it was impossible not to feel that he is becoming something larger. Not a superstar in the conventional sense. Something more durable. A player his team trusts completely. A captain who leads, above all, by doing.
Now comes the final. For the second successive year, Patidar stands one match away from the title. If he wins it, he joins the most exclusive club in Indian cricket — MS Dhoni and Rohit Sharma are the only captains to have won back-to-back IPL titles. The company doesn’t come more distinguished than that.
But there is another question that has been growing louder throughout this tournament, and Tuesday’s knock will only amplify it. Patidar has played ODIs for India and made his Test debut in 2024. In T20 Internationals, however, he remains uncapped. At 33, with 486 IPL runs this season at a strike rate of 196 — dismantling pace and spin alike, reading conditions better than almost anyone in the competition — the question is inevitable: how much longer can the selectors look past him?
In a T20I middle order that has often searched for exactly the kind of aggressive, situation-reading batter that Patidar is, the case feels stronger than ever. He is not a wild hitter who goes from ball one and hopes for the best. He is the bus driver in the hills — patient on the inclines, ruthless when the road opens up. International cricket, particularly in the shortest format, could use precisely that.
The road from Dharamsala winds back down to the plains. Somewhere on it, the bus driver grips the wheel and reads the next bend. He has been doing this long enough to know: the best is still ahead.
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