On the eve of an IPL final, nobody gives anything away. That is the unwritten rule. But the two captains who will walk out at the Narendra Modi Stadium on Sunday have, in the lead-up to the final, told you everything you needed to know. Not in what they said, but in how they said it.
Rajat Patidar went first, on Saturday evening in Ahmedabad. When the question landed, about India’s T20I set-up, his place in it, the possibilities, he picked up the dead bat and left it there.
“The answer to your first question is I’m not looking forward to any selection regarding India. So, I’m not looking forward to it.”
Full stop. Next question.
Shubman Gill had spoken about the same in the lead up to the big final. He was warmer. More considered. But no less careful.
“I will be happy to play if I get picked for the T20 team. And honestly, I want to keep working hard. Doesn’t matter what format it is. I want to keep getting better as a T20 batter, ODI batter and Test batter. Cricket is such a game — you can never really get perfect, but obviously you strive for it, and that’s what I like.”
Different answers. Different men. Same final, tomorrow, at the Narendra Modi Stadium.
GILL AND PATIDAR IN THE MIX?
The chatter exists for a reason. With India looking to move on from Suryakumar Yadav’s T20I captaincy following the World Cup win earlier this year, names have been floated — Sanju Samson, Tilak Varma, Shreyas Iyer. But the IPL has a habit of forcing selectors’ hands, and both Patidar and Gill have spent the last two months making that conversation very difficult to avoid.
Patidar has been the engine room of Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s middle-order — 486 runs at a strike rate nudging 200. But the number that really turns heads came in the Qualifier 1 against Gujarat Titans in Dharamsala, where he walked in and smashed 93 off 33 balls against one of the best T20 bowling attacks in the competition — Mohammed Siraj in form, Kagiso Rabada at full tilt — and made it look almost unfair. It was the kind of innings that changes the terms of a conversation.
Gill, meanwhile, has done what he always does — quietly, relentlessly accumulated. Dropped from the T20 World Cup squad despite being vice-captain, he came back to the IPL and scored 722 runs at a strike rate of 163.72, his best in the format. That includes a dominant hundred in the virtual semifinal against a Jofra Archer-led Rajasthan Royals in Chandigarh.
DIFFERENT OPTICS
The optics around both men, though, couldn’t be more different.
Gill carries the weight of inevitability. He is already India’s ODI and Test captain. Five days after this final, he heads to New Chandigarh to lead the Test side against Afghanistan. He is being built, deliberately and consciously, as the next face of Indian cricket. The T20I question, then, is almost an awkward footnote — except that the traffic jam at the top of the T20I batting order is, as someone put it, worse than Bengaluru’s Silk Board junction, and Gill knows it.
Patidar carries something quieter. The 32-year-old from Madhya Pradesh has spent the better part of his career flying just below the radar — one ODI cap in 2022, three Test appearances in 2024, and then, largely, silence from the selection table. He has never been handed anything. Everything he has earned, he has earned loudly, at the biggest moments, in front of the biggest crowds.
If RCB win on Sunday, he becomes only the third captain in IPL history — after MS Dhoni and Rohit Sharma — to win back-to-back titles. That is not a small thing. That is the kind of thing that changes a cricketer’s story permanently.
But ask him about it directly, and he will give you nothing.
Right after the press conference ended, Patidar was on the ground, leading RCB’s optional training session. Virat Kohli wasn’t there for the initial part. Patidar was — hooking short-pitched deliveries into the empty stands, one after another, as if the conversation had never happened. As if tomorrow is the only thing that exists.
For both men, that is the honest answer to every T20I question. Win tomorrow. Everything else follows.
The selectors meet to pick the squad for India’s T20I series against Ireland and England — running from June 26 to July 11 — not long after the final whistle blows at this stadium. A statement knock on Sunday will make it very hard to keep either name out of that room.
They know it. They just won’t say it.
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