Shreyas Iyer is experiencing the highest of the highs as captain as he continues to lead his teams towards competition victories. Having won the IPL for the Kolkata Knight Riders last year and the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, Iyer’s Punjab Kings ensured a top-two finish for IPL 2025.
Shreyas Iyer is living the daylights out of his time as captain in domestic T20 competitions. The championship-winning captain with the Kolkata Knight Riders in the IPL last year is on the way to replicating the heroics with the Punjab Kings this time. Iyer fittingly scored the match-winning six for his side against the Mumbai Indians, confirming a top-two finish for his side as the Punjab Kings were too good on Monday in Jaipur in their final league game and will now be off to their home venue in Mullanpur as they await the result of the LSG vs RCB to know their Thursday opponent.
It was a masterful chase from Josh Inglis and Priyansh Arya with a 109-run partnership for the second wicket, seeing their team through before Iyer finished it with a couple of sixes. While it was his 49th win as a captain in the IPL, Iyer completed 2,500 runs being a skipper in the tournament. Iyer also reached the milestone of 100 sixes as a captain in the IPL while registering 500-plus runs in the ongoing season at a strike rate of 170. Iyer became the sixth captain to hit 100 sixes in the IPL while also becoming only the second PBKS captain after KL Rahul (twice) to complete 500 runs in a season.
Most sixes as captain in IPL
223 – MS Dhoni (CSK/RPS), in 204 innings
168 – Virat Kohli (RCB), in 142 innings
158 – Rohit Sharma (MI), in 157 innings
109 – David Warner (DC/SRH), in 83 innings
105 – KL Rahul (PBKS/LSG), in 64 innings
101 – Shreyas Iyer (DC/KKR/PBKS), in 83 innings
This is the third time that the Kings will finish in the top two in an IPL season after 2008 and 2014. While they lost the semi-final in the inaugural edition against the Chennai Super Kings, PBKS reached the final in 2014 before losing to the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR). Now the Kings have an opportunity to do what no other Punjab squad has achieved in the previous 17 editions.
Punjab Kings will be affected by Marco Jansen’s departure, with the tall Proteas seamer set to leave the camp to prepare for the World Test Championship (WTC) final and hence, got a game into Kyle Jamieson before the big last week.