There may not be a better time to illustrate what unshackled leadership comes to yield in a grinding tournament like the Indian Premier League. Pat Cummins was by no means outstanding but he kept taking pace off the ball and asked Travis Head, Abhishek Sharma and Nitish Reddy to bat as if there’s no tomorrow. His IPL average may have slumped to its lowest since 2014, but Faf du Plessis reveled in rallying around his bowlers while giving Virat Kohli the freedom to do his thing. And in Sanju Samson and Shreyas Iyer, Rajasthan Royals and Kolkata Knight Riders found characters willing to quietly prove a point.
The link between all of them? None were tied down by past baggage. Cummins was parachuted in only this year. South Africans tend to have a more positive take on defeats and du Plessis, who took over from Virat Kohli in 2022, is no different. Samson’s captaincy is an extension of his no-holds barred approach in batting, which allows for very little scope for regret. And this was as good as a new start for Iyer, having missed out 2023 due to a surgery. Also, in case you forgot, Iyer is still without a BCCI central contract. With the T20 World Cup selection looming, both Indians had nothing to lose apart from giving their best shot to winning the IPL.
To that effect, Samson and Iyer’s leadership has been proactive, but there’s also no denying the brains working behind the scenes here. Be it opening the batting with Sunil Narine, or sending Andre Russell to bat as high as No 4, this has been a season of punts for KKR. And at its behest has been Gautam Gambhir, a fierce defendant of the ‘cricket is a team game’ theory who isn’t used to taking ‘no’ for an answer. Equally persuasive has been Kumar Sangakkara, who was not only instrumental in retaining and nurturing youngsters like Yashasvi Jaiswal, Dhruv Jurel and Riyan Parag, but also helped develop a sense of resilience that has seen Royals make the playoffs twice since he joined in 2021.
More compelling though are the stories of Sunrisers Hyderabad and RCB who took different paths to the playoffs. Picking up Travis Head for a cool ₹6.8 crore was an indication of which way Sunrisers were leaning in this IPL but it wasn’t till Mumbai Indians came to Hyderabad that the repercussions of that move were felt. Setting alight the IPL with a murderous 24-ball 62 out of 277 in the first week, following it up with a 41-ball hundred in a world record 287, Head was only one part of the well-oiled run machine that Sunrisers proved to be throughout the IPL. Equally belligerent has been Abhishek Sharma, the only Indian to cross 400 runs in this IPL with a strike rate of over 200.