Shreyas Iyer- The Dark Horse

Well I don’t need to tell you all, how well Shreyas Iyer has played in the CT 2025. But you need to know how well he has played throughout the past 1–2 years. Since he returned from his injury into the Asia Cup 2023, he has simply performed in every league he has participated in. He has won every trophy in which's final he has played apart from the ODI World Cup 2023.

Starting from

Asia Cup 2023:

ODI World Cup 2023: best figures for a number 4 batsmen for India in World Cups.

T20I against Australia: Scored a half century in one of the two match and lead India to series win.

India Vs England and India Vs South Africa Test: Did not perform well in both the tests along with many other team India players who did not perform well, making BCCI only drop him from the playing 11.

Accused by BCCI: After playing continuously from Asia Cup(30–8–2023) to Test(05–02–2024), his back injury relapsed and he returned home citing injury. Only to be accused by NCA and BCCI of faking his Injury.

Removed from the BCCI Contract List: without any meaningful explanation onto why such a decision was taken.

Ranji Trophy 2024: Coming from a back injury which was ignored by BCCI and NCA scored 95 in Ranji Final 2024 and helped Mumbai win.

IPL Trophy: scored 351 runs at an average of 39 and a decent strike rate of 146.86, Became the first captain to lead two different teams in IPL Finals. Won the IPL 2024 along with his team to make him one of the most successful captains in IPL.

Irani Cup 2025: Won the Irani Cup Trophy

IPL 2025 Auction: After getting KKR there 2nd trophy he was not retained by KKR citing that he is not worth the money. Goes into the Auction to be sold for 26.75 Crore to Punjab Kings showing everyone what is his actual worth.

SMAT 2024: Won the SMAT 2024 leading Mumbai from the front and scoring the 4th most runs in the SMAT 2024 Tournament with an astonishing strike rate of 188.5.

I doubt whether any other player has ever won so many tournaments as a player in a single year. He basically won all the domestically played tournaments including IPL in the year 2024.

India Vs England ODI: Got a suprise call up in the team and he played fantastically showing his class and scoring two half centries and a 40+ score in the three matches. Iyer said that he only played because Virat Kohli got injured, so if not for Virat Kohli’s injury that day the selectors might have not even selected him in the CT 2025 squad. They might have dropped a player with zero fails without any reason in a tournament like CT 2025.

Now comes the tournament where it mattered the most………………

Champions Trophy 2025: finished as India's top run-scorer in the competition with 243 runs in five games, including successive half-centuries against Pakistan and New Zealand in the group stage. He played a key knock of 48 runs in the final. There wasn’t a single match where he did not perform. According to me he should have won the POT, as the pitches he played on were tougher then Pakistan pitches.

I understand that Rohit Sharma has decided to carry on with the captaincy and maybe plans to captain the ODI WC 2027 team as well. However, whenever and at whichever stage Rohit decides to retire, the ideal Captain for at least ODI team India should be Iyer……needs to be Shreyas Iyer.

I don’t think he needs to prove himself any more to the selectors, to BCCI or to the Indian crowd. He has done it all, won all the tournaments that have taken place. Even Captained 2 and won it. Many give credit to the coaches or another players for his wins, but winning 5 tournaments in a successive row with different teams isn’t something that just happens. Even the greatest of Indian players haven’t been able to achieve this feat.

He is not in the GOT league but maybe can become one of the ideal ICT Captains. He should be taken back in the test team and even given a few chances in the T20I Team after his wonderful performance in the domestic circuit in both the formats. Whether or not he performs in the Test and T20I format doesn’t matter, he should be simply given the ODI Captaincy as soon as possible, so that he can start building an ideal team for the ODI WC 2027.

As far as different captaincy for different formats is concerned, India should simply approach the different format different captaincy approach, it is not necessary for all the formats to have the same captain. Each format is different and so should the captain be.

Hope the next long post that I do is showcasing how Shreyas Iyer lead Punjab to victory. There is already no stopping him, but if that happens then even BCCI won’t be able to say no to Iyer for ICT Captaincy.