The night MI felt the full force of Shreyas' ire

Shreyas Iyer was proper in the zone. The kind of space where you forget where you are. It takes time to come down from that trance.

When he was walking back after leading a third side into an IPL final, as he protected a seemingly injured right hand and shook hands with his left, he saw Shashank Singh and gave him a dirty look. It doesn't need a professional lipreader to ascertain what he said. Translated to English: "don't come close to me". Followed by the most common Hindi expletive.

This was a man aroused by the competition. He scored 87 not out off 41 for any team - Punjab Kings (PBKS) on this occasion - to successfully chase down 200-plus against Mumbai Indians (MI) for the first time in the 18 years of the IPL. MI, whom everyone fears for their success rate in big matches. MI, who held an 18-7 record in playoffs and knockouts coming into this match. MI, who were riding high after beating the best IPL team of the last four years, Gujarat Titans (GT).

But Iyer hadn't forgotten how Shashank had left the job unfinished. That he had strolled the first half of the run that he couldn't complete. The calm Iyer, the focusser on his own breathing, the dropper of big words one interview at a time ("stupendous" on this night, in case you were wondering), the dancer they all want to make reels with; under the surface a ferocious competitor. He was, in his words, "locked in".

Trent Boult can get a highlights reel of surreal catches he has taken. You can't say that of many fast bowlers. Yet, the more you play, the more you put yourself out there, there are bound to be errors that stick to you. In the 2019 World Cup final, he ended up touching the rope when catching Ben Stokes. Here he dropped Nehal Wadhera, the left-hand batter whose presence in the middle kept Mitchell Santner from bowling his third and fourth overs.

Even in the last match, GT kept holding back M Shahrukh Khan and kept promoting left-hand batters. The result: Santner bowled just one over for ten runs and a wicket. He has gone at 9.12 an over and 73 runs per wicket against left-hand batters this IPL as against 7.61 and 26.66 against right-hand batters. So there was some sound reasoning behind not bowling Santner. As their coach Mahela Jayawardene said, it was something that had worked for them in the past especially given they have had bowling options.

On the night, Hardik Pandya did actually take the bolder route and bowled Santner at Wadhera. Santner would have got him out had Naman Dhir not misjudged the catch at deep midwicket and then lobbed it for a four. Then Boult reprieved Wadhera off Hardik's bowling. We will never know if he would have found the courage to trust Santner again because just as he was possibly preparing the stage for the next bold move, Iyer happened.

Ashwani Kumar went for just four in the 11th over. Jasprit Bumrah conceded seven in the 12th after having gone for 20 in his first. With eight overs to go, we were now at two runs a ball with two Bumrah overs up MI's sleeve. Hardik possibly felt he needed to push it just a little more before he could go shopping. He brought on Reece Topley, playing his first match of the season because of the injury to Deepak Chahar and then to his replacement Richard Gleeson.

Topley had bowled two decent overs in the powerplay, but Iyer, 19 off 15 now, knew he was going to take him down. And this is where the transformation of Iyer the T20 batter became apparent. Earlier in the day, Himanish Ganjoo tweeted how batters were slogging length balls way more frequently than till 2023. In the years 2022 and 2023, Iyer played zero slogs to length balls from fast bowlers. In 2024 and 2025, he has done so to 11.39% of good-length balls.

Topley's first ball to Iyer was just there: 8.86m. Marginally short of good length. All the more reason to not slog it. Iyer, though, slogged it. It was not a powerful slog. He saw to it - borrowing from Iyer's words - that he didn't over-hit it. And then, the MI bowlers lost their execution en masse. Six of Iyer's eight sixes off the MI fast bowlers came off slot balls, pitched between 4m and 6m. Iyer was absolutely brutal on those. They offered him seven, and he missed only one.

Those with a lot of experience of playing and coaching the sport at the highest level say there is no secret to planning. The sport is more about the execution on the day. Jayawardene was clear they didn't execute well. All these slot balls were either length balls pitched too full or yorkers gone too short. Iyer was on top of his execution game, the bowlers weren't. Iyer was locked in, the bowlers weren't. The other day Sherfane Rutherford toe-ended one of these slot balls. Iyer didn't.

However, it wasn't all cashing in on loose balls. Even when the bowlers executed well, Iyer outdid them. If they bowled seven slot balls at him, they also bowled seven yorkers. With the ball tailing a little. Iyer steered them behind square for three fours, one to the right of short third, two to the left. He took 13 runs off seven yorkers.

With the efficiency of power-hitting these days, you can't really have third back in the death overs. Iyer took the best the two big MI bowlers - Bumrah and Boult - could throw at him and turned them into fours. The one off Bumrah's yorker was audacious. This ball swung in 0.57 degrees, just enough to make you shift from the original line you line up, and it would have landed 18cm in front of the middle stump had Iyer not dabbed it fine of short third.

Iyer hit the slot balls mercilessly, scored boundaries off yorkers, so what's left? Ah, the short ball. Off 13 balls pitched shorter than 6m, he scored 28 runs, including the lovely nonchalant afterthought of a ramp off a slower bouncer from Hardik.

It was also a great day for Iyer in the field. For the third playoff match in a row, it turned out that the side winning the toss had chosen wrongly. In the first, the ball moved around a lot more in the second innings, but Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) didn't have many to chase. In the second, MI had to deal with huge amounts of dew, but Bumrah bowled them out of trouble.

Here, PBKS - or the weather folks in Ahmedabad - had no clue it would rain when they decided to field. Between the toss and start of the match, it began to rain and kept raining on and off for more than two hours. When it did stop, they wasted no time in getting the game on.

PBKS had to now contend with a wet ball. Their legspinner match-winner Yuzvendra Chahal was making his comeback, his bowling hand still not 100%. Suryakumar Yadav corrected his unfavourable match-up against Chahal with three sixes, but Iyer kept trusting his big player. In his final over, Chahal took Suryakumar with him, a wicket that cost MI about 20 runs.

All through the first innings, PBKS just kept hanging in. Their coaching staff was a little nonplussed when Iyer went to Azmatullah Omarzai - 2-0-24-0 - at the death even though Vijaykumar Vyshak - 3-0-30-1 - had an over left. The bowling coach James Hopes said Iyer just went with his gut, and Omarzai gave him two overs for 19 and the wickets of Hardik and Dhir.

It was well past midnight when Iyer finished the win to reach the final, meaning the final is "tomorrow" and not "day after". He is the only captain [apart from MS Dhoni - Chennai Super Kings (CSK) and Rising Pune Supergiant/s] to have taken more than one team to the IPL final, also the only one to lead two different teams to the final in successive years. Hang on, why does he have three teams then? Why has he been released immediately after winning the title?

To be fair to Delhi Capitals (DC), he was yet another anchor when they let go of him. Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) didn't quite show the desperation to retain their winning captain.

"Tomorrow" they will move one pitch to the side. Onto the exact same surface on which Iyer did things that still resonate with his team. Their first match of IPl 2025 was played on pitch No. 6 in Ahmedabad, the mixed-soil pitch in the middle of the square. The first ball he faced for a new team, he made a statement by lofting Kagiso Rabada's hard length over mid-on.

If his first act was a statement for those on the outside, Iyer's final act with the bat was a statement for his own team. He was 97 not out but not on strike when the last over began. Shashank hit the second ball to deep midwicket, was happy with one to give Iyer the strike, but Iyer pushed Shashank for the second. Iyer never got the strike back, but 23 came off that final over. PBKS won by 11. Iyer still doesn't have an IPL century.

On that same pitch, Iyer will come up against the team that has beaten them twice in their last two encounters, the vastly improved RCB. Against an India team-mate with whom he shared a profound heartbreak at the same venue in 2023. They have both improved massively as T20 batters over the last two years. Virat Kohli has been loved unconditionally by his only franchise, who are yet to win the IPL. Iyer has won the IPL, but not the unconditional love of a franchise. Or the India T20I side. In between he even lost his national contract.

Only one of the two will find solace on Tuesday night.