Krunal Pandya has always lived in the shadow of his younger brother, Hardik – the flamboyant star of Indian cricket. He’s never been the headline act, never the poster boy. But those who’ve followed his journey closely know that Krunal Pandya is cut from a different cloth – one built on grit, resilience, and unshakable calm under pressure.
On Tuesday night, Krunal Pandya quietly carved his name into the history books, becoming the first-ever player to win multiple Player of the Match awards in IPL finals as Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) beat Punjab Kings (PBKS) by six runs on Tuesday. No fuss, no flair – just a man rising to the occasion when it matters the most.
Krunal Pandya entered his name in the history books on Tuesday (June 3) by becoming the first player in the world to win two Player of the Match awards in the IPL final. Krunal Pandya The 34-year-old all-rounder from Baroda bowled four overs for Royal Challengers Bengaluru in the IPL 2025 final played against Punjab Kings at Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad and picked up two wickets for 17 runs.
Krunal Pandya, who played in the IPL for the Mumbai Indians from 2016 to 2021, won the POTM award in the 2017 final for his all-round show against the Rising Pune Super Giants. Krunal Pandya , who played 43 matches for Lucknow Super Giants in the IPL from 2022 to 2024, was signed for Rs 5.75 crore by RCB in the IPL 2025 mega auction, and in this year’s IPL, he scored 109 runs and picked up 17 wickets in 15 matches for the Rajat Patidar-led side.
Royal Challengers Bengaluru won their maiden title in the IPL 2025 final against Punjab Kings at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad. A lot of credit should go to Krunal Pandya, who bowled a brilliant spell in the high-stakes clash. The left-arm spinner helped RCB make a comeback and eventually beat Punjab Kings by 6 runs. He was named the Player of the Match for his magical spell of 4-0-17-2.
Pitch Report and Toss
Pitch Report : ” Square boundaries are 64 metres on either side. 72m down the ground. Looks like a belter of a wicket. It looks great, consistent and will be really flat. Don’t think 200 is enough on this wicket. Back of length and using those square boundaries will be key. This is a 25 percent black soil and 75 percent red soil surface. 6 of the 8 games here have been won by teams batting first here.” reckons Micheal Clarke and Murali Karthik
Toss : Punjab Kings skipper won the toss and chose to bowl in an all important finals with no changes in the Playing XI. Royal Challengers Bengaluru skipper Rajat Patidar batting first also made no changes to the Playing XI .
Kyle Jamieson and Arshdeep Singh’s 3-fers restrict RCB to 190 in 20 overs
Phil Salt began by targeting the fine leg fence against Arshdeep Singh but fell in the second over from Kyle Jamieson after he mistimed a big hit. Shreyas Iyer backpedalled from mid-on, kept his eye on the ball and pouched it close to the boundary. Virat Kohli faced only 10 balls of the PowerPlay but Mayank Agarawal arrived at one-drop and made a streaky start and got a few shots going. PBKS came away as the better side with the ball moving a touch for the quicks.
Yuzvendra Chahal turned the screws right away. Mayank’s slog sweep went straight to Arshdeep at deep backward square leg. The surface was once again conducive for change of pace. Kohli was in the middle of a scratchy start but put away a predictable slower bouncer from Azmatullah Omarzai for a four over the keeper.
Patidar took on spin like he usually does, hitting Chahal for a six over mid-wicket. Jamieson also resorted to taking pace off the ball, a tactic he employed to great effect against Mumbai Indians in the second qualifier at this venue. He however, went the other direction to take out Patidar. After four slower balls of different lengths that Patidar managed to see off, Jamieson slipped in a full, straight delivery at 132kmph that the RCB captain missed and was out LBW.
To Kohli and a newly arrived Liam Livingstone, Chahal bowled an exceptional six-run over. RCB got stuck in a rut from the halfway stage but began to open right after the timeout. Livingstone and Kohli got 14 off Chahal but Omarzai lulled the RCB faithful into silence in the very next over. He continued to go short against Kohli and snuffed him out with one, covering good ground to take a catch that came off the leading edge.
Through most of RCB’s innings, it felt difficult to pin down whether they were going a touch too slow on a flat pitch or laying a strong platform on a slow one. While Kohli did his thing at one end, his top-order colleagues kept falling just when they were looking threatening, with Phil Salt, Rajat Patidar and Liam Livingstone scoring 66 off 43 between them. All three fell to Kyle Jamieson, who used the slower legcutter to telling effect, either getting it to die on the batter from shorter lengths or dip disconcertingly when he went full.
Jamieson, Azmatullah Omarzai and Vijaykumar Vyshak all hammered away on a hard length, and RCB couldn’t quite find a way to attack that length until Jitesh Sharma walked in. His 24 off 10 balls was a crucial little cameo in the end, featuring a flat-batted six over cover when he exposed all his stumps to create room, and a scooped six over his head, hit while chest-on to the bowler, Jamieson.
Jitesh Sharma took it upon himself to turn the tide. He hit two fours off Arshdeep and then brutally took down Jamieson, who’d bowled three excellent overs in the earlier phases. Jitesh ramped a short ball over fine leg and tonked a straight six when the pacer changed his length to go full. Livingstone added to the tally in the same over before falling leg before off a full toss. Romario Shepherd walked in and almost immediately got a reprieve as Praveen Dubey dropped a tough chance running in from mid-wicket.
Jitesh’s innings threatened to take RCB past 200, but their ambitions were nipped in the bud by Vyshak, who dismissed Jitesh while conceding just five runs in the 18th over, and Arshdeep Singh, who found the reverse-swing that allowed him to go full and attack the stumps in a three-wicket final over that cost PBKS just five runs.
In the middle of an intense exchange, Vyshak knocked back Jitesh’s stumps to once again silence the RCB faithful in the stands. Shepherd however, sparked life back into them with a four over fine leg and a massive six over mid-wicket off Omarzai. Arshdeep however, swung the game again, with a peach full ball to trap the West Indian leg before in the final over. After conceding 37 in his first three overs, Arshdeep’s fourth, in the 20th – read: 1 W 1 W 1 W.
Experienced Krunal Pandya’s emphatic bowling steers RCB to IPL 2025 title.
Chasing 191 to win their first-ever IPL trophy, Punjab Kings were off to a solid start. Their openers Priyansh Arya and Prabhsimran Singh added 43 runs in quick time. Arya scored 24 off 19 balls before getting caught near the ropes off Josh Hazlewood’s bowling. Prabhsimran kept the momentum going with a couple of sixes.
Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Josh Hazlewood tested Prabhsimran Singh’s short-ball flaw early, but couldn’t take him out with it. Against Bhuvneshwar, the PBKS opener’s cut flew just beyond the outstretched arm off deep backward point.
Off Hazlewood, he top-edged a pull to Shepherd at fine leg, who spilled it. Priyansh Arya meanwhile, lived a streaky life. He got two top-edges to fly to the third man fence for successive fours before Phil Salt produced a boundary line blinder to dismiss the left-hander. Josh Inglis pulled Yash Dayal for a six but overall, the RCB pace troika did well to keep a leash on Punjab’s scoring in the first phase.
Krunal Pandya has won three IPL titles with Mumbai Indians (MI), and was Player of the Match in one of them. That was for what he did with the bat. This time, he came in to bat in the 18th over and holed out for 4 off 5. This time, he turned the match with the ball. The final was on a knife edge when he came on. PBKS were 52 for 1 at the end of their powerplay; RCB had been 55 for 1 at the same stage.
But Krunal Pandya changed the game for RCB with two big wickets. First, he got Prabhsimran Singh out for 26, caught by Bhuvneshwar Kumar. Then, in his final over, he dismissed Josh Inglis, who was looking dangerous after scoring 39 off 23 balls. Inglis hit 4 sixes, but Krunal Pandya got him caught by Liam Livingstone at deep mid-wicket.
Krunal Pandya’s first over contained most of the ingredients that made him so difficult to hit on this pitch, which had just enough natural variation of pace and turn to make him hard to line up. Krunal Pandya bowled fast and into the pitch, either angling the ball into the right-handers’ leg stump and cramping them for room or firing it wide of off stump to offer a single to sweeper cover that they didn’t particularly want. Only three runs came off this over.
Krunal Pandya’s next over brought in another dimension: the ability to spot the batter’s intentions and change his pace at the last moment. Seeing the struggling Prabhsimran charge at him, Krunal Pandya – whose usual pace hovers in the 98-101kph range – dangled an 80kph ball outside his eyeline. Wrenched out of shape, Prabhsimran skewed a catch to point.
Krunal Pandya started with a three-run over as Prabhsimran’s struggles spilled over. Suyash Sharma gave him a way out with a full ball in the slot that the opener hit for a straight six. Inglis pulled a googly for one too as the pair took 15 off the leggie. Krunal Pandya continued to be a pest for Prabhsimran after the time out, as he had the opener caught at backward point. The game turned for the worse for PBKS in the 10th over when Shepherd got Shreyas Iyer to nick one behind.
Go back to November 19, 2023. Shreyas Iyer had been in red-hot form through that ODI World Cup, and had played the innings of India’s semi-final win. Then, in the final, he had fallen early, caught behind off a back-of-a-length delivery. The same script played out all over again now, more or less. Where he had poked uncertainly at Pat Cummins two years ago, he top-edged an attempted slash through point, off Romario Shepherd. It was a massive inflection point in this game, leaving PBKS needing 112 off 62 balls.
They were still in with more than a shout, though, because of their batting depth, and because Josh Inglis was playing a blinder. On this pitch where the short or shortish ball wasn’t coming onto the bat at anything like a predictable pace or height, he was playing the pull like a man in a dream. He scored 33 off 10 pulls, against pace and spin, hitting one four and four sixes.
At 39, however, he looked to step out and launch Krunal Pandya over long-on, and didn’t quite find either the power or elevation to do so. At that point, with PBKS needing 93 off 47, it seemed all but over.
Inglis tried to push back with a six off Shepherd in the wicket over and another one off Krunal Pandya in the next, but the left-arm spinner was in the midst of a stirring spell of bowling as he conceded just 14 off three overs. Patidar gave him his fourth over on the trot and the left-arm spinner repaid that faith with Inglis’s wicket to knock the wind out of PBKS’ sails. Shashank Singh and Nehal Wadhera couldn’t connect against the spin of Suyash but the left-hander hit a four and six off Shepherd to keep the flame flickering heading to the death overs.
Shashank had started his season at the same ground, and hit five fours in a now iconic final over, leaving his captain, on 97, without the strike.
He ended it with another burst of brilliance, keeping PBKS hanging on by their fingernails even as the required rate kept climbing. He hit Hazlewood for two sixes in the 16th over, and kept the equation within the bounds of possibility: 55 off 24. Then, with the rest of PBKS’ batters and genuine allrounders back in the hut, he refused singles and kept the strike all through the 19th over, hitting Bhuvneshwar for a six and a four to bring it to 29 off the last six balls.
Shashank hit two sixes off Hazlewood in a 17-run 16th over to drag the game back to an even keel. But Bhuvneshwar pushed RCB a step towards glory with the wickets of Wadhera and Marcus Stoinis in the 17th over. Azmatullah Omarzai then fell in the 18th over off Dayal, leaving Shashank with too much to do. He hit a six and a four off Bhuvneshwar in the penultimate over to take the equation down to 29 off 6. Hazlewood bowled two dots to end the tie and Kohli was in tears, even as Shashank went 6, 4, 6, 6 in the next four balls.
It wasn’t to be, but the explosion at the finish, when the match was done, showed how much closer PBKS could have come if things had gone just a little differently as RCB went on to win the final by 6 runs.
Presentations and Takeaways
Shreyas Iyer the losing PBKS skipper said : Dejected to be honest but the way our boys came up to the occasion, the way we cherished, it wasn’t immaculate but lot of credit goes to the management, the support staff and each and every person who has participated and contributed. The way the owners supported us was also amazing.
Considering the last game against MI, I personally felt that 200 was a par score. They bowled brilliantly, especially Krunal, he carries a lot of experience, he has done it over a period of time. I believe that was the turning point. I am very proud of each and every individual who has participated in this team.
There are a lot of youngsters who are playing their first season. The fearless nature that they showed was simply phenomenal. I keep on saying the same thing but hats off to every individual who has been here and who has contributed, the support staff, the management.
We wouldn’t be here without them, kudos to them. The job is still half done, we have to be here and win the trophy next year.
Positives, definitely the way we turned up and every individual stepping up and saying that he can win the match, there are so many youngsters in the team, I’m sure they’ve gained a lot of experience from these matches. I’m sure when they come next year they will carry immense experience with them. We can build some tactics and strategies around that so that we can play some decent cricket.
Rajat Patidar thee IPL winning skipper said : I think it is really special for me and special for Virat Kohli and all the fans who have supported for years. They deserve it. After the Qualifier 1, at that time we thought we could do this. I think 190 was a good score on this track because it was a bit slow. The way bowlers executed their plans was tremendous to watch. He’s (Krunal) a wicket-taking bowler.
Whenever I come under pressure, I look for KP. Suyash also bowled really well throughout the season. And all the fast bowlers – Bhuvi, Yash, Hazlewood and the way Romario came in and the way he gave 2-3 overs and the breakthrough was special.
For me it’s a great opportunity to do captaincy under him and it was a great learning for me. As I said he deserves it more than anyone else. Virat Kohli and all the fans. Everyone who has supported – the management, support staff – the way they’ve supported the players was beautiful. I just want to say one line for the fans – Ee salaa Cup Namdu.
Krunal Pandya Player of the Match for his stellar performance said : When we batted in the first innings, I was sitting outside and chatting with batters, I realised the slower you bowl the better. But in this format as a bowler you need guts to do that because the margin of error is small. I just backed myself and thought that if I’m able to vary my pace and keep it more on the slower side, I’ll create chances rather than just coming and firing it in.
What has been my biggest strength is learning what the situation requires. I’ve always backed my gut and instinct. Today also I realised if I have to take a couple of wickets, I have to be brave. If you would’ve bowled quick on that surface, it would’ve been a good batting wicket. But if you varied your pace, there was some help.
In the second innings it got better as well compared to the first innings. When I joined RCB I said that I loved winning trophies. After 3 and a half months, glad I was able to fulfil what I said on Day 1. Been pretty good – 10 years, 4 IPL trophies. Told Hardik also on the phone, there will be 9 IPL trophies in the Pandya household in 10 years.
With the final done and RCB being crowned Champions there were various set of awards given for outstanding performances to players in IPL 2025. Some prominent list is as followed.
Most Valuable Player of the Season: Suryakumar Yadav
Orange Cap winner: Sai Sudharsan (759 runs)
Catch of the season: Kamindu Mendis
Purple Cap winner: Prasidh Krishna (25 wickets)
Fairplay Award: Chennai Super Kings
Eighteen seasons in, Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) are finally IPL champions. Their victory in their fourth final came at the expense of another trophy-less team that had put together a heartwarming IPL 2025 campaign; it wasn’t to be for Punjab Kings (PBKS), but their time will surely come too.
It’s a sign of how far T20 has come that 190 beating 184 was a bowler-dominated game. PBKS did brilliantly to restrict RCB to 190 after sending them in, but RCB’s bowlers did even better, with Krunal Pandya, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Yash Dayal – who have all won IPL titles at other teams – bringing their experience and nous to play on an unusual Ahmedabad surface.
The margin of victory was narrow – six runs – and while it showed how closely matched these two teams have been over the season, it was also deceptive. Shashank Singh, who finished on an unbeaten 30-ball 61, hit Josh Hazlewood for 6, 4, 6, 6 to end the match and the season. But those hits came just a touch too late; PBKS went into the final over needing 29, and Hazlewood had started with a pair of dots that all but ended the contest mathematically.
At the end of it, all eyes were on one man, the man with 18 on his back. Like his innings in last year’s T20 World Cup final, Virat Kohli’s 43 in this game seemed at various points like it belonged to another era, too risk-averse, and likely to set his team a below-par total.
But there were clues throughout his knock that this wasn’t the sort of pitch that Ahmedabad has rolled out routinely this season, where 196 had been the smallest first-innings total in eight games. He had struggled especially to generate power with his pull shot, with the PBKS seamers generating tennis-ball bounce when they bowled into the pitch.
A target of 191, for all that, seemed too small for a PBKS line-up that had gunned down 204 with an over to spare at the same ground two days previously. But this pitch was different, and it didn’t necessarily ease up through the second innings. Between them, two of PBKS’ brightest batting talents outdid Kohli’s struggles: where Kohli scored 43 off 35 balls, Prabhsimran Singh and Nehal Wadhera scored 41 off 40 between them.
Gee! Where do we even begin to describe this. Grown men crying. RCB have finally done it. This will be a moment that will live long in the memory. One can imagine the scenes in Bengaluru – that city won’t sleep tonight as will every RCB supporter. Shouts of Aarrrrrrrrr-Ceeeeeeeeeee–Beeeeeeeeeee will be roaring around every street.
Firecrackers will be burst with gay abandon and what not. It will be mental out there. You just have to be there to experience it. Imagine yourself in Kohli’s shoes – that man has won everything that is there to be won in international cricket but he hadn’t won this one trophy. And he has played all these 18 years for RCB. One-man club! One-man franchise. One-man who is a cult hero in Bengaluru. And finally he has done it. The reactions from him even with 5 balls left in the final over – where he was ready to cry, would make anyone teary-eyed.
Coming to the chase, both the openers started well but RCB kept taking wickets and Krunal Pandya’s spell was game-changing. He put the brakes on and took the dangerous Inglis, also not to forget the all-important wicket taken by Shepherd of Shreyas who did not fire tonight. Punjab though bat very deep with the likes of Jamieson at 9. But the asking rate kept climbing and wickets came and went. Wadhera holed out to sweeper cover, Stoinis started with a six but went next-ball.
And Yash Dayal and Hazlewood closed it out despite Shashank Singh wanting to keep strike for a majority of the last two overs. RCB’s fielding apart from the Shepherd drop early on, was excellent with Salt setting the tone with that catch of Priyansh. All the catches were taken after that early blip and RCB kept their composure to professionally close it out. The target was not big but since this was a big final and with a lot riding on it – PBKS just were outsmarted by RCB.
Kohli went to his knees and covered his face with his hands. Patidar was running forward in celebration. ABD had his hands up in triumph. Kohli climbs on Salt and then hugs Andy Flower and his wife Anushka Sharma – a kiss on her forehead to mark his happiness.
Mayank and the others too joined in the celebrations. Hazlewood hugs Anushka. Meanwhile Prabhsimran is comforted by Ricky Ponting. A sea of emotions out there and the Narendra Modi Stadium is awash with RCB supporters elated with the PBKS’ ones crestfallen. That’s sport for you!