OPINION
Follow UsNot a lot changed for Delhi Daredevils (now Capitals) in 2015. They missed out on the playoffs for the third season in a row. But that year, there was a silver-lining. Apart from not finishing with a wooden spoon, Delhi unearthed a gem to serve them for years to come.
On the personal front, Shreyas Iyer had a decent outing in the 2014 U19 World Cup. Averaging 53.7, he scored 161 runs at a strike-rate of 105.2. The disappointment of going under the radar due to India’s underwhelming campaign was brushed aside in the domestic circuit. In his maiden Vijay Hazare Trophy season, right after the World Cup, Iyer’s average touched 54.6. His debut Ranji Trophy season produced 809 runs at 50.6, including two hundreds.
Somewhere around this time, Pravin Amre, a former Indian cricketer and an encyclopedia of batting, was a part of Delhi’s support staff as their assistant coach. He was also Iyer’s childhood batting coach, having spotted him during his teenage days in the Shivaji Park Gymkhana in Mumbai. Apparently, no one was surprised watching Delhi bid aggressively for Iyer, shelling INR 2.6 crore, 26 times his base price.
Iyer was the highest paid uncapped player of the season. Keeping his head high in a falling ship, he amassed 439 runs, breaking into the top 10 batters of the season, aged only 20. Announced as the Emerging Player of the year, Iyer justified every penny spent on him. Yes, Delhi finished seventh in the season but all was not lost as they finally found positives unlike the last two dismal seasons
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Iyer also broke Delhi’s poor habit of releasing quality players. Before the next season, Mumbai Indians made a strong pitch to include Iyer on their bandwagon. They offered Delhi three players, including Aaron Finch to trade in Iyer through the transfer window. Delhi rejected their plea.
Iyer managed only 30 runs in six innings in 2016 but got back on track with another excellent 2017 season. That year, he also tonked the touring Australian side for an unbeaten 202 runs off only 210 deliveries.
Iyer made his ODI and T20I debut by the end of the year. Subsequently, he was one of the three players Delhi retained before 2018. Consequently, his salary escalated to INR 7 crore.
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Aged 23 at the start of the 2018 season, Iyer was made captain of the side midway in the tournament when Gautam Gambhir decided to step down. Until that point, Delhi had won only one out of their six games. The qualification probabilities were low again and didn’t materialize but yet again, Delhi found silver-lining in the promise Iyer showed, this time as a captain. Delhi won four of their remaining eight matches.
The right-hander announced himself as a captain in style. He hammered an unbeaten 93 off 40 balls on his captaincy debut against Kolkata Knight Riders at the Feroz Shah Kotla, a match Delhi won by 55 runs, their biggest of the season.
It was the sixth year in a row when Delhi didn’t qualify but the newly established coach-captain duo of Ricky Ponting and Shreyas Iyer instilled a lot of hopes.
2019 opened a bunch of opportunities for Iyer. In the second half of the year, after India’s semi-final exit from the World Cup, he got an elongated run in India’s middle-order. The Mumbaikar registered four fifties in a row to hint he belongs to the international arena. In the first half, playing his first season as a full-time captain, Iyer led a rebranded Delhi franchise to their first play-off season in seven years. Many compared that Delhi setup to a football club where things are run by the manager. Ponting might have been the mastermind but Iyer showed the calmness to control tough situations in the park. That, while vindicating his reputation as a batsman.
Next year, Iyer notched up his first international hundred - 103 against New Zealand in Hamilton - and ticked off Delhi’s long-lasting ambition of playing an IPL final. It was only for an invincible Mumbai side that came in their way of the maiden IPL title. In many ways, Delhi and Iyer grew together.
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It was a relationship that was expected to reach new heights in the league until it took an awkward fall in Pune. Only two weeks prior to the IPL opener in 2021, Iyer dislocated his shoulder while fielding in the first ODI against England. It ruled him out of the tournament. Delhi announced Rishabh Pant as their stand-in skipper but things were going to become more complex.
Things may have been okay if the season had continued normally. Pant was promised captaincy for one season and Iyer would have taken the position back from 2022 onwards. It was only supposed to be a case of the vice-captain stepping in for his skipper. But the outbreak of the second Covid-19 wave broke the season into two halves. By the time the second half surfaced, Iyer was fit to join the team. As a batsman, his return was a blessing but the team was torn between a virtual tug-of-war for captaincy between Iyer and Pant.
You cannot blame the management to stick with Pant. However, it was clear that the injury and the second wave couldn’t have come at a worse time for Iyer. It added a sour taste in a relationship through no fault of anyone.
Hence, in the second half of IPL 2022, Iyer was only fulfilling his notice period at the franchise. As the season ended, the news surfaced that he wants to be released.
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At the 2022 auction, three teams were searching for a captain. He was the only Indian option available in the pool alongside being one of the two premium Indian batting options. As a result, he was a strong contender to be the most expensive player at the auction, harboring interest from several franchises.
Iyer was a perfect fit for Kolkata. While Punjab and Bangalore still had captaincy candidates, Kolkata had none. They were one of the two franchises without a premier Indian batter as well. It was a win-win situation for both sides. Five teams showed interest in Iyer at the end of which Kolkata signed him at a whopping but an understandable price tag of INR 12.25 crore.
It also marks a monumental rise for Iyer. From a base price of INR 10 lakh in 2015 to now a contract 122.5 times greater. Fun fact, Kolkata opened the bid for Iyer in 2015 so they are the first franchise to show interest in him at the IPL.
On Wednesday (February 16), Kolkata announced him as their new skipper, a call everyone saw coming. Since Gautam Gambhir left them after the 2017 season, Kolkata have been far from their golden days when they won two titles within three years. Both parties have a lot to achieve. Aspiring to lift themselves up again, the franchise will hope to establish a similar kind of growing-together relationship with Iyer that he did with Delhi.
