On the evening of May 22 in Hyderabad, Ishan Kishan walked off the field having made 79 off 46 balls against RCB in a match SRH won by 55 runs. His season tally moved to 569.
Quietly, without much ceremony, he became part of only the second batting trio in IPL history where three players from the same franchise all crossed 500 runs in a single season.
Two years ago, the BCCI had stripped him of his central contract and quietly removed him from every squad. The official reason was availability. The unofficial one, which everyone in Indian cricket circles knew, was attitude.
Both deserve examination.
The boy who lied to his parents about dinner
Before the IPL. Before the central contract. Before any of this. There was a twelve-year-old in Ranchi sharing a one-room flat with four senior domestic cricketers who were twice his age.
Ishan Kishan had left Patna because Bihar’s registration dispute with the BCCI had blocked his path to professional cricket entirely. His coach Uttam Majumdar told his father Pranav Kumar Pandey the hard truth: if the boy was serious, he had to go to Ranchi and start again.
In that one-room flat in Doranda, Kishan was the youngest. He washed dishes. He cleaned utensils. When his roommates Satyam Kumar and Monu Kumar left for night tournaments, he stayed alone. Too proud to worry his parents, he went to sleep hungry rather than admit what his evenings looked like.
Chips. Kurkure. Soft drinks. Eventually he learned to boil Maggi. His pre-practice breakfast was sattu, roasted gram flour mixed with water. When his mother called and asked if he had eaten, he said yes.
This went on for two years before his family found out, rented a proper flat, and his mother moved to Ranchi to be with him.
Nobody builds a fight-or-die mentality in a coaching session. Kishan built his in a tiny flat in Jharkhand, learning to survive before he learned to bat.
The mental health crisis nobody understood
By December 2023, the survival instincts that had carried him through childhood had started eating him alive.
Constant travel. Bench appearances in series he felt he deserved to play. Strong performances followed by inexplicable omissions.
The pressure of being fourth or fifth in a wicketkeeper pecking order that included Rishabh Pant, Sanju Samson, and KL Rahul. He asked for a break during the South Africa tour, drained in ways that do not show up in fitness reports.
The selectors called it an attitude problem. The central contract disappeared in early 2024. He was twenty-five years old, out of the national system, and suddenly invisible.
What followed was not a dramatic confrontation or a public statement. It was quieter than that. While scrolling through his phone one evening, he came across a shloka from the Bhagavad Gita.
Karmanye vadhikaraste ma phaleshu kadachana. You have the right to work. Never to the fruits of it. He called his father to discuss it. Then he ordered a copy of the book.
The Gita sat next to his bat and his keeping gloves from that point on. His father told him before the 2025 domestic season to play selfishly and secure his position. Kishan replied with another shloka. Anusasitah manah sukham janayati. A disciplined mind brings happiness.
This is not a player who found religion for a press conference. This is a player who found a framework that helped him stop destroying himself over things outside his control.
The Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy and the first captain’s hundred
In December 2025, Kishan captained Jharkhand to their first-ever Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy title. In the final against Haryana in Pune, he made 101 off 49 balls. The first captain in SMAT history to score a century in a final. Jharkhand won by 69 runs. He finished the tournament as the highest run-scorer with 517 runs at a strike rate of 197.
Pat Cummins watched from a distance, managing a lower-back injury that would keep him out of SRH’s early IPL season. When the franchise needed a stand-in captain for the first seven matches of IPL 2026, there was no real debate.
The tactical role nobody gives him credit for
SRH bat like a controlled explosion every match. Travis Head and Abhishek Sharma come out swinging from ball one. Heinrich Klaasen dismantles spin in the middle overs and finishes with precision. Between these two very different energies sits Kishan at number three, doing the hardest job on the team.
When the openers are flying, he maintains momentum. When they fall early and the middle order is suddenly exposed in the powerplay, he anchors.
On a slow Chepauk surface against CSK, chasing 180 with Head gone early and Abhishek struggling for timing, Kishan made 70 off 47 balls. Not his natural game. Not his preferred tempo. Exactly what was needed. SRH won with an over to spare.
His numbers this season reflect the dual role. 569 runs. Average of 40.64. Strike rate of 178.37. Six half-centuries. Nine catches behind the stumps plus a stumping. The keeping frees Klaasen from any wicketkeeping duties so he can focus entirely on batting.
The World Cup final he should not have played
The day before India’s T20 World Cup final in Ahmedabad, Kishan’s cousin sister was killed in a car accident.
He consulted Hardik Pandya. He thought about what she would have wanted. He played. He made a quickfire half-century at the top of the order alongside Abhishek Sharma and Sanju Samson. India posted 255 for 5. They beat New Zealand by 96 runs. They defended the T20 World Cup title on home soil.
There are things sport asks of people that have no parallel in normal life. Kishan gave one of those things on that evening in Ahmedabad.
Pant dropped, Kishan named: What the Afghanistan selection means
On May 19, the BCCI named squads for the Afghanistan series. Kishan is selected as a wicketkeeper-batter for the ODI squad. Pant is not in the ODI squad at all, retained only for the Test.
The contrast between their IPL seasons explains everything the selectors did not need to say publicly. Kishan made 569 runs for a playoff-bound SRH at a strike rate of 178. Pant made 286 runs for a last-placed LSG at 124. The numbers made the decision before any selector sat down.
Two years ago, the BCCI removed Kishan from the system and called it an attitude problem. Now they have removed Pant from the fifty-over setup and given the spot to the player they once discarded.
The boy who survived on Maggi in Ranchi. The player who found the Bhagavad Gita on his phone at his lowest point. The captain who scored a final hundred nobody had done before.
He did not change the game to fit back in. He changed himself. And the game came to him.