There is a detail in Rajat Patidar’s story that makes you stop and think about how thin the line is between a life in cricket and a life completely outside it.
In 2022, RCB told him he would be picked at the mega auction. He was not picked. He went unsold. The franchise that had released him after four underwhelming games had promised to bring him back and then sat on their hands while his name passed without a bid.
Patidar decided, reasonably, that cricket had given him its answer. He started planning his wedding.
Then Luvnith Sisodia got injured early in the season and RCB called him as a replacement. Patidar was reluctant. He did not want to sit on the bench for six weeks and watch. He wanted to play. He postponed the wedding anyway and joined the squad.
In the Eliminator that year, he scored 112 off 54 balls against Lucknow Super Giants. The first uncapped player to score a century in an IPL playoff match. The wedding happened later. The century exists forever.
That story, the near miss, the postponed wedding, the century that came from a replacement call he almost turned down, is the foundation of everything that happened in Dharamshala on May 26.
What 93 off 33 balls actually looked like
Gujarat Titans planned their bowling well. The Dharamshala surface had variable bounce, the kind that makes confident batters hesitant and hesitant batters hopeless.
RCB lost Venkatesh Iyer early to Kagiso Rabada, then Jason Holder dismissed both Virat Kohli and Devdutt Padikkal in three deliveries and RCB went from 76 for 1 to 94 for 3 in the space of a few overs. The innings was wobbling.
When Patidar arrived, he crawled. 22 runs off his first 14 deliveries. Not tentative exactly, more like a man reading the surface before he decided what to do with it. Then the 14th over happened. Prasidh Krishna bowling. Patidar on 18. First reprieve. Patidar on 20. Second reprieve. Two drops in the same over.
What followed was not relief hitting. It was not a man swinging from relief. It was something more deliberate and more frightening for the bowlers. Patidar scored 71 off his final 19 deliveries. His strike rate in the first phase was 157. His strike rate in the final phase was 373.
The 15th over, Kulwant Khejroliya bowling, went for 28 runs. His fifty came off 21 balls, a six off Rabada. He needed 12 more balls to score another 43 runs after that. The partnership with Krunal Pandya produced 95 off 45 deliveries.
The moment everyone will keep watching is the back-foot cover drive off Rabada in the 17th over. Short of length, sharp, the kind of delivery that asks serious questions of a batter’s technique and temperament simultaneously.
Patidar stood tall, got onto the back foot and drove it over the boundary. Kohli in the dugout covered his mouth with both hands. The shot was not a mishit finding the gap. It was a batter absolutely certain of what he was doing with a delivery that most players would have been glad to defend.
Patidar faced 33 balls. He played one dot. That dot was a bye, meaning he made contact with and scored off every single ball he received. RCB reached 254 for 5. The highest team total in IPL knockout history. Gujarat bundled out for 162. It was not even close.
The career that kept almost ending
Patidar’s journey to this innings passed through several moments where it genuinely could have stopped.
He started as a bowler in Indore. Switched to batting at Under-15 level. Made his Ranji debut for Madhya Pradesh in 2015 and spent years as a reliable but unspectacular domestic performer.
Then in the 2021-22 Ranji Trophy final he scored 122 against Mumbai, helping Madhya Pradesh win their first title in 69 years. That innings announced something.
But the IPL debut in 2021 was four games, 71 runs, released. The mega auction went past him without a bid. The injury replacement call he nearly turned down. Then the century in the Eliminator.
Then, just as things were building, an Achilles heel injury before the 2023 season required surgery in the UK and cost him the entire tournament. He came back through domestic circuits, Vijay Hazare, Syed Mushtaq Ali, grinding his way back to form before earning his India call in late 2023 and early 2024.
Think about the psychological accumulation of that sequence. Released. Unsold. Nearly married. Came back. Injured. Came back again. Each time the game pushed him away he found another way to stay inside it.
By 2025 when RCB handed him the captaincy, he was thirty-one years old. For most T20 players that is already the back half of the career. Patidar used it as a starting point.
What changed when he became captain
The version of RCB that existed for most of the franchise’s history was essentially Virat Kohli and whoever was batting around him. The squad was built around Kohli’s presence at the top and the assumption that if he scored, they would win, and if he did not, the rest of the lineup would have to manage somehow.
Under Patidar, Andy Flower and director of cricket Mo Bobat, the design changed. Role clarity. No player unsure of their function in the plan.
Bhuvneshwar Kumar given license to hunt in the powerplay. Jitesh Sharma and Tim David understanding exactly what his job is at the death. Every single player in the squad knowing the specific situation in which they will be required.
The result is two consecutive finals. RCB won their first title in 2025 after 18 years of trying. In 2026 they topped the league stage and then Patidar walked out in the most important match of the season and produced the highest individual score by a captain in a fifty-plus innings in IPL playoff history.
His playoff numbers deserve to be read slowly. Six innings. 338 runs. Average of 112.66. Strike rate of 193.14. Every significant playoff knock has come in a moment the team genuinely needed it, not a flat chase on a flat pitch in a dead match. The century in 2022 was a must-win Eliminator. The 93 in Dharamshala was Qualifier 1 with the final on the line.
The shot Kohli covered his mouth for
There is a photograph from Qualifier 1 that says more than most scorecards. Kohli in the dugout, hands over his mouth, watching Patidar’s back-foot cover drive off Rabada disappear into the stands. Kohli has batted in IPL cricket since 2008. He has seen more T20 batting than almost any person alive.
RaPa 5️⃣0️⃣! 💥
— Star Sports Kannada (@StarSportsKan) May 26, 2026
ಪ್ರೆಶರ್ ಟೈಮ್ನಲ್ಲಿ ಜವಾಬ್ದಾರಿಯುತ ಆಟ ಆಡಿ ಭರ್ಜರಿ ಅರ್ಧಶತಕ ಚಚ್ಚಿದ Rajat Patidar! ⚡🎯
ವೀಕ್ಷಿಸಿ | #TATAIPL 2026, Qualifier 1 👉 #RCBvsGT | LIVE NOW | ನಿಮ್ಮ Star Sports ಕನ್ನಡ & JioHotstar ನಲ್ಲಿ. pic.twitter.com/uw0VW5Lto7
For that shot to produce that reaction from that person, in that moment, tells you something that the strike rate calculation does not fully capture.
Patidar said in interviews that he actually prefers pace bowling to spin, which surprised people given his 200+ strike rate against spin this season. His explanation was simple. He likes the feel of a fast ball hitting the bat. He likes the contest at pace.
That preference, that genuine enjoyment of the most difficult form of the game, is visible in how he plays.
So what now?
RCB plays another final. Patidar will walk out with the same face he had at Dharamshala. Just a bat and a plan. That is what he has always had. A plan. When he was unsold. When he was injured. When he took over a broken franchise and fixed it without anyone noticing.
The 93 not out will be remembered. The back foot six will be replayed. But the real story is smaller.
It is a boy from Indore who started as a bowler. Who pushed his wedding back for a chance to sit on a bench. Who rebuilt his body when it gave up. Who looked at eighteen years of RCB failure and said, fine, I will do it differently.
Cricket gives us many heroes. Most of them are obvious from the start. Patidar was not. He was the guy nobody wanted. Now he is the captain nobody can ignore. That is not just a cricket story. That is a story about showing up when every door looks closed. And then kicking one open so hard that even Virat Kohli has to cover his mouth in disbelief.
Cricket works in these circles if you stay in it long enough. Rajat Patidar stayed in it. And now here he is.