Shreyas Iyer, Indian middle order batter and renowned IPL captain who led the Kolkata Knight Riders to their third title after 10 years, will now lead Punjab Kings in 2025. While Punjab still awaits the first title even after 18 years. Iyer has a fabulous batting record and a very impressive record as the captain in the last six years. Apart from scoring runs for the Kolkata Knight Riders, he played a major role with his proactive captaincy in last year’s victory.

Why did Kolkata Knight Riders release Shreyas Iyer when the captain led to the victory in the last season? It is a very obvious question. This happened as Shreyas wanted to test himself in the auction to find a handsome price, and it also happened as the Punjab Kings bought him for 26.75 crore, making him the second-highest buy in the IPL history, for an hour. Shreyas was the most valuable player in IPL history until Rishab Pant replaced him, who was bought by Lucknow Supergiants at a bit of 27 crore.

Shreyas Iyer: The Batter

In his 115 innings in the IPL, Shreyas Iyer scored over 3000 runs, with the highest score of 96. He has an average of 32.24 and a strike rate of 127.48, and he has also scored 21 hand-centuries. His two best seasons came in 2019 and 2020, when he scored 463 and 519 runs, respectively. Before that, in 2015, the had also won the Emerging Player Award.

 

Category	Stats
Matches	116
Innings	115
Not Outs	18
Runs	3127
Highest Score	96
Average	32.23
Strike Rate	127.47
Half-centuries	21
Centuries	0
Fours	237
Sixes	99

 

Shreyas Iyer: The Captain 

Shreyas Iyer led the team in 71 matches, winning 40 and losing 31, with a winning strike rate of 56.35. Iyer’s journey as a captain has been pleasant so far. After becoming Delhi's captain, he led the team to its first-ever final in 2020. Then, he moved to KKR in the 2022 auction, and in just his third season, he successfully led the team to its third IPL title.

Captaincy Record

Team	Period	Matches	Won	Lost	Tied/NR	Win%
Delhi Capitals	2018-2020	41	23	18	0	56.09
KKR	2022-2024	30	17	11	2	56.70
Overall	2018-2024	71	40	29	2	56.35

Shreyas became the youngest player to captain an IPL team at the age of 23, 142 days, in the 2018 season. He is also the only captain to lead two different teams to the finals: Delhi Capitals in 2020 and KKR in 2024.

Team-wise Performance

Team	Period	Matches	Runs
Delhi Daredevils/Capitals	2015-2021	87	2375
Kolkata Knight Riders	2022-2024	28	752

 

Punjab Kings Full Squad IPL 2025

Player	Role
Shreyas Iyer	Batter
Arshdeep Singh	Bowler
Yuzvendra Chahal	Bowler
Marcus Stoinis	All-Rounder
Marco Jansen	Bowler
Shashank Singh	All-Rounder
Glenn Maxwell	All-Rounder
Nehal Wadhera	Batter
Prabhsimran Singh	Wicketkeeper
Priyansh Arya	All-Rounder
Josh Inglis	Wicketkeeper
Azmatullah Omarzai	All-Rounder
Lockie Ferguson	Bowler
Vyshak Vijay Kumar	Bowler
Yash Thakur	Bowler
Harpreet Brar	All-Rounder
Aaron Hardie	All-Rounder
Vishnu Vinod	Wicketkeeper
Xavier Bartlett	Bowler
Kuldeep Sen	Bowler
Harnoor Pannu	Batter
Musheer Khan	All-Rounder
Suryansh Shedge	All-Rounder
Pyla Avinash	Batter
Pravin Dubey	All-Rounder