Batting Under Pressure: What Young Cricketers Can Learn From the Latest IPL Season — A Commentator's Perspective

Pressure is the one thing a bowling machine cannot bowl at you. You can groove your cover drive for hours, but the real exam comes when the asking rate climbs, the crowd roars, and your hands start to feel heavy. As someone who has batted in Ranji finals for Karnataka and now spends his seasons in the commentary box reading the professional game ball by ball, I can tell you that the difference between a good age-group batter and an elite one is rarely talent. It is temperament.

IPL 2025 gave us a wonderful syllabus on exactly that. So let me put on both hats — the international batsman and the commentator — and walk you through what young cricketers in Bengaluru and across India should be taking away from the latest season.

The Final Was a Lesson in Batting on a Tough Surface

If you only watch the highlights of T20 cricket, you grow up believing batting is about hitting every ball into the stands. The IPL 2025 final quietly corrected that myth. Royal Challengers Bengaluru — sorry, I should say RCB — finally became champions in their 18th season, and they did it in a way that should make every young batter rethink what "attacking" really means.

RCB made 190 for 9 and beat Punjab Kings, who finished on 184 for 7, by six runs to become IPL champions for the first time. Now read that scoreline again. It is a sign of how far T20 has come that 190 beating 184 was, in fact, a bowler-dominated game. On a surface with variable pace and turn, 190 was a fighting total, not a feast.

Why Virat Kohli's 43 Matters More Than a Hundred

Here is the tactical point I kept returning to on air. Kohli top-scored with 43 off 35 balls, but after RCB lost Phil Salt early, he hit only three fours in an uncharacteristic knock. A young viewer might call that a slow innings. I call it reading the situation. He put on vital partnerships with Mayank Agarwal and skipper Rajat Patidar, with those cameos keeping the scorecard ticking along.

On a pitch where strokemakers kept getting out trying to force the pace, Kohli understood that the highest-percentage option was to hold one end, rotate strike, and let the platform do the talking. The lesson for our young batters: your job is not to play the prettiest innings, it is to play the right innings for the conditions. Sometimes the bravest shot is the single you take instead of the six you risk.

Finishing Under Pressure: The Art of the Cameo

If Kohli's innings was about absorbing pressure, the back end of RCB's innings was about releasing it. Jitesh Sharma provided the acceleration, hitting two sixes and two fours to score 24 off 10 balls, and from 131 for 4 in 14.5 overs it was just enough to push RCB past 190.

That little 24 was, in many ways, the difference in the match. A finisher who can read exactly when to launch — not too early, not too late — is worth his weight in gold. And on the losing side, do not overlook Punjab's fight: Shashank Singh stayed put and scored 61 not out off 30 balls, including six sixes, though it only reduced the margin of victory. Even in a losing cause, that is a young batter showing he can keep swinging cleanly when the result is slipping away. Character is revealed under pressure, not in a net.

What I want my students to internalise from these cameos:

• Match awareness over muscle. Know the over, the field, the bowler's stock ball, and the required rate before you decide to attack.
• Have a release shot. Every batter needs one high-percentage scoring option to relieve pressure when the run rate climbs.
• Bat in partnerships. Pressure is shared. Talk between overs, agree on the target for the next two overs, and rebuild rather than chase the game alone.
• Accept that dots are part of the plan. A good defensive ball deserves respect; the bad ball will come, and that is the one you put away.
• Stay calm when wickets fall around you. The chase in that final fell apart for Punjab because batters kept perishing trying to force the issue after losing partners.

Consistency Is a Skill: The Sai Sudharsan Template

If you want to talk about handling pressure across a whole season — not just one night — look at the Orange Cap winner. Sai Sudharsan claimed the Orange Cap for Gujarat Titans, accumulating 759 runs in 15 matches. What impressed me as a commentator was not just the volume but the manner. He scored those runs at an average of 54.21 and a strike rate of 156.17, hitting one century and six half-centuries to show genuine consistency through the season.

An average above fifty paired with a strike rate above 150 is the modern batting ideal — substance and speed together. And he did it young: at 23 years old when IPL 2025 ended, Sudharsan became the youngest Orange Cap winner in IPL history. That is the journey from age-group promise to elite output, and it is built on repeatable method, not one-off fireworks.

For Parents and Young Cricketers

Do not measure a season by one big score. Measure it by how often your child contributes, how they bat when conditions are difficult, and whether their method holds up against good bowling. Consistency is the most underrated talent in cricket, and it can be coached.

Pressure Is Not Only a Batting Word

As a former batting coach, I will always look at the game through a batter's eyes — but the best batters understand bowlers too. The Purple Cap this season belonged to a brilliant story of resilience. Prasidh Krishna, returning to the IPL fold after two injury-laden years, won the Purple Cap in 2025, topping the wicket-taking charts with 25 scalps in 15 games.

Why does this matter to a young batter? Because pressure cuts both ways. His experience helped his team navigate crunch moments through the season. When you walk out to bat, the bowler is feeling pressure too — and a smart batter learns to read whose pressure is greater in that passage of play. Knowing that the seamer must defend a total, or that the spinner has one over left and a weaker bowler to follow, changes how you bat. Cricket at the top is a contest of nerves as much as skills.

How We Translate This Into Coaching

Watching is one thing; building it into a young cricketer is another. At our academy, the way I approach temperament is deliberate. We use video analysis so a player can actually see how their decision-making changes when the scoreboard tightens. We simulate pressure with the bowling machine — not just for grooving shots, but by setting targets, restricting deliveries, and forcing players to solve a match situation rather than simply hit balls. And under our BCCI-certified coaching staff, we talk constantly about the "why" behind every shot, because a batter who understands the situation will make better choices than one who only owns a textbook technique.

The skills you see in an IPL final — the patient anchor knock, the precisely-timed cameo, the refusal to panic when wickets tumble — are not gifts handed only to internationals. They are habits. They can be trained, repetition by repetition, season by season, from age-group cricket all the way to the elite level.

The Takeaway From IPL 2025

The latest season told one consistent story from start to finish: in a final most fitting for the occasion, RCB managed to keep their nerve to win by six runs and end their long 18-year wait. Nerve. That word kept coming up all season. The trophy did not go to the team that hit the most sixes; it went to the team that stayed calmest when it mattered most.

So to every young cricketer reading this on the way to practice: spend as much time training your mind as your hands. Learn to read the game. Learn to value the right single. Learn to be the calmest person on the field when everyone else is rattled. That is the batting that wins matches, and that is the batting that gets you noticed.

If you would like to build that temperament under structured, BCCI-certified coaching with video analysis and proper match-situation training, I would warmly invite you to explore our programs or simply get in touch with us. Whether your child is just starting out or already playing age-group cricket in Karnataka, we would love to help them take the next step in their journey.