Rajat Patidar’s All-Time IPL XI is already stirring up debate, and the biggest talking point isn’t who he picked, it’s who he didn’t. The RCB captain, fresh off leading his side through IPL 2026, put together his dream team from the tournament’s history, and Rohit Sharma, one of the most decorated captains and openers the league has seen, doesn’t feature anywhere in it.
Patidar has had plenty of standing to make a call like this. He led RCB through IPL 2026 with 501 runs from 14 innings at an average of 41.75 and a strike rate of 192.69, with five half-centuries along the way. A season like that gives a captain’s opinion a bit more weight in these conversations than it might otherwise carry.
Rajat Patidar’s All-Time IPL XI: The Full Team
Here’s the XI Patidar settled on, seven Indian players against four overseas picks:
- Chris Gayle 🇯🇲 — opener
- Virat Kohli 🇮🇳
- Suryakumar Yadav 🇮🇳
- Suresh Raina 🇮🇳
- AB de Villiers 🇿🇦
- Hardik Pandya 🇮🇳
- MS Dhoni 🇮🇳 — wicketkeeper
- Sunil Narine 🇹🇹
- Jasprit Bumrah 🇮🇳
- Dale Steyn 🇿🇦
- Yuzvendra Chahal 🇮🇳
That’s a top order built almost entirely around strike rate and intimidation. Gayle and Kohli opening together is about as aggressive a start as any all-time XI could ask for, and slotting Suryakumar Yadav and Suresh Raina straight after them keeps the tempo just as high through the middle overs. AB de Villiers gives the innings a finishing gear regardless of where he’s needed, and Hardik Pandya adds the all-round balance that lets the side carry an extra frontline bowler.
The Bowling Attack and the Rohit Sharma Snub
The bowling group is where Patidar’s picks get interesting. Sunil Narine offers control and wicket-taking threat with the new ball and through the middle overs, Jasprit Bumrah is about as close to a modern death-overs lock as the format has, Dale Steyn brings genuine pace and swing from his peak years, and Yuzvendra Chahal rounds it out as the frontline leg-spinner. MS Dhoni behind the stumps ties the whole attack together, and his inclusion is really the only pick in the entire XI that leans on composure and game management rather than pure output.
That approach is exactly what makes leaving out Rohit Sharma so notable. Rohit has multiple IPL titles to his name as a captain and remains one of the format’s most successful openers by any measure, so his absence is bound to spark disagreement among fans who would have picked him on captaincy pedigree and trophy count alone. Patidar clearly weighted raw batting impact and strike rate more heavily than championship history when he sat down to pick this team, and going with Gayle and Kohli at the top instead of Rohit is the clearest sign of that.
What the Team Says About Patidar’s Cricketing Eye
Picks like this tend to say as much about the person making them as the players involved. Patidar’s list leans toward players who dominated bowling attacks outright rather than those who won games primarily through composure and match management, which makes Dhoni’s inclusion stand out even more by contrast. It suggests Patidar isn’t picking purely on aggression for its own sake, he still wants at least one player in the XI whose value shows up in moments the scorecard doesn’t always capture.
Whether fans agree with the Rohit Sharma omission or not, a call like this from a current, in-form captain tends to carry more weight than the usual pundit debate, if only because Patidar has just spent a season captaining against most of the era’s best players himself.
For more on the league’s history and its greatest performers, the official IPL website has full stats and records from every season.
