RCB look to Josh Hazlewood for success in the IPL 2025 final

Mint

2 days ago

Josh Hazlewood has played comparatively less T20 cricket than you might expect from a bowler of his skills. He spent the first decade-plus of his career concentrating on red-ball cricket and the 50-over game. However, in the 2020s, Hazlewood has steadily increased his T20 diet. As he played more, he understood two things better and better: the dynamics of the T20 game and his own bowling. When a highly skilled bowler reaches that phase, the results are usually good. And in IPL 2025, Hazlewood has shown emphatically just how dangerous a T20 bowler he can be. In the IPL 2025 final against Punjab Kings (PBKS), he looms as Royal Challengers Bengaluru's (RCB) most dangerous weapon.
He has missed three games for RCB this year, but he is still their highest-wicket taker by a mile. His 21 scalps have come at an average of just 15.8, while his economy rate of 8.3 is outstanding for someone always tasked with bowling the toughest overs. He is the tournament's fourth-highest wicket taker, and easily the bowler with the best average and strike rate.
Hazlewood has been one of the most incisive bowlers in IPL 2025. Shreyas Iyer has been one of the most explosive batters. How the IPL 2025 final goes might well be shaped by the confrontation between Hazlewood's irresistible force against Shreyas' immovable object.
So far, the bowler has been winning the battle against the batter, rather handily. Shreyas has faced 22 balls from Hazlewood in T20 cricket, and it's not been pretty. He's scored only 11 runs and been out four times. However, as Shreyas himself might say, those were battles that were lost. There is still a war to be won.
Hazlewood has been RCB's prime weapon, while Shreyas is the central force binding Punjab together. All of what has gone before when these two faced off will melt into nothingness, because how they fare on June 3 in the IPL 2025 final will be what is most remembered.
The bowler should be quietly confident and in a great mental space, heading into the final. For one thing, the 21 wickets he has taken are the most he's ever taken in any T20 competition. More than just the number of wickets, it is the way he has looked when bowling. A wicket always seems around the corner, and batters have never seemed comfortable for any extended period when facing Hazlewood.
Competition Matches Wickets Average Economy IPL 2025 11 21 15.8 8.3 IPL 2022 12 20 18.9 8.1 BBL 2013-14 9 14 19.7 7.9 IPL 2021 9 11 26.6 8.4 T20 World Cup 2021-22 7 11 15.9 7.3
Right after the IPL 2025 final, Hazlewood will head to England to play in the World Test Championship final for Australia against South Africa. While some might raise eyebrows at playing in a T20 competition so close to an important red-ball game, it works uniquely well for Hazlewood. He is not a bowler who needs to make drastic changes across formats. His method of hitting the hard lengths at pace, extracting seam and swing, and consistently coming at the batter works regardless of format.
'I've got to be bowling, wherever I am in the world,' Hazlewood pointed out. 'There's no better place than out in the middle… to get that intensity right up, there's no better place than the IPL.'
The last time RCB and Punjab met was in Qualifier 1. Hazlewood ripped the heart out of Punjab's batting with 3 for 21, including the wickets of Shreyas and Josh Inglis.
After the game, he spoke of the mood in the RCB camp. 'Everything's quite relaxed, quite calm,' Hazlewood said. 'I think maybe a few of the younger guys in the attack have picked up on that and taken it into their own games. We're just trying to have fun out there, and stay nice and relaxed, no matter the situation.
'I think we've just got all bases covered. Any one of the five or six bowlers can bowl in any moment of the game, whether it be the start, middle or end. It obviously helps having Bhuvi (Bhuvneshwar Kumar) with so much experience. Quite a calm customer, so that sort of rubs off on the rest of the attack. I'm probably pretty similar to Bhuvi as well in that regard.'