Urvil Patel in action during CSK’s IPL 2025 match vs KKR.© BCCI
It was Chennai Super Kings’ chase of 180 runs against Kolkata Knight Riders in their IPL 2025 game at Eden Gardens on Wednesday. All the eyes at the stadium were eagerly waiting to see the batting of Ayush Mhatre, who was coming to the game on the back of a sensational 94 against Royal Challengers Bengaluru. As fate would have it, Mhatre was dismissed for a two-ball duck by Vaibhav Arora. Then came Urvil Patel, a 28-year-old right-handed batter from Gujarat. He played a dot ball before slamming a stylish six over the deep mid-wicket to Arora through a flick shot.
That was not it as Urvil went on to slam three more sixes and a four during his brisk cameo of 31 off 11 balls. His strike rate was 281.82. While this was the first time he was playing in the IPL, such a style of batting was nothing new for Urvil, who has the record of scoring the joint-second-fastest fifty in T20 cricket.
Urvil was born in Mehsana and plays domestic cricket for Gujarat. He is a hard-hitting wicketkeeper-batter who hogged the limelight during the 2024-25 Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy. He scored 315 runs across six innings at an average of 78.75 and a strike rate of nearly 229.92.
In the same edition of the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, Urvil had smashed a 28-ball century against Tripura at Indore in November 2024. This knock had helped him become the joint-second-fastest batter in T20 cricket to smash a ton.
It was a breakthrough season for Urvil as he smashed the most number of sixes (29) in it, being two ahead of Rajat Patidar.
After the tournament, Urvil also shone with his career-best score of 140 against Saurashtra in the quarter-finals of the Ranji Trophy.
Urvil Patel has played 47 T20s, scoring 1162 runs with two hundreds and four fifties.
Interestingly, Urvil was a part of the Gujarat Titans in IPL 2023 but made his IPL debut two years later for CSK. He was signed by the five-time champions for Rs 30 lakh as a like-for-like replacement after Vansh Bedi was ruled out of IPL 2025 due to injury. He was invited to trials by CSK along with Mhatre after their regular captain, Ruturaj Gaikwa,d was ruled out due to injury.
Topics mentioned in this article