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Sanjay Bangar, a former Indian cricketer who is now a commentator, believes that Ishan Kishan was overshadowed when playing for the Mumbai Indians (MI) and has gained much-needed freedom at the Sunrisers Hyderabad. After playing with MI for seven seasons, Kishan was let go prior to the Indian Premier League 2025 mega-auction. As a result, the wicketkeeper batter's situation worsened further after he lost his BCCI central contract earlier that year. Despite this, he kept up his hard work in domestic cricket, smashing hundreds in the Vijay Hazare Trophy, the Ranji Trophy, the Duleep Trophy, and the Buchi Babu Invitational Tournament.
Bangar on Ishan Kishan
He even got his IPL 2025 off to a wild start by smashing a century off 45 balls in his first game for Sunrisers Hyderabad against the Rajasthan Royals. Sanjay Bangar recently discussed Kishan's incredible century and said the young player had all of his old fears dispelled. Bangar added that he had room in Hyderabad but was overshadowed by the huge stars in Mumbai.
“Ishan has been doing really well when he was left out of the squad and he was out of favour for some amount of time. But what I liked about his approach was that, he seems to have cleared all the doubts that were there in his mind earlier times. When he was playing for MI, he was probably overshadowed a little bit by the likes of the other luminaries in the team, maybe a Rohit or a Sky or Hardik and Jasprit,” said JioHotstar expert Sanjay Bangar while replying to query from India Today.
Sunrisers Hyderabad paid Rs 11.25 crore for Kishan at the mega auction, and the star player lived up to his price in the opening match. Bangar added that Kishan will have the chance to forge his own identity while he was at SRH.
“But here he is, he can be his own man and he has the space. Because, if you look at that particular team, the kind of characters that are there, maybe Abhishek, who's a young guy who must have obviously played a lot, with Ishan, and Travis Head and Klaasen. So they do their own things but from being just another player to being the person makes a massive difference to how a player can produce results and how a player starts looking at himself. So it's a huge opportunity, he has taken it really well, fabulous knock. He's going to get to bat in similar situations for another 6-7 games because those are very good batting-friendly conditions in Hyderabad,” he added.
With an incredible innings of 106* (47), hitting 11 fours and six sixes, Kishan recorded the second-fastest century by a wicketkeeper batter in IPL history. Thanks to his innings and Travis Head's half-century (67 off 31), SRH was able to record 286/6, the second-highest score in IPL history. Hyderabad won the game by a margin of 44 runs, and Kishan's aggressive effort earned him the Player of the Match award.
