Tim David was batting on 35 off 17 balls at the start of the 19th over. Then he hit Jamie Overton for 6, 2, 4, 6, 6, 6 in one of the most merciless bursts of end-overs hitting you will see in IPL 2026.

And yet it took until the fifth ball of that sequence for David's strike rate to sneak past that of the guy at the other end.

That guy, Rajat Patidar, had begun the transformation that David was now taking to its apogee.

Before Patidar's entry at No. 4, Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) had scored 93 off the first 64 balls of this match against Chennai Super Kings (CSK). From the time Patidar walked in, they made an astonishing 157 off 56 balls. David ended the innings unbeaten on 70 off 25 balls, and Patidar on 49 off 19. Patidar hit six sixes to David's eight, at a marginally better balls-per-six ratio (3.17 to 3.13).

When Patidar walked in, RCB needed someone to seize a moment that had just arrived. They had been sent in, and the pitch at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium had been tacky at the start, with the ball holding up and bouncing awkwardly from a good length. Phil Salt, Virat Kohli and Devdutt Padikkal had all found it difficult to time the ball.

And then, at some point, the pitch had begun to ease out and become the classic Chinnaswamy surface. CSK had won what was beginning to look like an excellent toss. Conditions at the start of their chase would likely be much better for batting than they had been during RCB's powerplay.

RCB must have sensed the need to post a total that would make up for this easing-up of conditions, and felt an urgent need for impetus when Patidar walked in to join Padikkal, who was batting on 17 off 16 at that point.

RCB's captain gave his team exactly what they needed. Patidar had faced only one ball when he hit what was likely the shot of the innings at that stage. It came off a pretty good ball from Noor Ahmad, fired wide of off stump at 98kph from left-arm over, demanding that Patidar hit towards the longer square boundary - 68m to 60m - with a sweeper guarding it.

Patidar strode forward, freed his arms, and launched the ball over the boundary cushions to the right of that fielder.

The hits kept coming, all eye-catching as Patidar's shots typically are. From an aesthetic point of view, the pick of them was probably the effortless flick-drive over long-off when Matt Henry strayed a touch too full. From a difficulty point of view it was probably the carve over extra-cover off Khaleel Ahmed, when he came within inches of landing his wide yorker perfectly.

Six sixes in 19 balls.

This was by no means a one-off from Patidar. This is the kind of innings he excels at playing.

Since the start of the 2024 season, he has struck at 174.03 in the middle overs (7-16) of IPL games. Of all batters with at least 200 runs in this phase, only Abhishek Sharma, Sunil Narine, Nicholas Pooran, M Shahrukh Khan and Salt have gone quicker.

Break his middle-overs runs down by bowler type, and Patidar's numbers begin to look even more impressive: 180.64 against spin (only Nicholas Pooran has gone quicker with a 200-runs cut-off) and 167.04 against pace (only Suryakumar Yadav, Riyan Parag, Jos Buttler and Pooran are ahead of him with the same cut-off).

Destructive in the middle overs, against both pace and spin. It's rare for a batter to tick all three of those boxes. Patidar has been doing it for a sustained period. In an RCB XI with serious hitting ability all the way down to No. 8, he's the perfect fit at No. 4. He's comfortable against hard lengths from fast bowlers, he's capable of taking down all kinds of spin, and he backs himself to play his shots as soon as he comes to the crease.

Take those qualities, throw in the fact that he captained his franchise to the IPL title last season, and the fact that he's highly rated by the national selectors - he's already made his Test and ODI debuts - and you have a player who could be seriously pushing for a middle-order slot in India's T20I line-up as they keep looking forward after winning the T20 World Cup.

But Patidar is nearly 33, and India have at least two other strong candidates for that role from outside their World Cup squad, in Shreyas Iyer and Riyan Parag. They're younger than Patidar, and captain their IPL teams too. Patidar is probably some distance behind those two in the queue at the moment.

And that queue isn't lining up to fix anything like an obvious problem. It's hard to imagine the selectors seriously discussing phasing out Suryakumar, an all-time T20 great who has just captained India to a world title.

If that hypothetical conversation happens, however, Patidar could force himself into it over the next few weeks if he plays a few more innings like Sunday night's.