Who is Sameer Rizvi? 21-year-old turns heads in IPL 2025 with phenomenal knock vs PBKS
Sameer Rizvi played a scintillating knock of unbeaten 58 runs off 25 balls as Delhi Capitals defeated Punjab Kings by six wickets in their final league game of IPL 2025. He was also adjudged Player of the Match for his valuable knock.
Sameer Rizvi played a phenomenal knock of unbeaten 58 runs off only 25 balls as Delhi Capitals defeated Punjab Kings in their final league game of the IPL 2025 campaign. The 21-year-old has been in the IPL circuit since 2024, having made his debut for Chennai Super Kings last year. However, he failed to impress for the five-time champions, scoring only 51 runs in five innings at a strike rate of 118.60.
Despite having a poor season with the bat, Delhi backed Sameer as they signed him for INR 95 lakhs. Apart from DC, Chennai were also interested in signing the cricketer. Meanwhile, Rizvi had an incredible campaign for Kashi Rudras, scoring 469 runs in 13 matches at a strike rate of 152.76. He finished as the second-leading run-scorer of the tournament and that arguably caught the eyes of Munaf Patel, DC’s bowling coach.
He was scouting talents from the UPT20 League and that is probably how DC got to know about Rizvi and his destructive batting. He has played 32 T20 matches in his career, scoring 543 runs. He usually bats in the middle order and is extremely flexible as he has batted anywhere he was asked to for Delhi this year.
Notably, courtesy of Rizvi’s scintillating knock against Punjab, Delhi won the match by six wickets. Batting first, the Shreyas Iyer-led side was in song as the captain led by example. He hit yet another half-century in the tournament, while Josh Inglis and Marcus Stoinis played important cameos of 32 and 44*, respectively.
Delhi were put under some pressure in the second innings, but Karun and Rizvi were in fine form to help Delhi get the job done. In the post-match presentation, the youngster revealed that he was short on confidence at one point but was happy to see his hardwork pay off.
“It feels really good. The hard work I put in the last 2-3 months has paid off. I did not have the confidence before that I can play like this at this level, but after one innings, that came and now I feel I can do it. When I went in, more than 100 was needed, I looked at my first three-four balls and then played my shots,” Rizvi said.
