Jos Buttler scored 863 runs in IPL 2022, and 234 of them came in three knockout innings in five days. No batter in the history of the tournament had carried a team into a final quite like that. Fourteen years after Shane Warne's Rajasthan Royals won the inaugural edition in 2008, the franchise was back in an IPL final on 29 May 2022. Almost every road there ran through one Englishman opening the batting in pink.
The 2022 season is usually remembered as the year Gujarat Titans won the title in their first attempt, and we have told that story in our Gujarat Titans debut-season deep-dive. This Sunday piece tells it from the other dressing room. It is the season of the runner-up: Jos Buttler's four centuries, Yuzvendra Chahal's Purple Cap, Sanju Samson's captaincy, and a Rajasthan side that came within one game of the trophy. Every figure below comes from the Cricsheet ball-by-ball record of all 74 matches (17,912 deliveries).
The Season Rajasthan Rebuilt Around One Opener
A ten-team league in one state
IPL 2022 was the first ten-team season since 2011, with Lucknow Super Giants and Gujarat Titans joining the league. COVID-19 restrictions confined all 70 league matches to Maharashtra: 21 at the Wankhede Stadium, 20 at the DY Patil Sports Academy and 16 at the Brabourne Stadium, all in Mumbai, plus 13 at Pune's MCA Stadium. Only the playoffs left the state. Qualifier 1 and the Eliminator were played at Eden Gardens, and Qualifier 2 and the final at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad.
Neutral grounds took most of the home advantage out of the season, and the old powers struggled. Mumbai Indians and Chennai Super Kings, with nine titles between them by then, won four games each and finished tenth and ninth. Rajasthan had been rebuilt at the February 2022 mega-auction around Buttler, Samson and a new spin pair of Chahal and R Ashwin. They finished the league stage with nine wins from 14 and came second on net run rate, level with Lucknow and one win behind Gujarat.
The April Buttler made the league his own
Buttler's first nine innings of the 2022 season produced 566 runs. On 2 April 2022 at the DY Patil Stadium he made 100 off 68 balls against Mumbai, and Jasprit Bumrah eventually bowled him. On 18 April at the Brabourne he hit 103 off 61 against Kolkata Knight Riders. Four days later, on 22 April at the Wankhede, he made 116 off 65 against Delhi Capitals and put on a big opening stand with Devdutt Padikkal (54 off 35). Rajasthan reached 222/2, the highest total of the 2022 season. Around those hundreds sat 70* off 47 against Royal Challengers Bangalore and 54 off 24 against Gujarat.
That was three centuries before the end of April. Only Virat Kohli, with four in 2016, had ever made more in a single IPL season, and Buttler had more than half the league stage left.
The May slump nobody talks about
Then the runs stopped. From 2 May to 20 May 2022 Buttler scored 22, 30, 7, 2 and 2 in five innings, 63 runs in total. Avesh Khan bowled him for 2 against Lucknow on 15 May, and Simarjeet Singh had him caught for 2 against Chennai on 20 May. Rajasthan still won three of those five games. Yashasvi Jaiswal made a match-winning contribution against Punjab Kings on 7 May, and Ashwin finished the chase against Chennai on 20 May to secure second place.
This stretch matters to the story. Buttler went into the playoffs having averaged under 13 for three weeks. Rajasthan had qualified because the rest of the side covered for him, not because he carried them every night.
Chahal's Purple Cap and the hat-trick at the Brabourne
The bowling story belonged to Chahal. Released by RCB after eight seasons, he took 27 wickets in 17 matches for Rajasthan in 2022 at an average of 19.52 and an economy of 7.75, which won him the Purple Cap ahead of Wanindu Hasaranga's 26. His best night came on 18 April 2022 against Kolkata. In the 17th over of the chase he removed Venkatesh Iyer stumped, then took Shreyas Iyer lbw, Shivam Mavi caught and Pat Cummins caught off the last three balls. That gave him a hat-trick, figures of 5/40, and a seven-run win, with Rajasthan defending 217.
Five Days in May: The Knockout Run
Qualifier 1 — Miller's last over (24 May 2022, Eden Gardens)
Buttler's form returned in the first knockout game. He made 89 off 56, Samson added 47 off 26, and Rajasthan posted 188/6. Gujarat needed 16 off the final over, bowled by Prasidh Krishna. David Miller hit the first three balls for six and finished on 68* off 38, with Hardik Pandya making 40 off 27. Gujarat won by seven wickets with three balls to spare and went straight to the final.
The Eliminator in between (25 May 2022)
While Rajasthan waited, Rajat Patidar made 112* off 54 for RCB against Lucknow, an uncapped batter scoring a knockout hundred at Eden Gardens. RCB made 207/4 and won by 14 runs. We reconstructed that night in our legendary-match piece on Patidar's 112. Patidar later became RCB captain and the first man to lead them to a title.
Qualifier 2 — the fourth century (27 May 2022, Ahmedabad)
This was Buttler's best game of the season. Prasidh, who had been hit for three sixes in a row three nights earlier, took 3/22. Obed McCoy took 3/23 and RCB were held to 157/8. Buttler then made 106* off 60 and Rajasthan won by seven wickets in 18.1 overs. It was his fourth century of IPL 2022, equalling Kohli's 2016 record for most hundreds in a season, and it put Rajasthan into their first final since 2008.
The final — Hardik's 3/17 (29 May 2022, Ahmedabad)
The final was played before a crowd of more than 100,000 at the Narendra Modi Stadium. Samson won the toss and chose to bat, and Hardik Pandya bowled the spell that decided the final: four overs, 3/17, with the wickets of Samson, Buttler (39 off 35) and Shimron Hetmyer. Rajasthan managed only 130/9. Shubman Gill anchored the chase with 45, Hardik made 34 and Miller 32. Gill finished it with a six off the first ball of the 19th over, and Gujarat won by seven wickets with 11 balls to spare.
The Numbers Behind IPL 2022
Table 1 — The season's leading run-scorers
| # | Batter | Team | Runs | Inns | Avg | SR | 100s | 50s | 6s |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jos Buttler | RR | 863 | 17 | 57.53 | 149.1 | 4 | 4 | 45 |
| 2 | KL Rahul | LSG | 616 | 14 | 51.33 | 135.4 | 2 | 4 | 30 |
| 3 | Quinton de Kock | LSG | 508 | 15 | 36.29 | 149.0 | 1 | 3 | 23 |
| 4 | Hardik Pandya | GT | 487 | 15 | 44.27 | 131.3 | 0 | 4 | 12 |
| 5 | Shubman Gill | GT | 483 | 16 | 34.50 | 132.3 | 0 | 4 | 11 |
| 6 | David Miller | GT | 481 | 16 | 68.71 | 142.7 | 0 | 2 | 23 |
| 7 | Faf du Plessis | RCB | 468 | 16 | 31.20 | 127.5 | 0 | 3 | 13 |
| 8 | Sanju Samson | RR | 458 | 17 | 28.63 | 146.8 | 0 | 2 | 26 |
Buttler finished 247 runs clear of anyone else, which is roughly 40 per cent of KL Rahul's entire season. His 45 sixes were 11 more than the next best, Liam Livingstone's 34. At the time his 863 was the second-highest aggregate in IPL history, behind only Kohli's 973 in 2016. Gill's 890 in 2023 has since moved it to third.
Table 2 — Buttler's 17 innings, phase by phase
| Phase | Dates (2022) | Innings | Runs | Highlights |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| April surge | 29 Mar – 30 Apr | 9 | 566 | 100 v MI, 103 v KKR, 116 v DC |
| May slump | 2 May – 20 May | 5 | 63 | Top score 30 v PBKS |
| Knockouts | 24 May – 29 May | 3 | 234 | 89 (Q1), 106* (Q2), 39 (final) |
| Season | 17 | 863 | 4 hundreds, 4 fifties |
Table 3 — Rajasthan's bowling attack
| Bowler | Overs | Wickets | Economy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yuzvendra Chahal | 68.0 | 27 | 7.75 |
| Prasidh Krishna | 66.3 | 19 | 8.29 |
| Trent Boult | 62.0 | 16 | 7.94 |
| R Ashwin | 67.0 | 12 | 7.51 |
| Obed McCoy | 26.0 | 11 | 9.08 |
Rajasthan were the only side with four bowlers who each sent down more than 60 overs. That depth mattered. Chahal and Ashwin together bowled 135 overs of spin at an economy below 7.7 in a season when the average first-innings score was 171.1.
Table 4 — How the top four scored, by phase (runs per over)
| Team | Powerplay (1–6) | Middle (7–15) | Death (16–20) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rajasthan Royals | 8.37 | 7.97 | 10.55 |
| Gujarat Titans | 7.71 | 7.76 | 10.62 |
| Lucknow Super Giants | 7.44 | 8.36 | 10.97 |
| Royal Challengers Bangalore | 7.25 | 8.10 | 10.78 |
These rates explain the season. Rajasthan had the fastest powerplay of the top four because Buttler and Jaiswal went hard at the new ball. Their middle overs (7.97) and death overs (10.55) were the slowest of the four. Riyan Parag, then a 20-year-old finisher, made 183 runs off 132 balls in the season. When the Buttler-led start failed, as it did in the final, Rajasthan had less late-innings hitting than Gujarat, whose middle order of Hardik, Miller and Rahul Tewatia won game after game from behind.
The season's other numbers
- 18 totals of 200 or more, on pitches spread across four grounds.
- 59 of 74 tosses won by captains who chose to field, yet chasing sides won exactly 37 of the 74 games, half of them.
- 68 all out was the season's lowest total, by RCB against Sunrisers Hyderabad on 23 April 2022. SRH chased it down in eight overs.
- Kuldeep Yadav won four Player of the Match awards for Delhi, the most of anyone and one more than Buttler's three.
Legacy Impact — What 2022 Means Today
IPL 2022 reshaped the league's leading figures, and its effects are still visible. In his first season as a captain, Hardik won the title with a franchise that was only a few months old. That record is why Mumbai later brought him back to lead them, and he remains Mumbai's captain. Gill's 45* in the final began his rise. He made 890 runs the following year and now captains Gujarat. Patidar's knockout hundred took him from an injury replacement in 2022 to the captain of RCB's title-winning sides.
Rajasthan in 2022 also built the core of the team they field now. Parag, the young finisher of that season, is the Rajasthan Royals captain. Jaiswal has become one of the most dangerous openers in the league, and Hetmyer is still in the middle order. Most of the rest of that side has moved on. Buttler now opens for Gujarat, the team that beat him in the 2022 final. Samson was traded to Chennai, Chahal plays for Punjab Kings, Boult has returned to Mumbai, Prasidh is at Gujarat, and Ashwin has retired from the IPL. In 2026, Buttler's Gujarat knocked Rajasthan out in Qualifier 2 before losing the final to RCB.
There is a wider lesson for anyone who models this league. Buttler scored 566 runs in April, 63 in the next three weeks and 234 in the knockouts. Form in T20 cricket is very uneven, and judging a player on a short stretch can mislead in either direction. CricMind's Oracle is built with that in mind: it smooths team form with an exponential moving average instead of reacting to each innings, and it publishes every call before the match so it can be checked afterwards. On IPL 2026 that record was 38 correct and 35 wrong. Two of the misses were RCB's playoff wins over Gujarat, when the model backed the side that had been the steadier team all season and lost both times. The full record is on the leaderboard.
Three Takeaways
- One batter can carry a franchise to a final, but not through a final. Buttler made 234 runs across the 2022 knockouts. Once Hardik got him out for 39 in the final, Rajasthan had no other plan and were held to 130/9.
- Bowling depth, not star power, put Rajasthan in the top two. Four bowlers each sent down 60 or more overs, led by Chahal's 27 wickets. That depth kept Rajasthan in second place while Buttler made 63 runs in five innings in May.
- Neutral venues favoured adaptable sides. With the league played in Mumbai and Pune, the champion was a new team with no home ground to rely on, and Mumbai and Chennai finished in the bottom two.
FAQ
How many runs did Jos Buttler score in IPL 2022?
Jos Buttler scored 863 runs in 17 innings for Rajasthan Royals in IPL 2022, at an average of 57.53 and a strike rate of 149.1. It won him the Orange Cap and was then the second-highest season aggregate in IPL history, behind Virat Kohli's 973 in 2016.
How many centuries did Buttler hit in IPL 2022?
Four: 100 against Mumbai Indians, 103 against Kolkata Knight Riders, 116 against Delhi Capitals and 106* against Royal Challengers Bangalore in Qualifier 2. That equalled Kohli's 2016 record for most hundreds in a single IPL season.
Who won the Purple Cap in IPL 2022?
Yuzvendra Chahal of Rajasthan Royals won it with 27 wickets in 17 matches at an economy of 7.75. Wanindu Hasaranga was second with 26. Chahal's best figures were 5/40 against KKR on 18 April 2022, including a hat-trick.
Who won the IPL 2022 final?
Gujarat Titans beat Rajasthan Royals by seven wickets at the Narendra Modi Stadium, Ahmedabad on 29 May 2022. Hardik Pandya took 3/17 and was Player of the Match, Rajasthan made 130/9, and Gujarat chased the target in 18.1 overs, with Shubman Gill finishing on 45*.
When did Rajasthan Royals last reach an IPL final before 2022?
In 2008, the inaugural season, when Shane Warne's side won the title. The 2022 final was their first in 14 years.
Where was IPL 2022 played?
All 70 league matches were played in Maharashtra, at the Wankhede, Brabourne and DY Patil stadiums in Mumbai and the MCA Stadium in Pune. The playoffs were held at Eden Gardens in Kolkata and the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad.
What was the highest team total in IPL 2022?
Rajasthan Royals' 222/2 against Delhi Capitals at the Wankhede on 22 April 2022, built on Buttler's 116 off 65 balls. See the full IPL 2022 season page for every result.