AB de Villiers Won 25 Player of the Match Awards. He Never Won an IPL Title

Last Updated:

April, 2026

The most common Player of the Month awards in the history of IPL are dominated by AB de Villiers. 25 awards in184 matches. That translates to a win after every 7.4 games. No other competitor is even close in pace or in pure numbers.

The Player of the Match award goes to the single most impactful performer in each game. Batters score runs every season. Bowlers take wickets. Only one player walks away with the award each time. Over 17 seasons, AB de Villiers collected 25 of them.

The all-time list is presented in this table. What it does not indicate is how variously the players received their honors, how frequently these honors fell on losing causes as well as which players were the most perilous when the game really counted.

All-Time Top 10: Most Player of the Match Awards in IPL

No.	Player	POTM Awards	Matches	Awards per Match	Role	Active in IPL?
1	AB de Villiers	25	184	1 per 7.4	Batter	No
2	Chris Gayle	22	142	1 per 6.5	Batter	No
3	Rohit Sharma	20	264	1 per 13.2	Batter	Yes
4	Virat Kohli	19	260	1 per 13.7	Batter	Yes
5	MS Dhoni	18	264	1 per 14.7	WK-Batter	Yes
6	David Warner	18	184	1 per 10.2	Batter	No
7	Shane Watson	15	145	1 per 9.7	All-rounder	No
8	Yusuf Pathan	15	174	1 per 11.6	All-rounder	No
9	Suresh Raina	14	205	1 per 14.6	Batter	No
10	Kieron Pollard	13	189	1 per 14.5	All-rounder	No

4 Things This Table Does Not Tell You

Chris Gayle won 22 awards in 142 matches. That is one per 6.5 games. A better rate than de Villiers. He is listed second.

The record is set in total awards and not rate. Gayle had 42 fewer games as compared to de Villiers. Gayle would have earned 28 awards in 184 games at an award rate of one goal in every 6.5 games. He unnecessarily had less seasons of play, had earlier retired, had lost the record merely by sheer bulk and not performance. The ranking is made as per the ranking by output on a career basis. It does not have one of the best dominance ratings.

Rohit Sharma has 20 Player of the Match awards and 5 IPL titles. De Villiers has 25 awards and 0 titles. The record holder never won the trophy.

A franchise that has been to 3 finals with none being won, De Villiers was a lifetime player at RCB. This step made him the IPL all time leading player in terms of individual wins. He has not yet achieved the kind that features a trophy ceremony. Rohit won five. The championship and the award are by no means even on par with success in this format.

Shane Watson won 15 Player of the Match awards. 3 of them came in knockout matches. No other player in the top 10 has that conversion rate in elimination games.

The league stages win the majorities of the player of the month awards. They are the same in the table and not in the season. Watson became an IPL final player of the match winner. The two instances when he played a match winning performance when his team needed it the most. De Villiers was awarded 25 times and his greatest knockout was an 18 in the final. The number will be given in the table. It never tells you when those plays had come.

MS Dhoni has 18 Player of the Match awards in 264 matches. That is 1 per 14.7 games. The weakest rate in the top 10. He also won 5 IPL titles and averaged a strike rate of 136 in his final three seasons.

According to the award criteria of a match-winner, Dhoni was not even a winner. In other aspects he was a match-winner. He was able to realize his value on sticking to his budget, spinning and winning the game at the time when other players were losing the game. Explosive performances are caught by the award system. Dhoni had seldom been explosive. Victory was all he needed to do. And he did it even more than anyone above him at the table.

The Single Season Nobody Has Matched

In the IPL 2022, Jos Buttler has received 5 awards for the player of the match. In a single season. It was also during that tournament that he scored 4 centuries. No single player in the 5 previous seasons has obtained 5 awards in the same edition.

The league added an additional 74 matches in 2022 to the season of the IPL and 60 matches prior to that season. Opportunities were more in games. By that time, Buttler was required to perform at his optimum in his team within 1 out of 3 matches that they played so that he could even win 5 awards. He accomplished it during 17 appearances.

In the current season records since 2022 are as follows which are 4. Kohli did it twice, in 2024 and 2025. Gill did it in 2023. No one travelled above 5. The single-season table has been designed in such a way that does not allow any one player to dominate the list, with Buttler isolated at the top of the list in 2022.

Most Player of the Match Awards Per Season: Last 5 IPL Editions

Season	Most POTM Awards	Team	Awards That Season	Role
2025	Virat Kohli	RCB	4	Batter
2024	Virat Kohli	RCB	4	Batter
2023	Shubman Gill	Gujarat Titans	4	Batter
2022	Jos Buttler	Rajasthan Royals	5	Batter
2021	Harshal Patel	RCB	3	Bowler

The top of the order consists of four out of five season leaders that are batters. In 2021, only a single bowler, Harshal Patel, has broken the single-season law during the same year. With the increase in the speeds of the pitches and the increase in totals, it has been nearly impossible that a bowler would be able to win a sufficient number of individual match awards to be on top of a seasonal list.

Virat Kohli leads the table in back-to-back seasons, 2024 and 2025. No player has done that since the IPL expanded to its current format. At 37 years old in 2026, Kohli is producing Player of the Match performances at the rate a player 10 years younger normally would.

Will 25 Ever Be Beaten?

Virat Kohli is the only player who stands a realistic chance since he is still in the field. He has 19 prizes and has participated in 260 matches and still plays in 2026 with RCB, IPL. The ratio of his achievement in terms of number of awards per season is 4 awards and hence to achieve 27 awards he will need an additional 2 full seasons. That would get him to 2027 or at the latest, 2028.

It does not involve an intent problem, but a rate problem. Kohli has only 1 award against 13.7 matchings that is not elite. De Villiers won his 25 at 1 per 7.4. Supposing that Kohli plays 15 games more season after season, he will bring in 3-4 awards in total. That puts him at 22 to 23. He just has to go purple that he has not yet achieved consistently since 2016 to exceed 25.

Rohit Sharma has sanctioned 20 awards with 264 matches. His rating is too low. Shubman Gill is not old enough yet he has 7 awards in approximately 80 matches till now. By that pace it would take him 12 seasons or more of full IPL to make 25. He is the criticizer of the future and not the present.
The record of De Villiers remains till at least 2028. And 25 can simply be the figure that everyone pursues and cannot get.