Ten seasons, and two teams keeping the seats warm
The tenth IPL was the last one played without Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals. Their two-year suspensions over the 2013 betting case covered 2016 and 2017, and the two franchises created to fill the gap, Rising Pune Supergiant and Gujarat Lions, were living out their final season. Pune had finished bottom in 2016. In 2017, under Steve Smith, they finished second on the table, beat Mumbai Indians in all three league meetings and walked into the final at Hyderabad as the side nobody could read. Gujarat won four matches and vanished.
Sixty matches were scheduled between 5 April and 21 May. One of them, Royal Challengers Bangalore against Sunrisers Hyderabad at the Chinnaswamy on 25 April, never began. Bengaluru's season was that kind of season. On 23 April at Eden Gardens they were dismissed for 49, still the lowest total in IPL history, with Kohli and de Villiers both carrying injuries for long stretches.
On paper the season belonged to Sunrisers. David Warner took the Orange Cap with 641 runs, Bhuvneshwar Kumar the Purple Cap with 26, and the defending champions went out in the Eliminator anyway. Ben Stokes, in his first IPL season, was named Most Valuable Player for Pune and then flew home before the final, recalled by England for a Champions Trophy camp along with Mumbai's Jos Buttler. Pune lost Imran Tahir the same week. So the biggest match of the year was played by two sides missing their best imports.
Eleven off the last over
Rohit Sharma batted first and it went badly at once. Jaydev Unadkat removed both openers in the third over. Adam Zampa took out Rohit and Kieron Pollard in the eleventh. Mumbai were 81 for 7 after fifteen, and only Krunal Pandya's 47 off 38, with Mitchell Johnson hanging about at the other end, got them to 129 for 8. Almost nobody in the stadium thought it was enough.
Pune reached 119 for 3 with an over left, Smith still in, eleven to get. Johnson bowled it. Manoj Tiwary drove the first ball for four and holed out to the second. Smith went the same way to the third. A dropped catch off the fifth gave Pune two, leaving four needed off one. Dan Christian ran two, Washington Sundar turned for a third and was run out at the striker's end. Mumbai won by a run. It remains the lowest total ever defended in an IPL final, and Krunal, not Rohit and not Bumrah, walked away with the match award.
What the tenth season settled
Mumbai became the first franchise to win three titles, and the win confirmed the method they would ride for years: a strong Indian core, brutal death bowling, and an eye for players nobody else wanted. Pune and Gujarat were wound up within weeks of the final. Chennai and Rajasthan returned in 2018 and the league went back to a shape Indian fans actually recognised.
The lasting oddity is that a caretaker franchise, in a season it was never meant to survive, came within a single run of the trophy. Pune's fans got two years and one heartbreak, and then the team stopped existing.