Swooning over Hardik Pandya’s Richard Mille watch? Here’s why athletes love the Swiss brand

Hardik Pandya's on-field performance helped India defeat Pakistan in the Champions Trophy 2025, but his fans were clean bowled not just by his performance but also by his exquisite Richard Mille RM 27-02 watch. The Team India all-rounder collects luxury timepieces and owns quite a few flamboyant watches. However, this limited-edition Richard Mille was spotted on him during Sunday’s match in Dubai. might be his most prized asset not just because of its price tag. The timepiece is named after another sporting legend and actually features a breakthrough technology.

Is Hardik Pandya’s Richard Mille watch named after Rafael Nadal?

Hardik Pandya’s Richard Mille RM 27-02 CA FQ Tourbillon may have a price tag worth crores and you may have to pay almost 50K just for shipping it! However, that’s not what makes this watch unique. With this range, the brand unveiled the very first skeletonised baseplate known as ‘unibody’, in which the baseband and baseplate have been fused into a single piece. This innovation does away with the need to attach the two components and is inspired by the chassis of racing cars, and thus enhances resistance.

Incidentally, the watch Hardik sports is named after tennis legend Rafael Nadal; it’s a part of a collaboration between the Swiss watchmaker and the tennis star. When Rafael met Richard Mille in 2008, he didn’t want to wear a watch and didn’t even wear one during his matches. Nadal was resistant to the idea and it took Mille a long time to convince him. Together, they joined hands to collaborate on the world’s lightest tourbillon, the RM 027 – the first watch to bear Nadal’s name.

However, the Swiss watch label isn’t just a favourite with Rafael Nadal and Hardik Pandya. Athletes all over the world prefer Richard Mille watches owing to their impeccable weightlessness and durability. Richard Mille watches are the epitome of modern luxury and technical innovation. The Swiss label was able to take some major strides in lightweight construction and technical accuracy.

In fact, the label is known to design watches for specific sports; while a particular range of watches are extremely light and meant to take the forces of impact during golf, the brand makes a separate model that's extremely light and thin for track and field (Barshim RM67-02), you'll have another one designed for playing tennis with good shock resistance.

Besides Nadal, golf star Bubba Watson, F1 driver Charles Leclerc and high jumper Mutaz Essa Barshim are all fans of Richard Mille; the brand has committed to making sports-friendly watches for many years with elite ergonomics. Nicknamed the ‘billionaire’s handshake’, the label has made watches with enhanced ergonomics that are acutely resilient. A good but rather unfortunate example would be Formula One driver Felipe Massa’s M006 tourbillion.

In 2004 Mille created the super lightweight M006 tourbillon for Massa, capable of resisting shocks up to 500G. The driver was wearing the watch when he crashed into a barrier of tyres in 2009 and while he suffered serious head injuries, his timepiece was unscathed.

In a 2018 interview, the label’s head of marketing broke down the Swiss brand’s approach to making watches for elite athletes. “We are very sensitive to the fact that our ambassadors are human beings with personalities,” said the brand’s head of marketing Tim Malachard. “We are not just obsessed with their results and them staying at the top of their field. We know how difficult it is to be a top-line sportsman and know that there are bound to be ups and downs. But yes, it seems that our watches bring good luck to many of the sports people we work with.”