Spinners hit purple patch in IPL 2010
In a brand of cricket where the need for speed has been regarded as paramount, it might come as a surprise that the IPL’s leading wicket-takers so far this season are the slow bowlers.
Indeed, it’s a leg-spinner, and not the most famous one either, who is leading the pack after 37 matches of the series have been played.
The Delhi Daredevils’ Amit Mishra currently leads a quartet of slow bowlers in the race for the purple cap in this year’s competition. The 27-year-old, whose IPL performance hasn’t been enough for India’s selectors to ink his name among the 15-man squad for the World Twenty20, has so far claimed 14 victims this season from nine matches.
Hot on his heels is the Deccan Chargers’ slow left-armer Pragyan Ojha who has taken 13 wickets so far and the Chennai Super Kings Muttiah Muralitharan trails just one wicket further back in the field, with 12 from his nine matches.
A trio of players are tied for fourth on the table of leading wicket-takers in this IPL season, with 11 wickets apiece, but it’s Mumbai Indians spinner Harbhajan Singh who has been the most economical of the three, so the India spinner narrowly slots into fourth place on the list.
That leaves Harbhajan’s Mumbai teammates Zaheer Khan and Lasith Malinga as the leading wicket-takers among the pacemen, also with 11 wickets so far in this series, although it must be noted that Zaheer has played one less match than the other bowlers in the top six.
Rajasthan Royals captain Shane Warne, who started the season in questionable form, is now one of nine bowlers to have taken 10 wickets or more, and one of five spinners to have achieved the feat.
Wickets though aren’t everything in Twenty20 cricket, containing runs also counts. So how do the spinners compare there? Discounting the four deliveries of slow bowling by Virender Sehwag (at an economy rate of 3.00), it’s Delhi captain Anil Kumble who leads the way with an economy rate of 5.94 in the 35.5 overs he’s bowled so far. Another victory to the spinners.
At the other end of the scale, pacemen Albie Morkel and Shaun Tait have conceded more runs than any other bowler in an innings this year, going for 56 and 53 in their worst performances respectively. Third on the list though is Muralitharan, who was dispatched for 52 from his four overs against Rajasthan on April 3rd.
However, it’s the accumulation of wickets that will determine who dons the purple cap when the curtain falls on the competition.
A spinner has finished as the second-highest wicket-taker in the two previous IPL seasons – Warne in 2008 and Kumble in 2009 – but it’s been a fast bowler who has claimed more scalps than any other when the last ball has been bowled.
With spinners occupying the top four places on the wicket-taking table at this stage of the current season though, 2010 might just be their turn to take the honours.
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