We are halfway through the IPL in group stages and the last week was another intriguing one which provided a bit of clarity about where the teams are likely to end up in the group stage. Rajasthan Royals and Kolkata Knight Riders have been outstanding and fittingly played one of the great matches of the competition earlier in the week. It saw everything, drama, skills, temperament. Jos Buttler was required by his team to get the team home and he stepped up. Earlier in the game, Sunil Narine set up the game for KKR beautifully with a fiery hundred.
RR have been an exceptional bowling side. If Yuzvendra Chahal and R Ashwin don’t get you with spin, Avesh Khan and Trent Boult will get you with the new ball. They are a side who keep finding combinations with both bat and ball. Most of the players in RR dressing room must be feeling good about their game. That is not always the case with all the teams. It was not the case with RR last year when there was a set of key players who kept on winning games for them. This year, there are many match-winners, and we are only at the halfway mark into the league.
Same with KKR. They too have a core of players who are feeling very confident about their campaign. It becomes such a huge strength moving on in a long tournament like IPL where you need more than one matchwinner.
I had sensed it as a really big week for Mumbai Indians and Gujarat Titans in terms of getting closer to the playoffs. MI had a good win with Suryakumar Yadav scoring runs, but the next week will be even more important for them in consolidating their position on the points table.
GT are not really firing but they are managing to tick over, finding ways to win some games. They are going to be an intriguing watch moving forward. I don’t think they will feel they are putting out their best performances, but they are managing to get over the line every now and then.
Sunrisers Hyderabad have been a revelation this year as they continue to play the aggressive game. They are pushing boundaries and are in no mood to stop anytime soon. Scoring three 250- plus totals on the board is no small achievement. Travis Head and Abhishek Sharma at the top have been extraordinary, to say the least. I had said at the start of the tournament that SRH would be the side to watch in terms of fun and entertainment. They are having loads of fun while batting.
And as we talk about these batting performances and exceptional power-hitting that this past week has seen, I would also like to highlight some of the unsung heroes, the bowlers, who have produced some terrific performances so far.
When I watch cricket, I want to see a good and fair contest between bat and ball. There has to be a good balance. Looking at the IPL 2024 so far, I feel the bowlers in the remaining of the competition need some sort of help. The bowlers cannot be just machines providing balls to the bat to him them out of the ground.
This tournament and especially the past week was very difficult for the bowlers. For the same reason, it is very important to talk up some brilliant bowling performances that may have gone unnoticed and never really made the headlines. So, which are these standout performances I am talking about which disappeared in the crowd of 250-plus totals, hundreds and flurry of boundaries?
Andre Russell is the first name that comes to my mind. I had mentioned it in my IPL preview that his bowling was going to be crucial. And he is doing exactly that in this IPL. We saw him bowl a spell of 3 wickets for just 25 runs in 3 overs against RCB. It is just outstanding to see him give away just 25 runs from 3 overs when the team is defending 222, and the opposition has managed 221.
Russell’s bowling has been a huge lift for KKR. His bowling brilliance can be underlined as one reason why KKR are winning this year. Likewise, Narine has been phenomenal with the ball. He finished with a spell of 2 for 30 from 4 overs against Royals who hit 224 for 8. Simply said, this is a masterful display of T20 bowling.
Let’s move on to another spinner who has been a valuable asset to his teams in all the formats but particularly effective in IPL. When SRH went bonkers and hit 266 for 7 against DC, Axar Patel finished with a spell of 1 for 29. I understand that the figures with which the batters finished this game were astonishing. But to bowl like how Axar did and returned with those figures deserves a huge round of applause. It shows the quality Axar has got.
Speaking of quality, how can you not talk about someone who has been at the peak of his game in the last four months or so. We are talking about none other than Jasprit Bumrah. He has made two or three strong returns when the opposition batters have been going all guns blazing. 2 for 22 against DC when they ended up scoring 205 for 8. 5 for 21 when RCB nearly clipped the 200 total. When a bowler is putting up an individual performance like that and is repeating it, in a tournament where high scores have become rampant, it just reflects on excellence of these bowlers.
It is also important to note that numbers alone should not be talked up but one must also understand the context behind the numbers. When did a bowler bowl his overs, how did he bowl them and how important they were. I think, in both batting and bowling, it is just too easy to only look at the overall numbers. But for a batter, it is not necessarily about the number of runs he scores as much as it is about the time when these runs came. For a bowler, it is not about how many wickets they picked but when did he got those wickets.
A bowler could have gone for many runs earlier in the innings, but he can still create a huge impact by defending ten or less in the last over to win the game for his side. These small performances of the bowlers also need to be talked up. These bowling performances, that I talked about above, need to be seen in the same light. It is quite easy to push these bowling figures and performances aside when everyone has been talking about the batting numbers.
