Look out for Purple
May 17th, 2008Mohit Goyal - Udaipur
We all have been waiting for such a thing to happen and at last somebody has given a heed to the hard work the poor bowlers put in. It will be the first time we will see a player wearing a purple coloured IPL cap on the field. Yes, the IPL has announced a running purple cap for the highest wicket taker at any particular time in the league. Irfan Pathan is going to be the first proud holder of this cap. Although Irfan, Sreesanth and Zaheer all have an equal 13 wickets in their kitties but Irfan owing to the best average will get the cap.
Besides these three, the other bowlers nearing contention are Watson and RP Singh with 12 wickets a piece and leggies Warne and Chawla and rookie pacers Dhawal Kulkarni and Manpreet Gony having 11 each. Its very heartening to see 8 Indians in the 10 top wicket takers in the league thus far. Their are more foreign batmen than bowlers in the league but there are many prominent international names like Mc Grath, Asif, Vaas, Tanvir, Pollock, Steyn and Muralidharan but only Warne and Watson are in the top 10 as of now.
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The tournament has seen many new young Indian medium pacers grabbing the limelight. VRV Singh for Punjab, Yo Mahesh for Delhi, Dinda for Kolkata, Siddharth Trivedi for Rajasthan, Kulkarni for Mumbai, Gony for Chennai and Vijay Kumar for Hyderabad have come to the fore while seasoned pros Zaheer, Pathan, Sreesanth, Munaf, Nehra, RP and Ishant all have done well. Praveen Kumar has been bowling decently well. Agarkar hasn’t bowled badly but his road to the Indian team looks bumpy at the moment.
The disappointing thing has been the lack of enough young Indian spinners. Piyush Chawla and Amit Mishra have been good, Pragyan Ojha has been reasonable but the list ends here and these aren’t encouraging signs. But the performance of the bowlers in the last few matches has weakened the myth that T20 is a batsmen’s game. We just need to adjust the standards a bit. Since this is a short game batsmen can be care free and run rates are naturally going to be higher. We need to change the standards from economies of 4, 4.5 and maidens to economies of 6.5,7 and a better strike rate for the bowlers and then we will find that it isn’t just a batsman’s slam bang game.
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Tags: balaji, bowlers, chawla, IPL Purple cap, irfan, Mcgrath, orange cap, purple, purple cap, RP Singh, Shane Warne, Shaun Pollock, Shoaib Akhtar, Shukla, Sohail Tanvir, Sreesanth, ZaheerPosted in Cricket News, IPL - Bangalore Royal Challengers, IPL - Chennai Super Kings, IPL - Delhi Daredevils, IPL - Hyderabad - Deccan Chargers, IPL - Kolkata Knight Riders, IPL - Mohali - Kings XI Punjab, IPL - Mumbai Indians, IPL - Rajasthan Royals, IPL News |