TOP 10 BOWLING PERFORMANCES TILL DATE

The sportiqo.com ranking and points system follows a basic rule. Players get points for every ball that they participate in as a batter or bowler. For bowlers, wickets and dot balls have positive points, while boundaries conceded and extras such as no-balls and wide balls fetch negative points. Those with economy rates lower than the rest of their team get bonus points and they get penalty points when they concede runs at a higher rate than the rest. The system rewards wickets, dot balls and tighter bowling.

Boom, bang, bowled : Jasprit Bumrah

Boom! That’s what it was. He blasted the KKR innings with a five-wicket burst after going without success in his first over. You associate him with yorkers? Right? On this day he bowled that delivery with perfection, but took wickets with his top bowling performances, the another other weapons. The opponents were 123/2 after 13 overs and headed towards 200 perhaps. Bumrah was brought back into the attack and that was that. He came up with those trademark toe-crushers and mixed things up by using the short-pitched stuff with telling effect. To confuse the batters further, he also bowled a few length balls.

Those holding the bat had no idea what was happening. They tried to defend and got out, tried to attack and got out and got out even when they apparently tried to find a middle path. Bumrah not just blasted them out, but also outthought them. It was a classic example of a bowler devising plans and executing them with perfection. It looked like a physical effort and yet, it was as much about the mind as the body. The limbs carried out what the mind had programmed. Yorker now and the batter anticipating another next ball, then came a sizzling bouncer to catch him off guard. Ripping apart almost an entire batting line-up in three overs doesn’t happen every day and DY Patil Stadium experienced this exception. Mumbai Indians lost the match eventually, but Bumrah and his devastating craft were the winners.

Making them crumble: Anil Kumble

This was exactly a year after the inaugural IPL match. On that day, RCB were blown away by KKR. On this day, it seemed as if something similar was going to take place when they settled for 133/8. Then came Jumbo! The defending champions were bundled out for 58 in front of a stunned crowd. Truth be told, RCB had made early inroads before Kumble had been introduced into the attack. RR were already on the back foot. What the leg-spinner top bowling performances did was he just closed all escape routes. And he did it quite rapidly. Beating the batters in the air and off the pitch, he was unplayable. Almost everything in his top bowling performances quiver was on display in the span of just 19 deliveries! That was the most amazing part. In a mere matter of moments he dismantled the opposition and left them shell shocked.

They were gone before realising what was going on. The IPL has seen many five-wicket hauls and there will be many more, but few will be achieved in such a rapid manner. It seemed inevitable. Kumble will bowl and he will be celebrating with his teammates. And this kept happening until the innings got over. Having retired from the international game the previous year, the mechanical engineer from Karnataka proved in no uncertain terms that his destroying skills were just as sharp as his building skills.

Ballsmith!: Dwayne Smith

He got out for a first-ball duck opening the innings for his team in this game. But on this day, he was unbeatable with the ball. Brought into the attack fairly early and surprisingly, he kept delivering those cutters and zippers on a pitch assisting that kind of bowling. KKR had prepared for the other bowlers in the Gujarat line-up, not for Smith perhaps. And he hit them hard and bad. He started tormenting them early in the innings and by the time he was done, the damage had been done. Irreparable damage it was, mind you. Not a frontline bowler, Smith accounted for the top-order batters in very little time and tilted the balance in the favour of his team. It was not a menacing or devastating effort, but just the clever use of the seam and then relying on the pitch to do the rest. Some nipped in, some did not and it was a guessing game for the batters which they lost. To his top bowling performances credit, Smith was on the money all the time. He not only probed the right channels, but hit those channels with unerring regularity. It was game, set and match when he was done. The duck with the bat meant nothing in the context of the match.

Sam the man: Samuel Badree

Another effort to a losing cause. But what insane an act was this! The opponent reduced to 7/4 in the third over, courtesy a hat-trick by the leg-spinner. He was all over the opponents, mesmerising them, luring them into false shots and just bundling them out. The Trinidad born had the measure of the rivals and threatening to rattle them out of the game. He very nearly came to doing that actually. It was RCB’s game after that astonishing spell by him. Most of the notable names in the batting order struck off the list, Badree was running away with the game. Deceiving them off the wicket, amount of turn just about perfect, it was his top bowling performances day. Actually it was. Badree was the winner. Pity that his team was not. Sad tale in the end, but more than heroic the attempt was.

Mishy magic: Amit Mishra

This match was perhaps done and dusted before Mishra came into the picture. Deccan Chargers had amassed 198/2 and it was their game to lose. They defended the total with aplomb and that’s why this leg-spinner’s performance is talked about. Kings XI were not exactly in the match but might still had been harbouring hopes of staging a comeback. Mishra made sure that they did not stand a chance. He extracted grip from the pitch and on a day spinners of any kind failed to make much of an impact, came up with a stellar effort. His hat-trick was a killer blow for Kings XI and the faint hopes they had of making a match of this were snuffed out. Wrist spin has a special place in T20s in spite of its inherent risks because of the danger it causes. Mishra demonstrated why the likes of him are so sought after by delivering the telling blows. It was match sealed already and he put the finishing touches in some style. Turn, deceit and whatever else needed, he came up with those.

Rav effect: Ravindra Jadeja

This was a serious performance because it was a low-scoring match and spinners were playing a big part in it. There were Shakib Al Hasan, Sunil Narine and Piyush Chawla for KKR. CSK had Ravichandran Ashwin and Jadeja. The left-arm guy from Saurashtra towered above the rest and took four wickets, which was more than the tally of three claimed by all the other spinners combined. Of both teams. The pitch was tough to bat on when it came to playing against spin. The bounce was uneven at times and the ball came slowly off the surface. But one still had to hit the right areas to make that advantage count. Darting the ball in at the perfect pace and bowling the ideal length, Jadeja made life miserable for the KKR batters. He was pin-point accurate and gave nothing away. The rewards he got were fully deserved. Yes, it was just four overs of hard work, but it took a fair amount of concentration, application and dedication to deliver those four overs.

Lungi dance: Lungi Ngidi

This was a matter of delivering those blows, at each end of your day of work. The South African struck twice in his first spell and twice more in the second. He took out the heart and soul of the rival batting order by getting rid of Chris Gayle and KL Rahul by the fourth over and came back to dismiss two more at a time when Kings XI were hoping against hope to make some sort of a comeback. This was incisive bowling. He was not express pace all the time, but just about quick enough. He hit the deck hard and forced batters into awkward positions. He crammed them for room and offered very few freebies. When you do that consistently, rewards are bound to come by and this was one of those days. Ngidi was on song and because of him, his team retained its stranglehold over the opposition.

Fast forward Alzarri: Alzarri Joseph

A major, major effort this was. His team had a mere 136 to defend against a side which raced off to 30 in three overs. The pitch was not the best to bat on, but the task was still very difficult because of the low total MI had put together. And then came pace! Hurled at a certain speed, a cricket ball can be a frightening object. And this Caribbean demonstrated that he is a qualified practitioner of an art started by his illustrious predecessors. Six wickets in 22 balls? This is unheard of. One does not do that even in school cricket. But there was this Antigua boy, from the land of Andy Roberts and Curtly Ambrose, doing that menacing act. The surface helped him because the ball behaved in unpredictable manner. At his pace, he was always going to be a difficult customer to handle. But he had to get his act right. And that, he did, in telling fashion, by bundling SRH out for 96. Not often has a total of 136 been defended so convincingly.

Tanvir tale: Tanvir tale

There was a TV commercial back in the eighties with a tag line ‘Zip, Zap, Zoom’. In cricketing parlance, this show was it. Tanvir came, saw and he conquered. There were 12 wickets claimed by bowlers in the entire match and he accounted for half of them. A tricky proposition for batters because of his unusual run-up, action and follow-through, this Pakistani pace man was unplayable on this day and took wickets in his first and second spells. Hitting the right length at good speed and getting movement off the surface, he hardly bowled a bad ball. This meant bad luck for CSK as their players surrendered without a fight and got bowled out for 109. Not many times has an IPL match been dominated by one bowler. In a game designed to suit batters, these are performances that stand out as exceptions.