STATS 
Follow UsIt was only in the 2014 edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL), six years after the tournament’s inception, that Yuzvendra Chahal started becoming a first-team regular. Yet a decade on, the leg-spinner, who is far away from being one of the most capped players in the competition, has become the first bowler in the tournament's history to pick up 200 wickets.
In a way, Chahal’s IPL career has come full circle. 11 years ago, it was with the Mumbai Indians that the 20-year-old began his IPL journey, representing them in a solitary game against Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) at the Eden Gardens.
Fast forward to 2024, it’s against his first franchise that Chahal has scripted history, breaching the 200-wicket mark in the competition.
In sports, we tend to come across a lot of players for whom numbers don’t do justice to just how good they are. When it comes to Chahal, though, the numbers absolutely do justice to his greatness.
In terms of spinners, he is right up there with Rashid Khan and Sunil Narine as the best that’s ever graced this competition.
Among those with 100+ wickets in the IPL, the leg-spinner has the best strike rate, best wickets per game ratio and the second-best average.
In fact, it won’t be an exaggeration to label Chahal as one of the best bowlers in IPL history.
In the competition’s history, there have been 16 bowlers who have taken 125+ wickets. Among them, Chahal’s strike rate of 16.7 is only second to Lasith Malinga.
Chahal is right up there as the best strike bowler in the IPL, ever, for his consistency when it comes to wicket-taking — the sheer number of seasons he’s dominated.
In all, the leg-spinner has taken 20+ wickets in a season a staggering five times. No other bowler has managed this feat. Not even the great Malinga.
And Chahal, when he strikes, tends to take wickets in bunches. In his IPL career, he’s taken 2+ wickets in an innings 56 times, which is four more than any other bowler.
Only Jasprit Bumrah has taken more 3+ wicket hauls (22) than Chahal (20). The leggie has also taken 4+ wickets in an innings seven times, which is the joint second-best for any bowler. Narine tops this list with eight.
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What makes Chahal a one-of-a-kind bowler is the role he plays. Spinners in T20 cricket are expected to take wickets, but that’s only in the middle overs. Or, in rare cases, the powerplay, based on the profile of the bowler.
But, in the IPL, Chahal has almost revolutionized and redefined the role of a spinner, by picking wickets and turning games for his side at the death.
Since the start of 2015, no spinner has bowled more overs in the 16-20 phase in the IPL than Chahal (90.1).
Remarkably enough, the 33-year-old has taken at least 20 more wickets in this phase than every other spinner.
44 of Chahal’s 57 wickets at the death in the said period have come since 2019. That he’s bowled nearly twice as many overs as every spinner, barring Rashid Khan, is a good indicator of how he’s taken something that’s extremely uncommon and made it very ‘normal’.
If there’s one thing that truly defines Chahal’s greatness, however, it’s his ludicrous record at the Chinnaswamy stadium in Bengaluru, a renowned graveyard for spin bowlers.
Chahal spent eight seasons playing for Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB), which meant that, outside the pandemic, he played 50% of his games in each season at the Chinnaswamy, where the wickets are flat and the ground is comically small.
Essentially, he was at a disadvantage compared to his counterparts like Rashid, Narine and Ravindra Jadeja, who were bowling on surfaces far more conducive to spin.
The greatness of Chahal lies in how he delivered for RCB, game in and game out, season after season, despite being asked to bowl at the Chinnaswamy.
In all, Chahal has played 41 games in Bengaluru, taking 52 wickets at an average of 21.6 and economy of 7.7.
These numbers might seem normal, but they are nuts when you put them into context. And the context is this: since Chahal’s debut for RCB (in 2014), a total of 71 other spinners have bowled at the Chinnaswamy.
They’ve all combined to average 10 more than Chahal, and have been far more expensive than the leggie from Haryana.
Despite only becoming an IPL regular in 2014, then, Chahal has raced past the rest of the field and has left everyone behind to become the first double centurion in the competition. But by no means does 200 feel like an end. If anything, it feels like Chahal is just getting started.
He will turn 34 in three months’ time, but that is still relatively ‘young’ for a spinner in today’s age. He is bowling as well as he ever has — once again in the running for the purple cap — and looks primed to dominate the IPL for another couple of years at least. And that could very well mean him hitting the 250-wicket mark by the end of IPL 2026.
Whisper it quietly, but there’s no reason why Chahal can’t breach the 300-wicket mark by the time he calls it a day.
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