Finally Bowlers seem to get a hold of Twenty20 in IPL

When most of us first heard about Twenty20 in general and IPL in particular, we all heard and thought that it is purely a batsmen's game. For many cricket fans, It was all about hitting those massive SIXes and flurry of boundaries. It was perhaps all about making the bowler repent for his chosen career path in Cricket world. Cricket purist often criticized this form of the game citing the logic that it is a harakiri for the bowlers as they doesn't stand any chance in this format. Well, in the IPL opening ceremony game and for the next few games that followed, all such notions were well supported with big 100s in a Twenty20 game by Mccullum, Symonds, Hussey and Gilchrist. Umpteen number of countless sixes which has been rare even in the 50-50 format was easy to see af if a video game was being eye witnessed. Mouth watering for many and more success and dollors for IPL and Bollywood.

But it seems, slowly slowly the pattern has been changing and it has stabilised to some extent now. There could be many reasons for example exodus of the international stars, most importantly the australians, the amount of cricket being played and its tiring effect on the players etc. All these reasons have been suitably explained it one of the earlier posts of Mrigank.

However, After a bit of analysis, I do feel that bowlers are now finally getting a strong hold on the subject matter of T20. Initially they must have followed more or less the same approach as they do in regular ODIs if not test matches. Obviously that was not to work as this format gives more freedom to play your shots as you have 11 batsmen to play in only 20 overs. But the bowlers seem to understand a few basic things for their T20 bowling armoury:

1. Bowl lot many slower bowls and mix it well with your faster ones. It is learnt that Shane Warne had this plan for Sehwag and had asked his team members to bowl only slower bowls to him and frastrate him as the bowl would not come to the bat easily. Hard hitters always love it when the bowl comes to the bat really good.
2. Avoid full pitched bowls. As the boundaries have shrinked, chances are what would possibly be a catch near the ropes would be a comfortable SIX in this format. So bowl flat but short of a length. This is what Balaji did against Punjab Kings XI.

When the tournament started off, a dot ball was a Mallika Sherawat (rarity), forget about a Katrina Kaif (maiden over). But as the tournament has progressed, we have seen bowlers coming with many dot balls in overs and in fact we do see 1 or 2 maiden overs every match. In fact there has been instances of maiden wickets. See below.

Bowlers Bowling a Maiden

Mdns	Bowler	For	Mts	Overs bowled
2	IK Pathan	Moh	9	35.2
2	GD McGrath	Del	10	40
1	M Ntini	Chn	3	11
1	ST Jayasuriya	Mum	8	13
1	SM Pollock	Mum	8	28
1	SK Warne	Jai	9	29
1	I Sharma	Kol	9	30.4
1	P Kumar	Ban	9	32.4
1	RP Singh	Hyd	10	36.5
1	M Gony	Chn	10	37

Bowlers Bowling a Wicket-maiden

Bowler	For	Vs	Venue	Match	Batsman dismissed	Over #
Glenn McGrath	Del	Jai	Delhi	3rd	Taruwar Kohli	3rd
Ishant Sharma	Kol	Hyd	Kolkata	4th	Y Venugopal Rao	4th
Shane Warne	Jai	Ban	Bangalore	12th	Mark Boucher	12th
RP Singh	Hyd	Mum	Mumbai DY	14th	L Ronchi	3rd
Sanath Jayasuriya	Mum	Kol	Kolkata	16th	Mohammad Hafeez	14th
Praveen Kumar	Ban	Moh	Bangalore	25th	Yuvraj Singh	11t

Do not forget the two hattricks. Balaji and amit Mishra both have taken hattricks already. Had anyone ever thought something like this happening in T20?

owler	For	Vs	Venue	Match
L Balaji (5-24)	Chn	Moh	Chennai	31st
(victims-IK Pathan, PP Chawla & VRV Singh (all caught)
A Mishra (5-17)	Del	Hyd	Delhi	37th
(victims-DB Ravi Teja (Ct), PP Ojha (Ct) & RP Singh (St)

More importantly, I could count as many as 7 instances where the bowlers have won the game because of a terrific spell/over.

1. Sohail Tanvir [ 6/14 against Chennai]
2. Amit Mishra [ 5/17 against Hyderabad including a superb hattrick]
3. L Balaji [ 5/24 against Delhi]
4. Shoaib Akhtar [ 4/11 against Chennai, Daredevils might lose a semi spot because of this terrific spell]
5. GD Mcgrath [4/29 against Bangalore]
6. SM Pollock [3/12 against Kolkata, Kokata slumped to their lowest total of IPL]
7. Ashish Nehra [3/13 against Rajasthan]

There are many other small instances where the bowlers have contributed significantly. You can analyse the data in cricinfo in detail.

As someone has aptly said - "Throw a true sportsman to a challenge and he would raise his game". No matter what the format would be, everyone would have a day of his own to prove his calibre. It might need sometime and some motivation. This change also augurs well for the cricket pandits who were against T20 because it was a bowler's grave. Now they also have a reason to rethink and probably embrace this format.

I feel more happy as it seems to give chance to every participant to turn a game around just like we have been seeing those magical spells, magical innings and stunning catches in the regular forms of the games. And I hope it balances out more and it doesn't turn the NBA way?