There is one more player market to look at ahead of the IPL 2023 season getting underway on Friday and that comes in the form of the top bowler one, the one where the leading bowlers in the world will battle it out in.
Yuzvendra Chahal was the leading bowler in the tournament a year ago and he has retained his place in the Rajasthan Royals squad to attempt to defend the purple cap. Plenty of top bowlers will be looking to dethrone him.
Recent Winners
2022 – Yuzvendra Chahal
2021 – Harshal Patel
2020 – Kagiso Rabada
2019 – Imran Tahir
2018 – Andrew Tye
2017 – Bhuvneshwar Kumar
2016 – Bhuvneshwar Kumar
2015 – Dwayne Bravo
2014 – Mohit Sharma
2013 – Dwayne Bravo
Market Leaders
Whenever a top bowler market is doing the rounds and Rashid Khan is in the tournament he is never far away from favouritism and at 7/1 he is the market leader this season. Rashid will always be a threat in these tournaments but teams are fully endorsing the play him out without taking risks against him and deny him running through and ruining a batting order. There will be the odd time where he fills his boots but perhaps not as often as three or so years ago.
Wanindu Hasaranga had a brilliant season in 2022 and he is back in Bangalore this season but the first thing to note where he is concerned is that he is away with Sri Lanka in New Zealand and doesn’t finish there until April 8 so you’ve got to think by the time he is in India and ready to go we are looking at nearer April 11-12ish so he is going to miss three matches which isn’t ideal. That doesn’t mean he can’t win but it makes it more difficult.
Yuzvendra Chahal is the third in the betting at around the 10/1 mark. He won this market a year ago but it is important to remember that the tournament was played on just four grounds where the wickets tired towards the end. That isn’t the case this time around so the Indian leggie will need to win in a different way if he is going to do that. Jaipur isn’t the easiest place for bowlers either which would be another negative.
Kagiso Rabada, Jofra Archer and Mohammad Shami are all around the 12/1 mark this season. I’ll come on to the latter shortly but Rabada is arriving to the competition late as he has a big ODI series in South Africa to come through before he can get to India. Archer is going to have his minutes managed as he returns from injury so you would imagine it is pretty easy to put a solid line through those two in this market.
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Profile
As with the batsmen it is important to whittle the field down here too. We’re looking at more than 40 runners overall in this market and that is just too many to select from. Like we did with the batsmen, we can start by getting rid of any team we don’t think will make the play-offs and concentrate on the ones that do. That halves the number immediately and then there is one more filter to apply.
That comes in the form of whether to pick a seamer or a spinner. Usually in this part of the world the common perception is that we would want to be on spin but Imran Tahir ended a run of eight years where seamers were the top bowler in this tournament in 2019 and Chahal was the winner last season but it was a year where the tournament was condensed to four venues which tired over 70 matches. So it is a seamer for us and then the ideal situation is they bowl at the death where the cheap wickets are.
Betting
Mohammad Shami has never won the purple cap but his consistency in this league is so good and I think the 14/1 quotes that are out there for him are well worth taking. In the last four years of the IPL his finishing position in this market has been 7-8-5-7 so he is very consistent and this year I think he can go to the next level. There is a lot of big cricket coming up for India later in the year in the World Test Championship and a home World Cup so Shami has the ideal chance to show he should be in the reckoning and starting.
Shami ticks a big box for me in that he will open the bowling and then he will bowl at the death. The bowlers who tend to make their way towards the top of the list definitely bowl at the end of the innings because there will be at least a couple of innings where the last few overs will be going up against the lower order and tail of a team. He has good variations, can bowl a Yorker and has a bit of pace about him. Consistency and motivation make him a good bet at 14/1.
Tips
Back M.Shami Top Tournament Bowler (e/w) for a 1/10 stake at 15.00 with Coral (1/4 1-4)
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