We have had a look at the outright market and the top batter market ahead of the new IPL 2025 season and before the first ball is bowled there is just enough time to have a look at the offering for the top bowler for the season.
Harshal Patel landed the Purple Cap last season and he will join some world-class bowlers looking to get their hands on the award this time around and off the back of a Champions Trophy most of the leading bowlers will arrive in decent form.
Recent Winners
2024 – Harshal Patel
2023 – Mohammad Shami
2022 – Yuzvendra Chahal
2021 – Harshal Patel
2020 – Kagiso Rabada
2019 – Imran Tahir
2018 – Andrew Tye
2017 – Bhuvneshwar Kumar
2016 – Bhuvneshwar Kumar
2015 – Dwayne Bravo
Market Leaders
Varun Chakaravarthy is the 11/1 favourite to be the leading bowler in this tournament but backers of him will need to go against history where just two of the last 10 Purple Cap winners were spinners. He shot to prominence even more than he already had when he ploughed through the England batting order a month or so ago but he actually finished second in this market last year. Spinners don’t tend to go well in this tournament because batters in this part of the world are competent against spin so that is a concern.
Rashid Khan is 12/1 second favourite to land the Purple Cap. It is probably a surprise that he has never landed this title in his IPL career but it does show a couple of things, firstly that players in this part of the world are fine with playing spin and secondly that he is respected enough that teams largely look to play him out without giving him their wicket and then attack at the other end. Expect Rashid to be one of the most economical bowlers in the competition but maybe not the leading wicket taker.
Kuldeep Yadav is next in the betting at 14/1 to be the leading wicket taker. The immediate negative for him is that spinners just don’t have a great record of landing the Purple Cap and I don’t see that changing this season. The other question mark where Kuldeep is concerned is just how deep into the competition the Delhi Capitals will go. They are not a team who stand out as potential champions and you don’t want to be losing games to the field in this market if you can help it. At the price he is easy to swerve.
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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 three seasons ago 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
I always think this is the hardest of the markets to bet on where the Indian Premier League is concerned and IPL 2025 is no different, largely because the workload on bowlers these days is so huge that injuries are too frequent. The one thing I do know is that I want to be on a seamer and obviously it needed to be from someone who will go deep in the competition. With the injury status of the likes of Jasprit Bumrah and Mohammad Shami never guaranteed I’ll go overseas for a bet.
That comes in the form of Matheesha Pathirana who looks a fair price at 16/1 in this market. The Sri Lankan only played six matches last season but he took 13 wickets so if you give him just the full 14 game regular season at that rate then he is going to be closing in on 30 wickets. When you consider that the Purple Cap was won with 24 then he should be right in the mix. Overall his IPL strike rate for a full 14 match season where he bowls his full allotment of overs in each game would land him on 25 wickets so again he’ll be competitive. It is hard to score off the spinners in Chennai so Pathirana will pick up cheap wickets at the end of the innings when teams look to attack him to up their score and at 16/1 with all the likely scenarios he feels like a solid punt here.
Tips
Back M.Pathirana Season Top Bowler (e/w) for a 1/10 stake at 17.00 with William Hill (1/4 1-4)
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