IPL 2018: 5 most expensive bowlers of the season

Being a bowler is not easy in T20 cricket. Especially in a league like IPL, bowlers are under constant scrutiny. The margin for error is very less in this format of the game. You never your mark a bit and the ball travels miles into the stands.

Bowlers put in a lot of hard work to be able to bowl well in T20s. Often, they develop various different variations like the slower balls, knuckleballs and other variations in order to fox the batsmen. But, they don’t end up getting the kind of results they would desire. Sometimes, they get off the mark and end up conceding a huge number of runs to the batsmen.

Here are the most expensive spells by bowlers this season:

1. Basil Thampi | 4-0-70-0 vs RCB

This spell will have to be the worst spell of Basil Thampi’s life. SRH would have been thinking of winning the game comfortably had he conceded 15 or 20 runs less. In a virtual knockout game, RCB batted first and they took the SRH bowling lineup to the cleaners. They scored 218 runs in their quota of 20 overs and SRH fell short by 14 runs in the chase.

Basil came into the side in place of Bhuvneshwar Kumar in that game. Bhuvi was rested and Basil, who had good outings earlier was given a chance. However, he never managed to hit the right lengths and was smashed all over the park. Bowling to batsmen like AB de Villiers, Virat Kohli and Moeen Ali didn’t help either. Thampi had returned with the most expensive bowling figures in the history of IPL overtaking Ishant Sharma who conceded 66 runs earlier.

2. Umesh Yadav | 4-0-59-0 vs RR

Umesh Yadav had a dream IPL season this year. Although RCB didn’t have the best of seasons, this bloke was phenomenal. He sent shivers down the spines of the batsmen with the new ball. He bowled at a great pace and also hit good areas extracting swing as well. However, at the death, he was terrible and Virat Kohli was often forced to finish him inside the 12th or 13th over on most occasions.

Umesh has picked 20 wickets in 14 games and ended as the second leading wicket-taker at the end of the league stage. Despite all this, he had a really poor outing early on in the tournament against RR. He gave away 59 runs in his 4 overs and went wicketless in the innings.

3. Corey Anderson | 3.4-0-58-0 vs CSK

Corey Anderson was initially unsold in this year’s auction. However, he got his lucky break when he replaced the injured Nathan Coulter-Nile in the RCB setup. Corey came back from an injury and hadn’t bowled much for almost a year before this game. However, Kohli made him bowl three overs straight at the death despite having a batsman like MS Dhoni who was in the top-gear in the middle. Ambati Rayudu at the other end was also looking dangerous.

Chasing a mammoth total of 205, CSK seemed to be losing the game by a huge margin until MS Dhoni’s helicopter took off. MSD feasted on Corey Anderson’s bowling and the CSK batsmen smashed him all around the park. CSK finished the game with two balls remaining despite needing 16 to win off the last over. MSD finished the game with a 6 to provide CSK with a sweet victory and Anderson with one of his worst bowling figures ever.

4. Shivam Mavi | 4-0-58-1 vs DD

Shivam Mavi was one of the better finds for India at the U-19 World Cup this year. Mavi was terrific in New Zealand and hence attracted a lot of bidders in the IPL auction. He was finally bagged by the Knight Riders with whom he had a decent run. Mavi was entrusted to bowl the difficult death overs by DK for most of the initial stages of the tournament.

Although he didn’t get the kind of results as expected, he was impressive for a bowler of his age. However, in the game against DD when Shreyas Iyer made his debut as captain in IPL, Mavi ended up having one of his worst outings this year. His first three overs were decent enough where he conceded 29 runs and picked the wicket of dangerous Colin Munro. But he conceded 29 runs in his last over to end up having the 4th worst figures after the league stage.

5. Mustafizur Rahman | 4-0-55-0 vs RCB

The Royal Challengers opted to bowl first in a game at Wankhede against the Mumbai Indians. The MI batsmen put up a massive total of 213 runs on the board at the end of the first innings courtesy heroics from Rohit Sharma and Evin Lewis. Rohit scored 94 off just 52 balls in that game while Lewis scored 65 off 42.

Chasing this massive total, RCB were never in the game with MI bowlers doing exceedingly well. While all other bowlers had a great day, Mustafizur never looked comfortable. He gave away 31 runs in the last two overs he bowled after giving away 24 in his first two. Although Rashid Khan returned with similar figures against KXIP, he managed to escape from this list as he picked a wicket in that game whereas the Fizz didn’t.