Harshal Patel on bowlers’ plight in IPL 2024: ‘You either move on with the game or keep cribbing’
With 17 wickets at the economy rate of 9.78 in this year’s edition, Harshal is second in the purple cap list behind Jasprit Bumrah. (Sportzpics)
A couple of weeks ago, former India head coach Ravi Shastri lashed out at the bowlers on X, saying they need to stop “whinging and mourning” about the high scores in the Indian Premier League and instead focus on their “execution.” Shastri’s comments came a day after Punjab Kings chased down a record 262 runs with eight balls to spare. In that match when Punjab’s Shashank Singh smashed the winning six, Harshal Patel was sitting at the dugout, smiling in “disbelief”.
The 33-year-old Harshal endorses Shastri’s viewpoint.
“That match was just the realization of where the game has gone and it was not the first time that I felt that this season. It’s kind of fun to participate in that madness. I know the bowlers are bearing the brunt of that madness – – you either move on with the game or you keep cribbing,” Harshal tells The Indian Express ahead of their match against the RCB.
With 17 wickets at the economy rate of 9.78 in this year’s edition, Harshal is second in the purple cap list behind Jasprit Bumrah. Harshal doesn’t believe in the argument that the “Impact Player” rule game has tilted more towards the batsmen; instead feels the power-hitting has gone a notch up, taking everyone by surprise.
“Pitches in the IPL have always been flat. Even if they take the impact rule off next year you’re still going to see 250 plus scores because what the impact rule has done is it has shown the batting line-ups that you can go from ball one. More often than not, you’ll be fine because the pitches are so good.
“The boundaries are probably never more than 60-65 meters. The ball doesn’t swing in the IPL. There’s no assistance from the surface. It’s just that mindset change that has happened in batting units that you know, we can go hard from ball one and keep going till the 120th ball and more often than not we’re going to be fine,” he says.
New benchmark to assess bowler’s performance
Harshal feels it would be difficult for the bowlers to adapt to this manic hitting but says the benchmark of a bowler’s performance needs to be reevaluated as well
“Right now it’s very hard for me to predict where it will go. Even for myself. I try to make the batters play the most difficult shot. But you can’t do it consistently because obviously there are a lot of variables in the game and you have to look at whether that suits that particular delivery or not.
IPL 2024: Jasprit Bumrah and Harshal Patel
Jasprit Bumrah of Mumbai Indians and Harshal Patel of Punjab Kings during match 33 of the Indian Premier League season 17 (IPL 2024) between Punjab Kings and Mumbai Indians held at the Maharaja Yadavindra Singh International Cricket Stadium, Mullanpur on the 18th April 2024. (Photo by Arjun Singh / Sportzpics for IPL)
“It will be interesting to see whether bowling evolves to achieve some sort of equilibrium. My money is on the game to continue this (batting) way. The benchmark of a good performance has to be reevaluated for the bowlers. Till 2022, giving away 30-35 runs in four overs and a couple of impactful wickets was considered a great performance, but that has to be reevaluated because if 250 runs are being scored in a game, then most of the runs are being scored either in the power play or at the death. So guys who bowl predominantly in the power play and at the death will have to have a different benchmark for their performance. I’ve been trying to evaluate my performances first, whether I have executed what I wanted to execute and the second whether have I made an impact on the game by picking up wickets. Nowadays, you could bowl one over for 5 or 6 runs and the next over they’ll hit you for 25 and it’ll all even out; so taking wickets is the only way going forward,” says Harshal.
Power-hitting & baseball comparisons
Harshal also gives credit to the side-arm specialists for improving batters’ power-hitting.
“Most of the batters in the teams are doing so much range hitting that their ability to hit the ball out of the ground has increased multi-folds. I know people keep saying that wickets are flat, grounds are small, ball doesn’t swing, all these things are fine. But the batter’s skill to be able to hit 42 sixes in a 20 over game, by both the teams, requires a lot of skill. In practice sessions, most of the batters in our team don’t want to face bowlers, they just want to face side-arm slingers. Their skill level has gone up in terms of their ability to hit the ball consistently and pick up lengths early. If you’re hitting, say 70-80 balls every single day in the net for sixes, then your confidence to do that in the game increases,” he explains.
When asked about whether cricket is going towards baseball, he says: “In baseball, you don’t see home runs a lot.” (BCCI)
When asked about whether cricket is going towards baseball, he says: “In baseball, you don’t see home runs a lot. Yes, I understand the comparison of batters setting up (technically) to hit the ball as far as they possibly could. That’s probably the one similarity I see in cricket and baseball.”
The phone call from RCB
For Royal Challengers Bengaluru, Harshal Patel played three seasons and picked 65 wickets in 43 games but ahead of the auction, he was told over a phone call that the franchise was not going to retain him.
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“To be honest it didn’t affect me that much because I know retentions and auctions are just beyond the cricket part. I thought I had 2 fantastic years for RCB. 2021 and 2022 were great, 2023 was an average year, where I bowled a lot of bad balls in every spell, which is something that I’ve worked on this year. I got a call from RCB’s director of cricket Mo Bobat. He said ‘I’ve got bad news for you that we are not going to retain you.’ And I said I don’t think it’s bad because I’ll still get a team to play for. I knew that for a fact,” he recollects.
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