Wrist spinner Yuzvendra Chahal etched his name in the record books as he became the highest wicket-taker in the history of IPL. The 32-year-old surpassed Dwayne Bravo’s tally of 183 wickets as he made Nitish Rana the 184th victim of his IPL career on Thursday, May 11 at Eden Gardens in Kolkata.
Coming into bowl his first over during the 11th over of the innings, Chahal bowled a tossed-up delivery to Rana who slog-swept it straight to Shimron Hetmyer at deep backward square-leg. The West Indian came running in and dived forward to take his second breathtaking catch of the match.
Chahal had already levelled Bravo’s record-wicket tally during Rajasthan Royals’ last fixture against Sunrisers Hyderabad and finally surpassed him against KKR. The Haryana-born spinner didn’t stop there and ended up picking three more wickets to break the back of KKR’s batting after they were put in to bat first by RR captain Sanju Samson.
After giving just three runs in his first over, Chahal was taken to the cleaners by Venkatesh Iyer, who smacked him for 15 runs in his second over. However, the wrist spinner made a terrific comeback in his third over sending a well-set Iyer (57 off 42) back on his way to the pavilion getting him caught by Trent Boult.
On the fourth ball of the over, Chahal trapped Shardul Thakur in front of the stumps to claim his third scalp. He returned in the 19th over and got the prized scalp of the dangerous Rinku Singh who holed out at long-off.
Chahal gets the purple cap with 21 wickets to his name
The wrist-spinner finished his four-over spell with figures of 4/25 and helped Rajasthan to restrict KKR to 149/8 in their allotted 20 overs. Venkatesh Iyer was the top scorer with the bat for KKR while Chahal was the pick of the bowlers for RR with Trent Boult also picking 2/15 in his three overs.
Notably, Chahal won the coveted Purple Cap for finishing as the highest wicket-taker of IPL 2022, and with his sensational spell, he rose to the top of this year’s wicket-takers’ list as well with 21 scalps to his name from 12 matches.
The India cricketer now has 186 wickets in his IPL career from 142 innings at an average of 21.36 and an economy of 7.64.
Meanwhile, Twitter was abuzz with reactions to Chahal’s historic achievement and his splendid spell.