Last Updated on 2 years by Charbel Coorey
Cricket News: IPL 2023: 5 leading contenders to win the Purple Cap | Who will win the Purple Cap in the 2023 IPL?
Bowlers have grown in the T20 game by constantly reinventing and modifying their methodologies over time. The Indian Premier League (IPL) rewards their efforts with the Purple Cap for the player who takes the most wickets at the end of any season.
CricBlog’s leading contenders for the IPL 2023 Purple Cap
There is a close tussle that goes on for this title towards the conclusion of every campaign. With the coming season set to commence in a few days’ time, CricBlog takes a look at the five most ideal contenders for the Purple Cap in IPL 2023.
Wanindu Hasaranga
Leg-spinners have shown the potential to thrive at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru and Wanindu Hasaranga gave a good account of his skillsets in the previous campaign.
Picked for a whopping sum of Rs 10.75 crores by the Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB), Hasaranga notched 26 wickets in 16 games at an economy rate of 7.54. He emerged as an incredible wicket-taking option in the middle-overs and will be looking to replicate the feats that Yuzvendra Chahal scaled at RCB’s home turf during his heydays with the franchise.
Yuzvendra Chahal
Chahal won the Purple Cap with 27 wickets last season. He has arguably not been in the best of runs since then but the 32-year-old often tends to turn up well during the course of the IPL.
Rajasthan Royals’ home ground in Jaipur is fairly big and that brings spinners into the action with opposition batsmen looking to increase the scoring rate towards the backend of the innings. Chahal is smart enough to use these factors to his favour and that could help him again finish at the top of the wicket-taking charts in the coming campaign.
Rashid Khan
The Afghan spinner took 19 wickets en route Gujarat’s run to the title victory last year. This time around, again much like Chahal, the large dimensions of the ground at the Narendra Modi will help Rashid Khan induce many caught out dismissals at the boundary line.
The 24-year-old often falls back in the Purple Cap race as batsmen tend to adopt a defensive approach against him. This brings the other bowlers into the fore in a greater capacity but the aforementioned factor could very well turn the tides in Rashid’s favour this time around.
Jofra Archer
The English express pacer returns to the fold in the coming season of the IPL after a long injury layoff forced him out of competitive cricket for around a year and a half. Archer will have to straightaway take over the responsibilities of spearheading the Mumbai Indians’ pace attack in the absence of Jasprit Bumrah.
His tearaway speed and the consistent ability to hit hard lengths will hold him in good stead for Mumbai’s home games at the Wankhede Stadium. Archer can very well dismantle the opposition batting line-up with some good spells in the powerplay and that sort of incisiveness with the ball will surely benefit Mumbai’s arguably weakened bowling unit.
Khaleel Ahmed
A slightly left-field pick for the Purple Cap, but Khaleel Ahmed’s innate wicket-taking ability was on full display last season when he scalped 16 dismissals in mere 10 appearances for the Delhi Capitals. He has grown in his game with the new ball and his tall height coupled with the angle that he brings in with his left-arm bowling means that Ahmed is great at taking wickets in the death overs as well.
There are good chances that he could play a greater number of games this season and Ahmed might as well end up climbing the wicket-taking charts even though his economy rate ends up tilting towards the higher end of the spectrum.
