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IPL 2016: Top 10 bowling spells of the tournament

The season 9 of IPL was memorable because of some good bowling performances by pacers as well as spinners

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There was a good competition with both bat and ball in IPL 2016
From Top Left: Mitchell McClenaghan, Dwayne Smith, Dwayne Bravo, Amit Mishra, Adam Zampa, Marcus Stoinis, Dhawal Kulkarni, Chris Jordan, Akshar Patel, Andre Russell © AFP

Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) won a well fought final of Indian Premier League (IPL) 2016 against Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) to end a high voltage tournament. The tournament was dominated with both bat and ball with many top performances with the willow and white ball. Many top bowlers stood out for their teams and restricted runs from the big hitters from the opponents’ camp. Spinners and fast bowlers had good spells to show off but some of them came out all guns blazing in some matches. Here is a look at the Top 10 bowling performances in IPL 2016 edition: Full Cricket Scorecard: Royal Challengers Bangalore vs Sunrisers Hyderabad, IPL 2016 Final

Adam Zampa’s 4-0-19-6 against Sunrisers Hyderabad: Australia’s young spinner, Adam Zampa, has made a mark in his long tour of India since the ICC World T20 2016. He impressed in the group stage matches for his side and continued his good run with 7th ranked team of IPL 9, Rising Pune Supergiants (RPS). In their encounter against SRH, RPS restricted them to a mere 137 for 8 thanks to Zampa’s effective spin bowling. He got the wicket of a dangerous looking Yuvraj Singh and became the second best performance in the history of IPL after Pakistani pacer Sohail Tanveer (6 for 14). Trip down IPL finals over 8 years

Dwayne Smith’s 4-0-8-4 against Kolkata Knight Riders: In Gujarat Lions’ home game against KKR, a surprise bowling performance by Dwayne Smith stopped a well-balanced KKR’s batting lineup to only 124 for 7. The home side took his bowling lightly and paid the price for it in this must-win game for both the sides. It was his fierce spell which changed the game for GL.

Marcus Stoinis’ 4-0-15-4 against Mumbai Indians: Playing in their adopted home ground, Visakhapatnam, MI tottered to a paltry score of 124 in their quota of 20 overs, thanks to some quality and disciplined bowling from Kings XI Punjab’s Marcus Stoinis. He finished with match figures of 4-0-15-4 taking important wickets of Jos Buttler and Keiron Pollard.

Chris Jordan’s 4-0-11-4 against Gujarat Lions: In Match 44 of IPL 2016, England’s Chris Jordan wrecked havoc GL’s fame batting line-up carrying some big hitters with a superb spell of 4-0-11-4. RCB raced to a mammoth total of 240-plus in 20 overs thanks to a 229-run stand between AB de Villiers and Virat Kohli, both reaching centuries against an ordinary bowling display. In reply, GL never got going with Jordan being their chief destructor of their innings and lost by a whopping margin of 144 runs.

Andre Russell’s 4-0-20-4 against Kings XI Punjab: In a closely fought match between KKR and KXIP played at Eden Gardens, Kolkata, the hosts won by 7 runs despite a good fight put up by the visitors. The man who changed the game for KKR was their star all-rounder, Andre Russell who bowled beautifully to outclass the batsmen in the death overs. He was also effective in the field with a good run-out.

Amit Mishra’s 3-0-11-4 against Kings XI Punjab: In their second game of IPL 2016, Delhi Daredevils (DD) demolished KXIP for a low score of 111 for 9 in 20 overs. DD’s trump card, Amit Mishra, playing his 100th IPL game, broke the backbone of KXIP dismissing David Miller, Shaun Marsh and Glenn Maxwell. Though he did not complete his whole spell, his inspired bowling led the start of a well fought campaign for DD and that is why he made it to the list.

Akshar Patel’s 4-0-21-4 against Gujarat Lions: In GL’s home match against bottom-ranked team, KXIP, Akshar Patel troubled GL’s middle-order and took the only hat-trick of the season. He finished his quota of 4 overs with praise-worthy economy rate of 5.25 and led his team to victory against Suresh Raina’s side by 23 runs. He took the wickets of Dwayne Smith, Dwayne Bravo, Dinesh Karthik and Ravindra Jadeja.  The most astonishing fact of his match winning spell was that he took his 4 wickets in the span of 5 balls.

Mitchell McClenaghan’s 4-0-21-4 against Gujarat Lions: On 16th April, 2016, GL played defending champions, Mumbai Indians, at Wankhede stadium. In a thrilling match which saw GL win in the last ball by a controlled innings from Australian opener, Aaron Finch, the only shining performance with the ball came for MI’s came from New Zealand’s 29-year-old, Mitchell McClenaghan. He took two key wickets in the penultimate over but Bumrah could not defend 11 runs from the last over to hand over a win to GL. His economy of 5.25 proves that he was difficult to play on that day.

Dwayne Bravo’s 4-0-22-4 against Kings XI Punjab: Dwayne Bravo is at present one of the most trusted all-rounders, especially when it comes to the shorter format. He has been a key performer for West Indies team and also played a similar role in GL’s maiden IPL campaign. In their first clash against KXIP, Bravo made merry of the opponent’s lower-order and picked up David Miller and Glenn Maxwell in the space of 12 balls. He took his team to win and finished with his best figures in IPL. In this match, Bravo added another feather in his cap by being the only player to have a combo of 1000 runs and 100 wickets.

Dhawal Kulkarni’s 4-0-14-4 against Royal Challengers Bangalore: Dhawal Kulkari impressed one and all with his economical bowling in almost every game he turned up for his new franchise. He was one of the leading wicket takers in the season gone by. In Qualifier 1 against RCB, he almost took GL to their first final as he picked up a 4-wicket-haul with important scalps of Chris Gayle, in-form Virat Kohli and Sachin Baby.  His economy of 3.50 against the most dangerous batting lineup in a knockout game was thoroughly applaudable.

There were many other great bowling performances in IPL 2016 with Purple Cap winner, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and RCB’s Shane Watson getting a 4-wicket-haul against Gujarat Lions. Bhuvneshwar had a few good outings with either a 3-wicket-haul or a 4-wicket-haul but missed out because of being a little expensive over the others, mentioned in the list. He would straight away make it to the list of ‘Top 10 bowlers of IPL 2016’. Yuzvendra Chahal also ended with figures of 4-0-25-4 against KXIP, Ashish Nehra’s 3-0-15-3 and Mustafizur Rahman’s 3-0-16-3 against MI in the same match were some of the other memorable bowling performances but were left out from the top 10 bowling performances list due to a slightly higher economical rates and different match situations taken into account.

(Aditya Sahay is a journalist with CricketCountry who is completely into sports and loves writing about cricket in general. He can be followed on Twitter at adisahay7)

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