Rashid Khan: A legendary IPL career in making

Rashid Khan took the IPL by storm starting from the time his name came under the hammer during the auction ahead of the 2017 season. Shortly after Mohammad Nabi became the first Afghanistan player to earn an IPL bid, Rashid became a reason behind bidding war. Sunrisers Hyderabad bought the leg-spinner for 4 crore INR, eight times his base price of 50 lakhs INR after being involved in the bidding war with Mumbai Indians.

By the time Rashid made his IPL debut, Afghanistan were still two months away from becoming a full member country. But the way the Afghan spinner was received by the league, it never felt like he was a product of an associate nation. Rashid soon became a cult hero in the IPL not just for the Sunrisers fans and in Hyderabad. People across the country anticipated his success and the leg-spinner didn’t let them down.

A dream start

Rashid Khan picked up 17 wickets in the debut season and followed it with 21 and 17 wickets respectively in 2018 and 2019. The biggest talking point of his IPL career till date has been his economy rates which were far from touching seven in any IPL season. Ahead of the 2020 edition, Rashid Khan’s IPL career economy rate of 6.55 is the best among any player who has bowled 100 or more overs.

Anil Kumble is placed second behind Rashid with an economy of 6.57. Impact of Rashid Khan’s bowling can be seen in the approach of the batsmen whenever he comes into the attack. The scenarios of a match do change quite quickly when the leg-spinner is bowling. The batsmen, of late, are seen to be following a defensive strategy of playing out his four overs.

It is one of the reasons why Rashid picked only 17 wickets from 15 games in 2019 but his economy rate of 6.28 was his best in three seasons. A similar defensive strategy against Rashid could be seen in the IPL starting this week if the batters were good enough to face Rashid’s fast leg-spin coming after a long break.

(Stats as on September 13, 2020)