What’s the story?
Indian pacer Ishant Sharma has been roped in by Kings XI Punjab as a replacement for opener Murali Vijay. The 28-year-old pacer had not found any buyer in the IPL Auction held in Bengaluru in February, but will now turn out for the Glenn Maxwell- led side, who begin their campaign against Rising Pune Supergiant(RPS) in the afternoon game of the double header at Indore on Saturday.
In case you didn’t know...
The Delhi cricketer was released by RPS ahead of the auction and prior to that, he put up his base price a whopping Rs 2 crores, raising several eyebrows and in the auction, no franchise went for him, leaving him without a team for the upcoming edition.
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The heart of the matter
Last year for Pune, Ishant played a mere four matches, where he picked up 3 wickets at an economy rate of 9.86. In his overall IPL career, he has picked up 59 wickets in 70 matches at an average of 34 .77 and an economy rate of 8.05.
This will be the fifth team that the lanky pacer will play for in the IPL having already played for the Kolkata Knight Riders, Deccan Chargers, Sunrisers Hyderabad and RPS earlier.
His best spell in the IPL came while playing for the Deccan Chargers, where he picked up figures of 5 for 12 against the Kochi Tuskers Kerala at Kochi to lead his side to a win.
In his overall Twenty20 career, Ishant has played 107 matches and taken 88 wickets at an economy rate of 7.75. His last T20I game for India came in 2013 against Australia.
Here’s one of his best spells
What’s next?
The Maxwell-led side can utilise Ishant along with the likes of Sandeep Sharma at the start of the innings and maybe decided upon whom to pick at the death overs as well. Hopefully, now the pitches on which they play will have a lot more grass since they are a pace heavy unit and if that turns out to be the case then we could see a more even contest between bat and ball.
Author’s Take
Ishant’s selection is a bit intriguing because he does not have the best of records when it comes to T20 cricket. The lengths he bowls in Test matches should seem ideal for batsmen in T20 cricket and so it will be interesting to see how he alters them during the course of this IPL.
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