Yuzvendra Chahal's spin wizardry continues as he yet again proved his prowess in Rajasthan Royals' (RR) IPL 2023 campaign opener against Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium on Sunday (April 2). Chahal rose to the occasion and snared a brilliant four-fer against SRH to script history. Riding on his sensational spell, Chahal became the first Indian to scalp 300 T20 wickets. The 32-year-old achieved this feat after removing SRH's star batter Harry Brook on 13. Chahal is now closely chased by Ravichandran Ashwin (287), Piyush Chawla (276), Amit Mishra (272) and Jasprit Bumrah (256).
Chahal sent back Mayank Agarwal, Harry Brook, Adil Rashid and Bhuvneshwar Kumar to join an elite list of cricketers. The ace spinner had finished as the top wicket-taker of the 2022 IPL, with 27 wickets at an economy of 7.75. He had also taken the only hat-trick of the season.
Chahal also emulated Sri Lankan bowling great Lasith Malinga's record for the second-most IPL wickets. Chahal got along with Malinga's wicket tally of 170 wickets in IPL as Dwayne Bravo tops the chart with 183 wickets.
Overall, he is the 15th highest wicket taker in the shortest format behind Dwayne Bravo (615), Rashid Khan (530), Sunil Narine (479), Imran Tahir (469), Shakib Al Hasan (451), Wahab Riaz (413), Lasith Malinga (390), Andre Russell (390), Sohail Tanvir (389), Shahid Afridi (347), Mohammad Nabi (331), Samit Patel (321), Chris Jordan (315) and Kieron Pollard (312).
Talking about the match, SRH skipper Bhuvneshwar Kumar won the toss against RR. Despite winning the toss, SRH could hardly stop the RR batters, as Yashasvi Jaiswal (54), Jos Buttler (54) and Sanju Samson (55) scored their half centuries, leading RR to a score a 203/5 in 20 overs. Chasing 204, SRH had a patchy start and lost 5 wickets in just 10 overs. Following this, the batting order of SRH collapsed and RR won the match by 72 runs. RR bowlers Yuzvendra Chahal took four wickets, Trent Boult took 3 wickets, while Jason Holder and Ravichandran Ashwin took one wicket each.
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