Yuzvendra Chahal scripted history as he shattered Dwayne Bravo's long standing record to become the leading wicket-taker in the history of Indian Premier League. Chahal stepped on this mighty milestone in Rajasthan Royals' match against Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) at the Eden Gardens on Thursday (May 11). Chahal now has notched a total of 184 wickets while Bravo snared 183 scalps during his IPL stint. KKR skipper Nitish Rana became Chahal's 184th prey as the ace spinner scripted the record in his 143rd match.
Most IPL Wickets List :
184 – Yuzvendra Chahal
183 – Dwayne Bravo
174 – Piyush Chawla
172 – Amit Mishra
171 – Ravichandran Ashwin
RR skipper Sanju Samson's plan to bring Chahal into the attack in 11th over worked as the star spinner trapped Rana on the very second ball of his spell to storm into the history books. Chahal didn't stop there as he went on to take another wicket, this time the dangerous looking Venkatesh Iyer who returned to pavilion after scoring 57 off 42 in the 16th over to leave KKR reeling at 129/6. With Iyer's wicket Chahal also donned Purple Cap with 19 wickets in his kitty in a total of 12 matches.
Chahal - who was the Purple Cap winner in the previous IPL season - has been one of the goto bowlers for RR captain Sanju Samson and the senior India leg-spinner picked up the big wicket of KKR skipper in a crucial game.
Earlier in the tournament, Chahal also touched a big milestone as he became the first Indian bowler to pick 300 T20 wickets. The Haryana cricketer achieved the feat against Sunrisers Hyderabad by dismissing their star batter, Harry Brook.
RR captain Samson won the toss and elected to bowl first against KKR.
“We will bowl here first. Long tournament, need to change according to the strength and weaknesses. Couple of changes for us - Boult replaces Kuldeip Yadav, KM Asif replaced Murugan Ashwin. Root will bat at 4. It's a long tournament, we have had some tough games for the bowlers, the morale of the team is high, not easy to forget close losses, but we need to move on,” Samson said after winning the toss.
“I think we're getting the type of pitches we want. We will have to play good cricket, take one game at a time and earn 2 points. One change for us - Anukul Roy replaces Vaibhav Arora. Looks like the pitch is dry, they haven't watered a lot, so we are playing that extra spinner and add some depth to the batting,” KKR captain Nitish Rana said after the toss.
Rajasthan Royals (Playing XI): Yashasvi Jaiswal, Jos Buttler, Sanju Samson(w/c), Joe Root, Dhruv Jurel, Shimron Hetmyer, Ravichandran Ashwin, Trent Boult, Sandeep Sharma, KM Asif, Yuzvendra Chahal.
RR impact subs: Donavon Ferreira, Devdutt Padikkal, Riyan Parag, Murugan Ashwin, Navdeep Saini
Kolkata Knight Riders (Playing XI): Rahmanullah Gurbaz(w), Jason Roy, Venkatesh Iyer, Nitish Rana(c), Andre Russell, Rinku Singh, Sunil Narine, Shardul Thakur, Anukul Roy, Harshit Rana, Varun Chakaravarthy.
KKR impact subs: Suyash Sharma, Vaibhav Arora, N Jagadeesan, Umesh Yadav, Lockie Ferguson
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