Chahal's new life in the faster lane

Yuzvendra Chahal's career has a strange arc. No Indian player has taken more wickets in T20 cricket than his 377 and up until very recently he was India's leading wicket taker in T20 Internationals (96 wickets). Yet, he has not featured in a T20 World Cup game for India though he was a part of the extended squad in the 2022 and 2024 campaigns. The one he missed was the 2021 edition, where five other spinners superseded him despite being the incumbent spinner in the lead up to the tournament. The reason provided for his omission was he was relatively slower through the air compared to the ones that made the cut for the slower wickets in UAE.

IPL 2022 soon followed and Chahal found a new home in Rajasthan Royals and had R Ashwin to partner up and had no confines of the Chinnaswamy to contend with. He finished the season as the Purple Cap holder with a record 27 wickets, still the joint most by a spinner in a single edition of the IPL. From being someone who predominantly outsmarted the batters by staying away from their hitting arc or cramping them for room in his RCB days, he turned to a more classical leg break bowler beating the batters with dip, drift, and turn. From bowling around 27% googlies in the two previous editions, Chahal bowled only 10% in the 2022 season further underlining the transformation in his methods.

Despite ending as the leading wicket taker in the 2022-24 IPL cycle, he was surplus to the national team's requirements, having last featured in a T20I in August 2023. In the cycle post the 2024 T20 World Cup, India have preferred the likes of Varun Chakaravarthy and Ravi Bishnoi whose average speeds sit north of 95 kph over Chahal, whose top speeds are clocked around that range.

Probably fuelled by those thoughts, he started off the season bowling quicker than his optimal speed. The average speed in his first five games of the season read 87.5 kph and bagged just two wickets at an average of 83.50 and conceded at 11.13/over. The turnaround happened in the low scoring thriller in Mullanpur