The ideal T20 bowler may not be the quickest or possess bewildering excesses of variations. He may just be taller, cleverer and more accurate than most. Like Josh Hazlewood is. For much of his career, the prime years in his twenties, he was misconstrued as a T20 outlier, playing only three games in 2,161 days for his country and repeatedly getting snubbed in auctions. At 35, he is arguably amongst the best fast bowlers in the format, almost equal to Jasprit Bumrah.
When RCB acquired him in 2022 (for a not-so-unearthly 7.5 million USD), no one imagined he would be as influential as he would turn out to be. The shorter boundaries of the M Chinnaswamy, his home ground, rang sirens of peril; the batting-friendliness of the surface made the choice seemed counterintuitive. Besides, he didn’t fit the post-modern T20 bowler’s mould. He was not super quick, he does not swing or seam the ball appreciably like his Australian teammate Mitchell Starc. He cannot wield an album of magical balls. He was the unfashionable, unassuming Aussie, mild-mannered and affable, a genial giant of a man.
Yet, four years on, he is as talismanic to RCB as Virat Kohli. In two full seasons with the franchise, he grabbed more than 20 wickets (20 in 2022 and 22 in the title-winning season of 2024). He is like the steady 20-goal-a-season striker in football. The level seldom drops. In these four seasons, he has nabbed 45 wickets in 27 games. Bumrah has only eight more, but in 12 extra games. The strike rate of 18.64 is better than Bumrah, and any fast bowler with 40 wickets in this span. The economy rate of 8.43 is the third best in the list after Bumrah and Trent Boult.