IPL News: Harbhajan Singh claims unique IPL record in season opener against RCB
Harbhajan Singh might be out of the national team for quite some time now with little hopes of making a comeback. However, in the first match of IPL itself, the off-spinner showed to the world that he still has some amount of cricket left in him. Bhajji, as he is known as, bowled a brilliant spell of bowling and picked up 3 wickets against the Royal Challengers Bangalore in the tournament opener. With his skillful bowling, the off-spinner didn’t give anything away to the opposition top order and in the process made a unique record in IPL history.
The record that he broke
Bhajji bowled brilliantly against RCB in the first match of IPL 2019. Being given the crucial role of bowling the power play overs, Bhajji went on to claim the most number of caught and bowled dismissals in IPL history. He went past his own teammate Dwayne Bravo to get to the top of the list. While Harbhajan claimed his 11th caught and bowled dismissal tonight when he got the wicket of Moeen Ali, Bravo has 10 such victims to his credit.
Here are a few bowlers who are in the race for the top spot:
Harbhajan Singh (11 wickets)
Dwayne Bravo (10 wickets)
Sunil Narine (7 wickets)
Kieron Pollard (6 wickets)
Interestingly, 3 out of the 4 players at the top of the list come from the West Indies.
Harbhajan’s performance against RCB
Bhajji was brilliant in the game against RCB at the MA Chidambaram Stadium, Chennai. While the pitch had a lot to offer for the spinners, Harbhajan extracted that beautifully with his good assessment of the correct length on the wicket. As a result, none of the batsmen could read him carefully off the wicket. Bhajji took 3 wickets for just 20 runs in his quota of 4 overs and RCB couldn’t quite recover from the opening blows of the finger spinner. His 3 wickets included the dangerous trio of Virat Kohli, Moeen Ali and AB de Villiers.