Jaipur: Rajasthan Royals (RR) leg-spinner Yuzvendra Chahal became the first player to pick 200 wickets in the 17-year Indian Premier League (IPL) history. He achieved the incredible feat during the clash between RR and Mumbai Indians (MI) at Sawai Mansingh Stadium in Jaipur on Monday.
Chahal reached the landmark with his first wicket of the innings against Mumbai Indians. He dismissed Mohammad Nabi, who lobbed off a return catch to the leg-spinner in his first over of the match and became Chahal's 200th IPL scalp.
The crafty leg-spinner is the highest wicket-taker in IPL history with 200 scalps in 153 games, followed by Dwayne Bravo (183) and Piyush Chawla (181).
The 33-year-old served Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) the most - for eight years between 2014 to 2021. He is still the only bowler with over 100 IPL wickets for the Bengaluru-based franchise. Despite this, RCB decided not to retain the wrist spinner ahead of the mega-auction in 2022.
While Chahal has become the first player to reach 200 IPL wicket-mark, former pacer Rudra Pratap Singh was the first player to take 50 IPL wickets. Former Sri Lanka and Mumbai Indians speedster Lasith Malinga was the first to take 100 and 150 IPL wickets.
However, their loss proved to be Rajasthan's gain as the crafty leg-spinner emerged as the leading wicket-taker of the IPL 2022 season. He bagged the Purple Cap in his first season for Rajasthan with 27 wickets in 17 matches at an average of 19.51 including a hat-trick and five-wicket haul. With the exceptional performance, RR finished as the runners-up of that season, losing the final to Gujarat Titans (GT). He also broke former Chennai Super Kings (CSK) spinner Imran Tahir's record for most wickets by a spinner in a single season in the 2022 edition.
With his second wicket of the game against Gujarat Titans (GT), the senior leg-spinner became the highest wicket-taker for RR among spinners. He surpassed the legendary Shane Warne to become the franchise's most successful spinner in the IPL. Warne, who led RR to the title in the inaugural IPL edition in 2008, took 57 wickets from 55 games at an average of 25.38 while Chahal had 59 scalps at a strike rate of 14.36 for the Royals in the cash-rich league before the start of the match against KKR. He attained the feat in his 37th match for RR.
Overall, only Siddharth Trivedi (65) and Shane Watson (61) are ahead of Chahal in terms of IPL wickets for Rajasthan. Notably, Chahal and Warne are the only other bowlers with over 50 wickets in this regard.
Chahal also fired for them last season by snapping up 21 scalps, the most for the Sanju Samson-led side. Chahal is currently the second-highest wicket-taker in the cash-rich league with 13 wickets in eight matches and is only behind Mumbai's pace spearhead Jasprit Bumrah (13), who has the better economy rate than the former.
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