AGENCY
NEW DELHI, Mar 31
Ashwani Kumar became the first Indian bowler, and sixth overall, to pick up four or more wickets on IPL debut and on the back of his performance Mumbai Indians wrapped up Kolkata Knight Riders for 116 in their first home game of IPL 2025.
The 23-year-old left-arm seamer from Punjab tripled his career tally of wickets – from two to six – over the course of one evening. He dismissed the KKR captain Ajinkya Rahane with his first ball. He took down Rinku Singh and Andre Russell. This league does not present many higher quality of wickets.
The most impressive thing about Kumar was how hard he was to line up. He had an orthodox bowling action. His speeds were largely in the early to mid 130kph range. Those are the kind of bowlers that get smashed around in the IPL. But try as they might, KKR were never able to do it. Kumar came to prominence because of his performances in the Sher-E-Punjab T20 trophy last year where he displayed an affinity for the death overs.
He didn’t really bowl in that phase of the innings against KKR but he did show why he could find success in high-pressure situations. It was his control of length.
Rinku tried to take him down, but one ball after coming down the track and hitting him for four, he was caught on the deep-point boundary. Kumar pulled his length back to surprise the batter. Russell tried to take him down, but one ball after clearing his front leg and smacking him through the line, he was beaten by a bouncer and then knocked over by a 140kph good length delivery that surprised the batter again.
Mumbai are almost surely looking at their first win of IPL 2025 after losing their first two games. KKR, meanwhile, were left wondering what had gone wrong.
They were put in to bat and they seemed very conscious of putting up a par-plus total, their batters going on the attack even though they lost Sunil Narine and Quinton de Kock in the first two overs. Angkrish Raghuvanshi looked good for his 26 off 16 but he fell immediately after the powerplay. That left KKR five down and forced them to bring in Manish Pandey as an Impact Player, which meant they will be going into the bowling innings short of options. The move didn’t work with Pandey falling for 19 off 14.
