Eighteen years ago, to this day, the IPL kicked off. Since then, a total of 1172 IPL matches have lasted long enough to give us winners and losers. Not one of them has had right-arm fast bowlers going around the wicket to right-hand batters as often as the match between Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) and Chennai Super Kings (CSK) did: 22 times including wides and no-balls. The next two entries - 19 balls each - are also from IPL 2026, and feature CSK.
CSK, Anshul Kamboj in particular, are using that angle extensively this year, but SRH's Praful Hinge, despite cutting the return crease once and conceding a no-ball, bowled the whole last over to right-hand batters from around the wicket. That after having gone for 54 runs in his first three.
A total of four wickets fell and only 24 runs accrued off these 22 balls. Kamboj bowled two overs for nine runs and got the wickets of Heinrich Klaasen, Liam Livingstone and Shivang Kumar. The falling wickets actually forced SRH to pivot from their original plan and choose a batter in Livingstone as the impact player.
Despite primarily being a seam bowler who would love to bowl from over the wicket with the new ball, Kamboj has bowled more from around the wicket to the right-hand batters than over in this year's IPL: 58 balls at 8.58 for six wickets, as against 40 balls at 10.8 for four wickets from over the wicket. He has bowled 60 balls to right-hand batters in the back-half of the innings, and gone over the wicket only on two occasions.
As we saw with Hinge, it is not just Kamboj who is using this angle this year. Kamboj is the heavy influence on overall numbers for sure, but numbers are suggestive of a trend. In 27 matches so far, 17% of the balls bowled by right-arm fast bowlers to right-hand batters at the death have been from around the wicket. At the same juncture, only once in previous seasons has this angle been used more than 11% of the times: back in 2015.
It is, in all likelihood, a cyclical thing that the hapless bowlers keep going back to as flatter pitches, deeper batting line-ups thanks to the impact player, and bolder batters push them into newer corners. At any rate, either to eliminate predictability or because they believe straight yorkers are riskier, the bowlers are hugging the wide lines with their dear lives. It can be seen in the number of wides bowled at the death in the last three years: around 8%, but a constant year-on-year increase from 4.5% back in 2020.
Now, it is debatable whether this angle gives bowlers any extra advantage when trying to hide the ball wide outside off. That's primarily what the bowlers are trying to do, going straight only as a change-up. From over the wicket, you should have more leeway on the wide calls, but from around the wicket, the angle gives you the chance of hitting the outer half of the bat more often.
While you do open up a blind spot outside the leg stump and also make leg-side hits slightly more difficult when you go around the wicket, there is always a trade-off. If there weren't, nobody would ever bowl from over the wicket.
Most likely, it is just the novelty of this angle that is tempting the fast bowlers. When getting carted around anyway, you may as well try something new. Why use this angle only as the last resort? If you zoom out a little, the regular use of this angle has resurfaced after 2015 as a last resort after not much has worked in recent years.
So far, though, this angle has yielded a better economy and a better average than bowling over the wicket to right-hand batters at the death. How long it does stay this way will depend on how well the batters adjust.