Usually, we see these kind of bowling outings only once or twice in an entire season of the Indian Premier League (IPL). Today however, was just the first day of the new IPL 2021 season on 9th April 2021 and we were in action right away with the season already seeing its first individual 5-wicket haul in a bowling performance – Harshal Patel.
It was Royal Challengers Bangalore that decided to bowl first after winning the toss and they had a great bowling attack including Mohammed Siraj, Kyle Jamieson, Shahbaz Ahmed, Dan Christian, Yuzvendra Chahal and others. However, it was the most unexpected player to bag a 5-fer in Harshal Patel, also making it the first T20 5-fer of his career so far!
SEE ALSO: List of bookmakers accepting bets from India
Patel has been around since a long time and made his way back to the RCB franchise for the IPL 2021 season. In just the first game of the season against Mumbai Indians in Chennai, he was really good with his variations and had 2/26 in 3 overs, which led his captain Virat Kohli to throw him the bowl for the 20th over of the innings, even though Christian had a couple of overs to spare himself.
However, it immediately turned out to be a good decision as Patel struck off the first ball of the over. getting Krunal Pandya out at deep mid-wicket. The very next ball, he struck again, this time getting the very dangerous Kieron Pollard who holed out to backward square leg, putting Harshal Patel on a hat-trick ball.
SEE ALSO: List of fantasy sports websites in India
What followed was the most perfect swinging yorker which only narrowly missed the leg-stump of Marco Jansen, a youngster from South Africa making his debut in the IPL in this game. Everyone had their hands cupped to their mouths seeing how that ball missed the stumps but he covered up the very next ball, hitting timber and picking up what became the first ever 5-fer against Mumbai Indians in IPL history!
From 86/1 in 10 overs, Mumbai Indians collapsed to 159/9 and a lot of that credit went to Harshal Patel who ended with record figures of 5/27, making him the third RCB bowler in IPL history to get a 5-fer after only Anil Kumble and Jaydev Unadkat, and he played a big role in getting RCB off to a winning start in their IPL 2021 campaign. For all similar updates, make sure you stay tuned to ReadScoops.com…
Register on 10Cric and get a whopping INR 10,000 first deposit bonus
