The change of teams has worked wonders for Harshal Patel or 'Purple' Patel as he is popularly called since his 32-wicket season for the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) in 2021. The Harshal Patel of 2021 has been on show in the ongoing season of the IPL for Punjab Kings as the slower dipping yorker is back and as admitted by himself after not being able to execute it for a year and a half, the pacer is able to get that hang-time and dip in his cutters and currently sits on top of the pile with 22 scalps to his name.
Among those, Harshal also has priced wickets of his former IPL captain Virat Kohli and legendary MS Dhoni's wickets as well. In fact, Harshal is the only bowler to dismiss MS Dhoni in the ongoing season as the former CSK skipper has batted 10 times and gotten out only twice, out of which one was a run-out. However, not Kohli or Dhoni, Harshal's favourite wicket of the season was Shahrukh Khan as he dissected his favourite wickets of the season in a chat with the IPL.
"The Shahrukh wicket was really special because if I say so myself, that was a really difficult delivery to play," Harshal said in the video on the IPL website. "That would probably be one of my favourites and obviously getting Mahi bhai out is always special, especially in that situation where the game could have gone either way. Instead of 167, they could have gotten to 180."
"I have said this multiple times, when I execute that delivery and when it comes out of my hand really well, most of the batters don't see it, especially when you have just come in and you have not played any balls. It's very easy to wait for it and allow it to dip and then get under the ball and hit it for a six or a four," Harshal added.
Harshal revealed that initially he wanted to bowl from around the wicket to Dhoni as he didn't want to dish out the couple of deliveries left in his final over for the CSK wicketkeeper-batter to hit in his area. However, when he got Shardul Thakur out with that dipping delivery, he chanced that out and luckily it came out right and the Punjab Kings pacer got the big wicket.
Speaking about Kohli's wicket during the RCB vs PBKS match in Bengaluru earlier in the season, Harshal said that he wanted to bowl wide to the former RCB skipper as he had a fielder in the deep at point. "The idea was not to get him out because he was stepping out and playing so well through the line that even if I have mid-off back, he is good enough to hit me over extra cover. The idea was, okay if he steps out, I am going to just throw it wide and if he gets bat on ball, I still have deep point to cover it," Harshal added.
On Wednesday too against the Rajasthan Royals, Harshal picked two crucial wickets of Harshal Patel and Donovan Ferreira on a Guwahati track that was stopping a bit. Harshal is now two wickets ahead of Jasprit Bumrah in the race and would want to add a few more to get out of the range of Varun Chakravarthy, the KKR spinner, who will play a minimum of three more games and is four wickets behind the Punjab pacer.
