Jarrod Kimber
Welcome to the IPL awards ceremony, put on your tux and join me as we look at the nominees and winners of all these awards I made up.
We have now seen all the IPL games, except the ones that Lucknow played in and we slept through, or all that rain. But we saw a lot of cricket, and I was wondering what to do with all my takes and nonsense, and I thought we should aim at making our own awards from the regular season.
So that is what we are doing. And we will start with our favourite award ever, most improved player.
Our nominees are Pat Cummins, who has never been this good in the IPL before. Tushar Deshpande has been a revelation this season. Abhishek Sharma is smashing the ball everywhere. Riyan Parag has been around for a long time, this year he has looked like the player everyone hoped was under there. Rajat Patidar and Sai Sudharsan were good before, but they have found another level. Everyone has improved, but who has done it the most?
The two players I think qualify are Abhishek and Parag. Parag had a decent first year, and since then has struggled. Abhishek had a good season in 2022. But this is one of the most explosive years ever. There is not much between it. I am going with Abhishek, but Parag has just as good a claim.
Next up is the McStrike award for best strike bowler. Andre Russell has been crazy with his wickets. Matheesha Pathirana took more than two wickets per game in his brief season. Yuzvendra Chahal probably loses this because of the second half. Harshal Patel is back taking poles with slower ones. Jasprit Bumrah has taken a lot of wickets. Mukesh Kumar was consistent. Mayank Yadav is lucky to be nominated, but why not. Varun Chakravarthy couldn’t do anything at the start of the year, but boy has he come good. And Harshit Rana took 17 in 12 games.
We could go through this deeper, but even in just six games, Pathirana was like a nuclear weapon. If you told me he took four wickets per game I would believe you.
The real purple cap is the award for best bowler. There were three outstanding seasons; Pathirana might have won this if he had a full season. Sunil Narine has also had an incredible season. But we would be wasting everyone’s time if we didn’t just skip to Jasprit Bumrah. Even by his standards, this is freaky. He has his lowest economy ever in the fastest scoring season in T20 history. Plus, he averaged 16.8, with no help.
The Bhuvi is the award for the best new ball bowler, and the man it is named after is one of the nominees. Vaibhav Arora had a really good run. Sandeep Sharma did very well and Bumrah was great, but certainly not a specialist. But I think the outstanding bowler with the new ball has to be Trent Boult. His first overs have been works of art. And while I want to give it to Bhuvneshwar Kumar, who certainly had some moments, but Boult was next level.
The nominees for the best defensive bowlers are Sandeep Sharma, Pathirana, Narine, and Natarajan. But it is clearly Bumrah again.
The Dre Russ goes to the best all-rounder and the big man gets nominated for this as well. Nitish Reddy gets a nomination here, but he is more about the future. Ravindra Jadeja didn’t have a career year, but made runs and was strong in the face of the econ-apocalypse. Axar Patel had a really great season as well. But, Sunil Narine made a stupid amount of runs, and stupid runs if we’re being honest, and was also one of the best bowlers in the tournament.
The best spinner is the Rashid award, but the great man is not on the list. We have Narine, plus the left-arm spin of Jadeja and Axar. Chahal had a great start to his year, but is lucky to be here, Varun Chakravarthy was just the opposite. Kuldeep Yadav was really good this year. But I can’t go past Narine for this.
How about a Yusuf award for best hitter? Sunrisers have two at the top of their stack, Ramandeep Singh did some incredible work for KKR. Jake Fraser-McGurk changed our view on life. Phil Salt and Sunil Narine had some fun. SmAshutosh Sharma lived up to his new name. Really enjoyed the work of Shashank Singh, Will Jacks and Tristan Stubbs. Should we mention MS Dhoni’s late-stage capitalism slogging? But I have never seen anything like what Fraser-McGurk did. Maybe the two Sunrisers Southpaw sloggers hurt each other’s case, but the Rooster was magnificent.
For the best batter we’ll call the real Orange Cap. Again, we have the Abhishead or Travishek combo, but Virat Kohli was huge as well. Ruturaj Gaikwad carried Chennai. The Royals had Parag and Sanju Samson. We should also mention people like JFM, Patidar, Nicholas Pooran, Tilak Varma and Sudharsan. I think this is between Head and Kohli, and I think Kohli had a great season. But I find it hard to go past Head. He averaged 44 while striking at two a ball for 500 runs. If Kohli’s entire season was like his last nine games, I think he would have an even better case.
For our best player of pace, we have Stubbs, JFM, Dinesh Karthik, and possibly Rishabh Pant. But it is between Travis Head and Virat Kohli again. The Aussie opener wins again for me. He has been exceptional against deliveries over 140 kph.
The Raina award for best work against spin has a few nominees. Abhishek has got to be close. Samson played it really well. Patidar and Heinrich Klaasen took it to a whole new level. Shivam Dube was incredible for the half of the year, then not. Kohli gets there for the slog sweep. Sudharsan, Pooran, Sunil and Shashank all had their moments. I couldn’t go past Patidar for this, I love what he did against spin this year. But I very nearly went for Abhishek as well.
For the best powerplay batter, the Sehwag, Head and Abhishek obviously get in. As do Sunil Narine and Salt. Many mentioned Kohli and Faf du Plessis, but I think they are further away. And we had nominations for Prabhsimran Singh. I have gone for Abhishek here, but there is not much between him and his partner Head, or JFM.
The Rayudu is for the best guy in the middle overs. We have Samson, Patidar, Pooran, Dube, Parag, Will Jacks, Tilak, Shashank, and Klaasen. Patidar has a good shout here, actually a few of these do. But Samson controlled the middle for the Royals so many times.
The Dhoni for best finisher has a whole bunch of options. Dinesh Karthik came back. Klaasen was still pretty good in an underwhelming season for him. Shashank was handy. MS Dhoni was good in the death, or maybe it was a zombie batting because he came in so late. Ramandeep and Ashutosh did great work. Pooran would have been better in an order that helped him. Tim David had to contend with Hardik Pandya’s batting orders and his own game against spin, while Stubbs scored around three runs per ball at the death. But even with those numbers, I really think DK was the best guy there. It just felt like instant runs and calmness all season, even when the team was struggling. But Stubbs has a lovely case too.
And our best newcomer award has a few exciting new players to look at. Nitish had played only two matches before, so he qualifies. I really liked Rasikh Salam’s work. And let us be clear, with even one more match we might have had to give this to Mayank Yadav. But this is Jake Fraser-McGurk’s award. What the hell did we watch when he was at the crease?
Those are the awards for this year. Will any of the winners be in contention next season too? You would think so, given how well some of them have done. And maybe they’ll do it well enough to have one of the awards named after them too.
