Following on from our review of the best batsmen over the last decade of the IPL, it's now time to turn our attention to the bowlers.
If you are new to the site, it's recommended that you at least check out our article on the batsmen (linked above) first, as that gives an introduction of the methodology behind how we calculate our player ratings, and you can find an even more detailed outline here.
If you're interested in applications outside of the IPL, please check out our Cricket World Cup 2019 ratings, our Ashes 2019 player ratings, and our reviews of the 2019-20 ODI and Test match seasons.
Back to the IPL, and specifically our top bowlers over the last decade. As with the batsmen, our model generates two raw abilities for the bowlers. These can be considered as:
a) Their ability to prevent runs and
b) Their ability to take wickets
We'll combine them below, but this charts shows how the bowlers map based on their respective abilities:
Please note that we have imposed a minimum qualification criteria of 150 overs bowled.
As with the batsmen, the most well-rounded, high quality bowlers are those pushing out towards the top right of the chart. Lasith Malinga is almost out on his own here, although Chahal and Sandeep Sharma might also have a claim for inclusion in that 'elite' bracket. Aside from those few, however, it does look as if most bowlers specialise fairly strongly in just a single ability.
Looking at the extremes of the chart shows us the top performers when we look at the raw individual abilities - Imran Tahir stands out as the deadliest IPL bowler of the last decade, with Rashid Khan out ranking as the most difficult to score runs from. Khan's position is highly impressive given that he also ranks fairly high on the wicket-taking axis.
Combining the abilities - with different weights to ensure we capture the full picture - gives the table below:
Centering our discussion around the middle column again, and we find the deadly Imran Tahir take the number one spot. That he was able to take this position despite a modest wicket preservation ability underlines how sensational his wicket taking ability has been. Yuzvendra Chahal comes in behind Tahir - he is a little more rounded, with a top 4 spot across all 3 columns.
IPL Superstar Lasith Malinga is in at 3rd, and is also by far and away our most impressive fast bowler. He, as we noted when we looked at the scatter plot above, is probably the most balanced high quality bowler of the decade, with excellent ratings in both of the abilities computed.
In fourth place - and the final bowler to feature in all three columns - is Afghani spinner Rashid Khan. His unmatched ability to keep the runs down has been complemented by a more than solid wicket taking threat, cementing him as one of the most impressive IPL bowlers of the decade.
Lower down the list we start to get bowlers who more obviously lean to either wicket taking or economy as their primary skill. Mitchell McClenaghan and Sandeep Sharma slot in at fifth and sixth, primarily for wicket-taking prowess, with Ashish Nehra's deadly but erratic bowling getting him in further down the list.
On the other side, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Sunil Narine both impress with some miserly bowling over the last decade, making the top five when we focus on economy.
Rounding out the top ten is South African Chris Morris. His abilities are actually fairly well-rounded, just not quite on the level of his more spectacular peers higher up the list. There's no doubt that he is a highly useful bowler however, and - for what it's worth - he doesn't rank too badly amongst our batsmen either.
Of course, there are a handful of bowlers who are only good enough to qualify for one of the columns. On the left hand side, we have Karn Sharma and Dwayne Bravo, whose brilliant wicket-taking is betrayed by some pretty woeful economy - 8.47 is Bravo's case. On the other side you have Dale Steyn, Ravichandran Ashwin and Hardik Pandya - who haven't exactly been threatening, but their profligacy has made them useful options over the years.
That concludes our review of the top IPL bowlers from the 2010s, we hope you enjoyed it. Please keep an eye out for our next article, where we'll be taking using results of this, as well as our batting analysis, to declare our IPL Team of the Decade.
Thanks for reading!
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