T20 has, among other aspects, changed the way scorecards are displayed. The second column in the bowling chart, dedicated to maiden overs for years, has now made way for dot balls. A maiden over, after all, involves six dot balls – an extremely infrequent occurrence in IPL, or any T20.
Only 12 maidens were bowled in the 2018 edition, of which Lungi Ngidi had bowled 2. In fact, Praveen Kumar (14) and Irfan Pathan (10) are the only ones to have bowled 10 or more maidens.
As for dot balls, Harbhajan Singh has bowled the most in the history of the Indian Premier League, followed by Praveen Kumar – though Praveen has bowled them way more frequently. Here is a list of bowlers with 800 or more dot balls in IPL history.
Here is the complete list.
Players | Dots | Balls | B/D | D/spell | Econ |
Harbhajan Singh | 1,128 | 3,098 | 2.75 | 8.7 | 7.05 |
Praveen Kumar | 1,075 | 2,524 | 2.35 | 10.2 | 7.72 |
Lasith Malinga | 1,060 | 2,558 | 2.41 | 9.9 | 6.86 |
Amit Mishra | 1,027 | 2,861 | 2.79 | 8.6 | 7.39 |
Piyush Chawla | 1,020 | 2,058 | 2.02 | 11.9 | 7.71 |
Dale Steyn | 978 | 2,594 | 2.65 | 9.0 | 6.72 |
R Ashwin | 968 | 2,258 | 2.33 | 10.3 | 6.73 |
Bhuvneshwar Kumar | 956 | 2,258 | 2.36 | 10.2 | 7.15 |
Sunil Narine | 955 | 2,292 | 2.40 | 10.0 | 6.53 |
Zaheer Khan | 873 | 2,200 | 2.52 | 9.5 | 7.58 |
Umesh Yadav | 860 | 2,253 | 2.62 | 9.2 | 8.32 |
Irfan Pathan | 835 | 2,043 | 2.45 | 9.8 | 7.77 |
Shane Watson | 804 | 2,029 | 2.52 | 9.5 | 7.93 |
However, more dots are definitely not a guarantee of economic bowling, for a bowler may have expensive overs despite bowling a maiden. As we shall see, in 2018, Mitchell McClenaghan (2.33 balls per dot) has a worse economy than Narine (2.67).
Here are the list of bowlers who had bowled most dot balls in the 2018 IPL.
Players | 2019 team | Dots | Balls | B/D | D/ spell | Econ |
Rashid Khan | SRH | 167 | 408 | 2.44 | 9.8 | 6.73 |
Umesh Yadav | RCB | 148 | 319 | 2.16 | 11.1 | 7.86 |
Sunil Narine | KKR | 137 | 366 | 2.67 | 9.0 | 7.65 |
Jasprit Bumrah | MI | 133 | 324 | 2.44 | 9.9 | 6.88 |
Siddharth Kaul | SRH | 131 | 396 | 3.02 | 7.9 | 8.28 |
Yuzvendra Chahal | RCB | 128 | 300 | 2.34 | 10.2 | 7.26 |
Bhuvneshwar Kumar | SRH | 124 | 217 | 1.75 | 13.7 | 7.66 |
Trent Boult | DD | 118 | 316 | 2.68 | 9.0 | 8.84 |
Deepak Chahar | CSK | 117 | 229 | 1.96 | 12.3 | 7.28 |
Sandeep Sharma | SRH | 116 | 264 | 2.28 | 10.5 | 7.56 |
Andrew Tye | KXIP | 116 | 336 | 2.90 | 8.3 | 8.00 |
Shardul Thakur | CSK | 113 | 280 | 2.48 | 9.7 | 9.23 |
Piyush Chawla | KKR | 110 | 294 | 2.67 | 9.0 | 8.40 |
Mitchell McClenaghan | MI | 103 | 240 | 2.33 | 10.3 | 8.30 |
Do note that while Rashid leads the list, it is also because he has bowled a lot of balls. He bowls one every 2.44 balls, which is significantly more than Bhuvneshwar’s 1.75 or Chahar’s 1.96.
Other than these two, Umesh, Sandeep, McClenaghan, and Chahal have also bowled more than 10 dots in an average 4-over spell.