He scalped four wickets on his debut against KKR.
23-year-old Ashwani Kumar has grabbed so many eyeballs with his exceptional bowling skills on his Indian Premier League (IPL) debut. The left-arm pacer from Punjab was acquired by the Mumbai Indians (MI) for his base price of INR 30 lakh.
Youngster Ashwani stunned the defending champions Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) with his four-wicket haul on the very first match of his IPL career.
He bagged the big wickets of KKR captain Ajinkya Rahane, Rinku Singh, Manish Pandey and Andrey Russell. He earned the player of the match award for his brilliant figure of four for 24. He also became the first Indian bowler to scalp four wickets on IPL debut.
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Proteas Ryan Rickelton has shared what makes Ashwani effective and how the MI pacer adds value to their squad. He has a great pace that many players fail to read early in the game, opined Rickelton.
The batter also felt that it was Ashwani’s brilliance to have “a second plan” apart from swinging the ball.
“He’s a lot quicker than I think people recognise at first, so I think that’s a great attribute he has and he can swing the new ball,” Rickelton said.
“It’s absolutely quite though, we’ve got two specialist swing bowlers with the new ball as well, but to have that second plan without that swing factor was really impressive”, he stated in the press conference.
The five-time IPL champions started their IPL 2025 campaign poorly by losing two on the trot. They lost their IPL opener against the Chennai Super Kings by 4 wickets followed by the 36-run defeat against the Gujarat Titans. But the Hardik Pandya-led team has made a quick turnaround to defeat KKR by 8 wickets at the Wankhede Stadium. Their next IPL fixture is against the Lucknow Super Giants at the Ekana Stadium on April 4.
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