T20 cricket was the result of the gradual monotony that was setting into the conventional formats of the game cutting down the viewers. The newest format of the game came with a guaranteed promise of full-on entertainment.
The youngest format of the game apparently came with a great promise for the batters. It was believed that the shortened version of the game is going to be a cake walk for the batsmen. But with time the bowlers have found their foot in the format and taken away the predicted one-dimensional batting domination aspect from the format.
The Indian T20 League, the best of the T20 leagues round the world has witnessed some great batting displays. But the bowlers have also shown some spectacular performances in the league. Here are some of the best performances by the bowling sides restricting the opposition to some pretty ordinary scores while defending some modest totals.
1.116 Defended by Chennai against Punjab, 2009: Durban saw the best bowling performance by a team while defending in 2009. Chennai batted first and put up a very modest total of 116 runs. Parthiv Patel scored the highest runs of the innings with a 32 of 23 deliveries, while 7 of the players were unable to reach double figures.
While coming out to defend the modest 116 runs the Chennai team put the Punjab batsmen under pressure from the very beginning. Luke Pomersbach was the only man scoring over 20 in the innings while the likes of Sangakkara, Yuvraj Singh, Simon Katich and Irfan Pathan failed to make a fight for the target. The Chennai spin attack in Muralitharan, Ashwin and Suresh Raina bowled brilliantly and kept Punjab down to 92 runs for 8 wickets in 20 overs.
2.118 Defended by Hyderabad against Mumbai,2018: The Mumbai team in their home ground are mostly invincible. But in 2018, Hyderabad did something spectacular while defending a very modest total. Batting first Hyderabad put up 118 runs. Kane Williamson and Yusuf Pathan scoring the highest runs with 29.
Mumbai coming out to chase 119 runs made a mess of the chase. Some fight was put forward by Suryakumar Yadav (34) and Krunal Pandya (24), while no other batsman lasted long at the crease. Siddharth Kaul (3 wickets) and Rashid Khan (2 wickets) with outstanding bowling performances dismissed the mighty Mumbai line for 87 runs winning the match by 31 runs.
