IPL Most Middle-Overs Wickets: All-Time Records

Yuzvendra Chahal has taken 149 wickets in overs seven to fifteen of Indian Premier League innings. Ravindra Jadeja is on 144, Piyush Chawla 132, Amit Mishra 126 and Rashid Khan 121. Every one of the top five is a spinner, and you have to go past twenty names before a bowler who runs in off a long approach appears with any volume behind him.

That is the single most reliable fact about this part of a Twenty20 innings in India. The nine overs between the end of the powerplay and the start of the last five are where captains reach for a wrist spinner or a finger spinner and where roughly forty-five per cent of all deliveries are bowled. Chahal has bowled 2,960 of them, conceding 7.75 an over and taking a wicket every 19.9 balls — the fastest strike rate of anyone with a three-figure haul in the phase.

Every figure on this page is drawn from overs seven to fifteen inclusive of all 1,243 Indian Premier League matches from 2008 to the 2026 final. The batting side of the same nine overs is covered on the middle-overs run records; the first six overs sit with the powerplay wicket records and the last five with the death-overs wicket records.

Most IPL wickets in overs 7 to 15

Qualification: 20 wickets in the phase. Economy, average and strike rate are all phase-only figures, not career ones.

#	Bowler	Wickets	Balls	Economy	Average	Balls per wicket
1	Yuzvendra Chahal	149	2,960	7.75	25.7	19.9
2	Ravindra Jadeja	144	3,582	7.53	31.2	24.9
3	Piyush Chawla	132	2,969	7.87	29.5	22.5
4	Amit Mishra	126	2,712	6.97	25.0	21.5
5	Rashid Khan	121	2,552	6.87	24.1	21.1
6	Ravichandran Ashwin	101	2,857	7.03	33.1	28.3
7	Axar Patel	96	2,507	7.13	31.0	26.1
8	Sunil Narine	94	2,556	6.53	29.6	27.2
8	Harbhajan Singh	94	2,370	6.93	29.1	25.2
10	Kuldeep Yadav	82	1,856	8.19	30.9	22.6
11	Varun Chakravarthy	77	1,422	7.44	22.9	18.5
12	Krunal Pandya	72	1,926	7.36	32.8	26.8
13	Karn Sharma	67	1,308	8.31	27.0	19.5
14	Pragyan Ojha	63	1,373	6.85	24.9	21.8
15	Dwayne Bravo	58	1,507	7.56	32.8	26.0
15	Rahul Chahar	58	1,452	7.72	32.2	25.0
17	Harshal Patel	56	1,260	8.03	30.1	22.5
17	Ravi Bishnoi	56	1,386	8.17	33.7	24.8
19	Imran Tahir	54	941	7.21	20.9	17.4
20	Rajat Bhatia	52	1,393	7.16	32.0	26.8
21	Andre Russell	49	813	9.15	25.3	16.6
22	Noor Ahmad	46	887	8.08	26.0	19.3
23	Jasprit Bumrah	45	942	6.58	23.0	20.9
24	Kieron Pollard	42	1,115	8.15	36.0	26.5
25	Muttiah Muralitharan	39	1,105	6.37	30.1	28.3
25	Siddharth Trivedi	39	1,074	6.98	32.1	27.5
27	Shane Warne	38	942	6.78	28.0	24.8
27	Shreyas Gopal	38	822	8.30	29.9	21.6
29	Shadab Jakati	37	858	7.76	30.0	23.2
29	Hardik Pandya	37	1,012	8.40	38.3	27.4
31	Mohit Sharma	35	738	7.89	27.7	21.1
31	Shardul Thakur	35	729	8.50	29.5	20.8

Why the leading names are almost all slow bowlers

Twenty-one of the first twenty-five names on that list bowl spin. The exceptions are Dwayne Bravo, Andre Russell, Jasprit Bumrah and Kieron Pollard, and three of those four are all-rounders who were being used in the phase because the balance of the side left no one else. Bumrah is the only specialist fast bowler in the group, and even he bowled only 942 middle-over deliveries against 1,423 at the death.

The reason is a matter of who gets the overs. A captain has twenty overs of bowling and a small number of them are worth spending on a strike seamer with the new ball or a specialist at the end. What is left goes to whoever can hold a rate on a used pitch with the field spread and no swing, which in Indian conditions almost always means a slow bowler. Chennai Super Kings built two title-winning attacks on that principle with Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja bowling six overs between them in the middle of most innings, and Jadeja's 3,582 phase deliveries are the most anyone has bowled.

The most economical middle-overs bowling

Restricted to bowlers with 750 deliveries in the phase — about 125 overs.

#	Bowler	Economy	Wickets	Balls	Balls per wicket
1	Muttiah Muralitharan	6.37	39	1,105	28.3
2	Sunil Narine	6.53	94	2,556	27.2
3	Jasprit Bumrah	6.58	45	942	20.9
4	Shane Warne	6.78	38	942	24.8
5	Pragyan Ojha	6.85	63	1,373	21.8
6	Rashid Khan	6.87	121	2,552	21.1
7	Harbhajan Singh	6.93	94	2,370	25.2
8	Shakib Al Hasan	6.94	32	840	26.2
9	Amit Mishra	6.97	126	2,712	21.5
10	Siddharth Trivedi	6.98	39	1,074	27.5
11	Ravichandran Ashwin	7.03	101	2,857	28.3
12	Axar Patel	7.13	96	2,507	26.1
13	Shahbaz Nadeem	7.14	34	1,001	29.4
14	Rajat Bhatia	7.16	52	1,393	26.8
14	Murali Kartik	7.16	18	816	45.3
16	Imran Tahir	7.21	54	941	17.4
17	Jacques Kallis	7.32	23	866	37.7
18	Yuvraj Singh	7.34	30	756	25.2

Rashid Khan and Amit Mishra are the outliers worth stopping at. Both have taken more than 120 wickets in the phase while conceding under seven an over, which no one else has managed. Rashid's 6.87 across 2,552 deliveries is the most impressive single line on this page: he was bowling almost all of it after 2017, in the seasons when scoring rates rose fastest, and he still went at less than a run a ball while striking every 21 deliveries.

Who strikes fastest in the phase

Restricted to bowlers with 750 phase deliveries and 30 phase wickets, ranked by balls per wicket.

#	Bowler	Balls per wicket	Wickets	Economy
1	Andre Russell	16.6	49	9.15
2	Imran Tahir	17.4	54	7.21
3	Varun Chakravarthy	18.5	77	7.44
4	Noor Ahmad	19.3	46	8.08
5	Karn Sharma	19.5	67	8.31
6	Yuzvendra Chahal	19.9	149	7.75
7	Jasprit Bumrah	20.9	45	6.58
8	Rashid Khan	21.1	121	6.87
9	Amit Mishra	21.5	126	6.97
10	Shreyas Gopal	21.6	38	8.30
11	Pragyan Ojha	21.8	63	6.85
12	Piyush Chawla	22.5	132	7.87
12	Harshal Patel	22.5	56	8.03
14	Kuldeep Yadav	22.6	82	8.19
15	Shadab Jakati	23.2	37	7.76
16	Shane Warne	24.8	38	6.78
16	Ravi Bishnoi	24.8	56	8.17
18	Ravindra Jadeja	24.9	144	7.53

Andre Russell's presence at the top is a curiosity rather than a model. He bowled only 813 middle-over deliveries and conceded 9.15 an over doing it, but he was being brought on specifically to bowl at a set batter with a hard length, and it worked often enough to give him the fastest strike rate in the phase among qualifiers.

The phase has become more expensive and more dangerous at once

Unlike the powerplay, where fielding restrictions cap what a bowler can be asked to do, the middle overs have moved in both directions at the same time.

Season	Phase economy	Balls per wicket
2008	7.79	25.5
2009	6.69	25.3
2013	7.08	25.3
2018	7.98	23.1
2022	7.96	23.0
2023	8.32	22.1
2024	8.74	21.7
2025	8.95	22.5
2026	9.22	22.2

Two and a half runs an over have been added to overs seven to fifteen since 2009, and the wicket rate has quickened by roughly three balls per dismissal. Sides are no longer treating the phase as consolidation. From 2023, with an extra batter available under the Impact Player rule, they have been willing to lose a wicket in the middle overs in exchange for tempo, and the bowling figures reflect the trade rather than any decline in the bowlers.

Chahal and Jadeja arrived at similar totals by different routes

The two leaders are five wickets apart and almost nothing else about them matches. Chahal took his 149 in 2,960 deliveries; Jadeja needed 3,582 for 144. Chahal's phase average is 25.7 against Jadeja's 31.2, and Chahal strikes five balls sooner. Jadeja, in return, is the cheaper of the two at 7.53 to 7.75.

That is the difference between a leg spinner picked to take wickets and a left-arm finger spinner picked to bowl four overs for twenty-eight whatever the state of the game. Chahal moved between Royal Challengers Bengaluru, Rajasthan and Punjab and was, at every stop, the bowler a captain turned to when a partnership needed breaking. Jadeja has bowled his 3,582 deliveries almost entirely for one club, and the value in them was as much about control as dismissals.

Five things the table alone does not show

• Varun Chakravarthy's 77 wickets have come at 22.9 apiece, the best average of anyone with 50 or more in the phase. He is also the only bowler in the top fifteen whose entire body of work postdates 2019, so his numbers were made in the higher-scoring era rather than despite it.
• Amit Mishra and Piyush Chawla, both of whom finished with more than 120 phase wickets, were leg spinners bowling in an era when the received wisdom was that leg spin was too expensive for Twenty20. Between them they bowled 5,681 deliveries in the middle overs at a combined rate under 7.5.
• Noor Ahmad's 46 wickets came in only 887 deliveries, a strike rate of 19.3 that ranks fourth among qualifiers. He is the clearest example of the modern pattern: a left-arm wrist spinner given the phase outright rather than shared with a seamer.
• The all-rounders in the list are cheaper than their reputations suggest in only one case. Sunil Narine's 6.53 is the second-best economy on the page; Hardik Pandya's 8.40 and Kieron Pollard's 8.15 are among the worst of the qualifiers, and both were being used as a fifth or sixth option rather than a plan.
• Jasprit Bumrah's phase average of 23.0 is better than every spinner's on the list except Imran Tahir's, on 942 deliveries. The reason he does not appear higher is simply that Mumbai Indians rarely wanted him bowling in the middle when they could hold him back, which is a selection choice rather than a verdict on his effectiveness there.

Sources and method

The tables were built from the public ball-by-ball archive of every completed IPL match, filtered to deliveries bowled in overs seven to fifteen inclusive. The phase boundaries are the standard analytical split for Twenty20: overs one to six are governed by the fielding restriction, overs sixteen to twenty by the end-of-innings acceleration, and what sits between is a different bowling problem.

Wickets are credited to the bowler only where the dismissal is one a bowler is credited with — bowled, caught, leg before, stumped, hit wicket and caught and bowled. Run-outs are excluded. Economy and average count runs off the bat plus wides and no-balls, and exclude byes and leg byes, which is how bowling figures are recorded on a scorecard. Rain-shortened innings are counted as played, so a fifteen-over match contributes fewer middle-over deliveries than a full one, and matches abandoned without play contribute nothing.

Records on this page reflect the archive as it stood after the 2026 final on 31 May 2026. Leading totals were cross-checked against published IPL bowling records; where a figure here is a computed phase split rather than a published career number, that is because the phase splits are not maintained as official records by the league. Nothing on this page is estimated: where a bowler fell below the stated qualification threshold, the row was left out rather than filled.