IPL Most Powerplay Wickets: All-Time Records

Bhuvneshwar Kumar took 97 wickets in the first six overs of IPL innings. Deepak Chahar and Trent Boult are next on 72 each. That gap of twenty-five is the largest lead any bowler holds on any phase wicket list in the competition, and the way he built it says more about swing bowling in India than any coaching manual.

He conceded 6.55 runs an over doing it. In the seasons Bhuvneshwar was bowling the new ball, the competition's powerplay rate ran from 7.2 to 9.6; by 2026 it had reached 10.10. A bowler holding a phase to six and a half an over while taking a wicket every 26 balls in it was, for about a decade, the most valuable non-batting commodity in the tournament.

All figures below cover overs one to six of every innings in the 1,243 Indian Premier League matches played between April 2008 and the 2026 final.

Most IPL wickets in the powerplay

#	Bowler	PP wickets	Balls	Economy	Average	Balls per wicket
1	Bhuvneshwar Kumar	97	2,543	6.55	28.6	26.2
2	Deepak Chahar	72	1,605	8.06	30.0	22.3
2	Trent Boult	72	1,656	7.41	28.4	23.0
4	Sandeep Sharma	64	1,740	7.09	32.1	27.2
5	Mohammed Siraj	60	1,464	8.25	33.6	24.4
5	Mohammed Shami	60	1,650	7.75	35.5	27.5
7	Umesh Yadav	58	1,446	7.69	32.0	24.9
8	Ishant Sharma	57	1,521	7.44	33.1	26.7
9	Zaheer Khan	52	1,292	6.74	27.9	24.8
10	Kagiso Rabada	51	1,080	8.72	30.8	21.2
11	Ravichandran Ashwin	50	1,252	7.09	29.6	25.0
12	Dhawal Kulkarni	44	1,018	7.49	28.9	23.1
13	Arshdeep Singh	43	996	8.73	33.7	23.2
14	Praveen Kumar	40	1,572	6.69	43.9	39.3
14	Ashish Nehra	40	1,093	7.50	34.2	27.3
14	Jasprit Bumrah	40	1,266	6.94	36.6	31.6
17	Khaleel Ahmed	38	978	8.27	35.5	25.7
18	Lasith Malinga	37	1,110	6.28	31.4	30.0
18	Jofra Archer	37	750	7.38	24.9	20.3
20	Mohit Sharma	36	858	8.13	32.3	23.8
20	Morne Morkel	36	906	7.13	29.9	25.2
22	RP Singh	35	1,002	7.16	34.1	28.6
23	Shane Watson	34	834	7.09	29.0	24.5
23	Dale Steyn	34	1,134	6.26	34.8	33.4
23	Albie Morkel	34	900	8.45	37.3	26.5

One name on that list is not a seamer at all. Ravichandran Ashwin took 50 powerplay wickets and conceded 7.09 in the phase, which is a direct product of Chennai's willingness to open the bowling with off spin at Chepauk for the better part of a decade. Sunil Narine and Harbhajan Singh, both further down the economy table, were used the same way.

The cheapest powerplay bowling

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

#	Bowler	Powerplay economy	Wickets	Balls
1	Dale Steyn	6.26	34	1,134
2	Lasith Malinga	6.28	37	1,110
3	Bhuvneshwar Kumar	6.55	97	2,543
4	Praveen Kumar	6.69	40	1,572
5	Zaheer Khan	6.74	52	1,292
6	Sunil Narine	6.93	29	990
7	Jasprit Bumrah	6.94	40	1,266
8	Irfan Pathan	7.07	28	918
9	R Vinay Kumar	7.09	30	750
9	Ravichandran Ashwin	7.09	50	1,252
9	Sandeep Sharma	7.09	64	1,740
9	Shane Watson	7.09	34	834
13	Harbhajan Singh	7.10	30	773
14	Morne Morkel	7.13	36	906
15	RP Singh	7.16	35	1,002

Steyn and Malinga are separated by two hundredths of a run across more than a thousand deliveries each, which is the closest thing to a dead heat on this whole record archive. Both bowled the bulk of their IPL cricket before 2016.

The trade-off between wickets and containment

The powerplay is the one phase where a bowler can genuinely do both, but the numbers still pull apart.

Bowler	Balls per wicket	PP economy
Jofra Archer	20.3	7.38
Kagiso Rabada	21.2	8.72
Deepak Chahar	22.3	8.06
Trent Boult	23.0	7.41
Dhawal Kulkarni	23.1	7.49
Arshdeep Singh	23.2	8.73
Mohit Sharma	23.8	8.13
Bhuvneshwar Kumar	26.2	6.55
Lasith Malinga	30.0	6.28
Jasprit Bumrah	31.6	6.94
Dale Steyn	33.4	6.26
Praveen Kumar	39.3	6.69

Jofra Archer's 20.3 balls per powerplay wicket is the best figure of any bowler with 750 balls in the phase, and it comes with an economy rate of 7.38 — the only entry near the top of both columns. Praveen Kumar sits at the other extreme: 6.69 an over, a wicket only every 39 balls. He was bowling to be left alone rather than to get anyone out, which is also why he holds the record for most maiden overs.

What has happened to the phase

Season	Powerplay runs per over	Balls per wicket
2009	7.22	21.9
2013	6.93	25.5
2016	7.70	27.0
2019	8.13	28.1
2021	7.72	30.0
2023	8.72	24.8
2024	9.47	22.5
2026	10.10	22.4

Read the two columns together and the last three seasons stand out. Between 2013 and 2021 the powerplay got both more expensive and safer for batters — the rate rose while wickets became harder to find, peaking in 2021 at a wicket every thirty balls. Since 2023 both have moved: the rate has gone up by another 1.4 and the wicket rate has come back to where it was in 2009.

That is a genuine change in what the phase is. Batting sides are now taking risk in the first six overs that they were not taking in 2021, and bowlers are collecting the wickets that come with it. The batting side of the same story is on the powerplay run records.

Bhuvneshwar Kumar's ninety-seven

He bowled 2,543 powerplay deliveries — 423 overs and five balls, more than any other bowler in IPL history and 55 per cent of his total workload. Sandeep Sharma, second on that list, has bowled 1,740. Sunrisers Hyderabad gave him the first over of almost every innings for a decade, and he was still opening the bowling in his final seasons at other franchises.

The method was conventional and rigorously applied: full length, seam presented, both directions off it, and a knuckle ball added around 2017 once batters had adjusted to the swing. He won the Purple Cap in 2016 with 23 wickets and again in 2017 with 26 — one of only four bowlers to top an IPL season's wicket list twice.

For the phases either side of his, see the middle-overs wicket records and the death-overs wicket records. Franchise detail is on the IPL hub, and the wider context in the guide to cricket in India.

Sources and method

The powerplay is defined here as overs one to six of an innings, the mandatory fielding-restriction period in a full-length IPL match. Rain-reduced innings with a shortened restriction period are counted as played, which affects a small number of deliveries in the totals.

Wickets are credited to the bowler for bowled, caught, caught and bowled, lbw, stumped and hit wicket; run-outs, retirements and obstructing the field are not credited to a bowler. Runs conceded include wides and no-balls but exclude byes, leg byes and penalty runs. Balls are legal deliveries only, so a bowler who sends down a powerplay over containing a wide is credited with six balls, not seven.

Phase average is runs conceded in the phase divided by wickets taken in it; balls per wicket is the phase strike rate. Both are within-phase measurements and should not be read against career figures. All numbers are computed from the ball-by-ball archive published by Cricsheet (cricsheet.org, ODC-BY 1.0), covering every IPL match from 18 April 2008 to 31 May 2026.

The 750-ball qualification on the economy and strike-rate tables is our own bar and is stated because rate tables without one reward very small samples. Season figures cover all innings in that season. Purple Cap seasons were derived from the same archive and checked against the published list.