Cricket used to be a game of skills in the past and you didn’t necessarily need a lot of muscles to make a mark in the game, but now with white ball cricket being as important as red ball cricket, powerful stroke-play is one of the key traits required in any young player coming through the ranks.
We have had seen some really powerful players in the IPL over the years. Here is an all time IPL XI of players with solid muscles –
#Openers (Chris Gayle, Virat Kohli)
There is hardly anyone around the cricketing circuit who would want to debate against Chris Gayle’s muscle power because it would be an invalid debate. The big Jamaican can hit the ball as hard as anyone else in the world and it’s fitting that he is the only batsman in the history of the IPL who has hit more than 300 sixes.
Generally, most of the people don’t include Kohli in the list of the power-players, but the Indian captain has shown on plenty of occasions in the IPL that he can deposit the ball into the stands if need be. He has got the whippy wrists which help him generate the power into the shots.
#Middle order (KL Rahul, Andrew Symonds, MS Dhoni, Andre Russell)
KL Rahul is another player who looks very compact in terms of his technique, but if and when he wants, he can easily clear any ground in the world. He has already hit 81 sixes in the IPL, although he has played significantly lesser number of games as compared to the other popular power-hitters.
Andrew Symonds and MS Dhoni were the first proper set of finishers in the first season of the IPL. Both of them would bat at no. 5 and no. 6 for their respective teams most of the time and were capable of hitting sixes even when they were not timing the ball well.
Andre Russell is arguably the greatest player of all time in T20 cricket. The consistency that he has shown despite playing high risk cricket in the last 3-4 years, it’s just mind-boggling and the only reason behind it is his power. Whether he is up against the fast bowlers or the spinners, Russell just lines up the bowler so well and the swing of his bat is clean as a whistle.
#All-rounders (Hardik Pandya and Ravindra Jadeja)
Hardik Pandya is in and around the circuit only for the last few years, but he has made a name for himself as one of the cleanest strikers of the ball. The jury is still out on Pandya’s ability to play the big shots against the fast bowlers consistently well, but as far as his striking power against the spinners is concerned, he is right up there at the top of the pile.
Ravindra Jadeja is probably not used at his right spot in the IPL. He is someone who can launch brutal onslaught against the spinners in the middle phase of the innings, but he often has to bat at no. 7 for CSK as they already have quite a few quality middle-order batsmen to bat at 4, 5 and 6. However, there have been occasions in the past where Jadeja has gone on a six hitting spree.
#Bowlers (Umesh Yadav, Jasprit Bumrah, Shoaib Akhtar)
When you talk about fast bowlers, you can’t judge their muscle power with the numbers of sixes that they hit because they are not going to hit a lot of sixes even if they are very powerful. But, their physical strength can surely help them generate a lot of pace, both through the air and off the surface.
Umesh Yadav is someone who doesn’t really hit the deck hard, but he is one of the fastest in the air and it’s not easy for anyone to negotiate him if the ball is swinging and he is bowling full.
Bumrah and Akhtar, on the other hand, could just smash the deck with their strong shoulders and they didn’t just extract pace off the wicket, they extracted a lot of bounce as well. While Akhtar has already retired, Bumrah is still playing and just keeps getting better every season.
