T20 cricket has become a rage in recent years. The T20 World Cup and the Indian Premier League have become two of the most awaited cricketing events of the world. The short version of the game is dominated by the batsmen as almost every bowler goes for a pounding every now and then.
At times even the experienced lot has found it really hard to contain the batsmen who practically look to score big with ever delivery that comes their way. Therefore, finding who is a better bowler in T20 cricket is tough but possible when using the right measures.
To be frank the best possible means of determining the skills of a T20 bowler is to go through his performance charts in recent Twenty Twenty Tournaments. Speaking of performances, a slow bowler like New Zealander Daniel Vettori is the prime candidate when it comes to finding out the best T20 bowler. His variations have troubled batsmen from most cricketing nations.
Close behind him are Aussie quickies Brett Lee and Shaun Tait. While Brett Lee has an impressive record of about twelve wickets with a bowling average of 27.83 Shaun Tait too has managed to grab four wickets with an average of 23.75. Both of them also happen to have an economy rate that is below eight.
The T20 World Cup also saw the rise of a few fresh faces in the likes of New Zealand fast bowler Mark Gillespie who crippled the Kenyan batting order in the opening match of the tournament. He managed to grab four valuable wickets for just seven runs in the three odd overs he bowled.
Promising paceman Umar Gul who was instrumental in helping the Pakistan team win the 2009 ICC T20 World Cup has showed what it takes to be a better bowler in this ultra short form of the game. Last but not the least even a slightly lesser known West Indian Deren Sammy needs special mention for his bravado since he took six wickets while conceding single figure runs.
Every bowler is subjected to some mindless thrashing in the T20 format of cricket. Therefore it would be useless to speculate or predict bowlers who will come out as better performers in these competitions. As mentioned earlier, even the most experienced ones can have a poor day in the field. Ideally a bowler’s performance for three to five T20 matches should be the yardstick to measure, whether he is a better T20 bowler than most of his contemporaries.

Got Thoughts?
By all means share them, and start the conversation.
Leave Your Own Comment
You can follow any responses to this entry via its RSS comments feed. You can also leave a trackback if the inclination is there.