Spin has had a bigger say in IPL 2025 than it did in IPL 2024.After 50 matches this season, they had 220 wickets at an average of 30.02. At the same stage last season, they had taken 154 wickets at an average of almost 37. Overall, they had taken 39% of all bowler wickets by the 50th game, compared to 27% last year.Why, though?Piyush Chawla, still the third-highest wicket-taker in IPL history (192, behind Yuzvendra Chahal and Bhuvneshwar Kumar), feels it has to do with the heat around India to a large extent.Related
-
A spell from hell: Arshdeep finds a new high in Dharamsala
-
KKR survive last-ball thriller to stay alive in top four race
-
Hat-trickster Chahal is still making batters look silly
-
Sai Kishore bowling just one over baffles experts
-
Patidar lauds Krunal's 'courage' after triple-wicket final over
“Any bowler wants to bowl with the dry ball. And you can’t really predict where it’s going to be [dewy or otherwise] and where it’s not going to be,” he said on ESPNcricinfo’s Time Out show. “If you see the weather also this year, generally… I’m coming from Delhi, and in February you don’t have your fans on; but this year, your fans were on in February. That means it’s getting hotter and Delhi is already touching almost 45 degrees (Celsius).”So all the venues where it’s hot, the pitches are dry. No matter how much you roll it, how much you water it, eventually it gets dry, and it helps the spinners.”It might not only be about the conditions. Like everyone else in the circuit, spinners have also done their thinking, their research, and brought about tweaks.”If you see the spinners here, they are actually pulling their lengths back, rather than going too full, because now most of the batters don’t use their feet, except a few,” Chawla said. “So they [the batters] just wait for the ball to pitch up in their area, and sometimes when they don’t get a couple of sixes in two or three overs, even the ball that is not there to be hit, they go for it. And in that situation, they end up mistiming it.”As elaborated on ESPNcricinfo by S Rajesh, the change is most evident in the middle overs. This season, spinners have 44 more wickets in the middle overs after 50 matches compared to last year, and have bowled more than 61% of the overs in that phase. In IPL 2024, quick bowlers took 138 wickets in the middle overs compared to 127 for spinners, but the numbers have been flipped in 2025: spinners have taken 171 and quick bowlers 106.