The attacking yorkers make a searing comeback

Royal Challengers Bengaluru have been best side on road this season winning five on the bounce. The bowlers orchestrated four of these wins, including all three games they fielded first and restricted opponents to below par totals which RCB batters chased down without hardly breaking a sweat. One phase where they have been exceptional is the death overs (16-20) where they are the second best team in terms of economy rate and sit second in terms of wickets taken.

Josh Hazlewood has been RCB's standout bowler of the season, and he has been exceptional in the death phase, especially in away games where he concedes at 8.25/over and has four wickets to show for. His approach in the season opener and how he bowled in the same phase in Mullanpur underline a major shift in how seam bowlers have been approaching death overs bowling in the tournament. At Eden Gardens, he conceded 15 runs off two overs at death (including a leg bye) while in Mullanpur it was one run more. But the devil lies in the details.

In the tournament opener against KKR, he went into the pitch bowling all but one at a length or shorter while come game #37, he attempted a yorker ten out of the 12 balls of his second spell. In all, Hazlewood and Bhuvneshwar Kumar attempted yorkers 17 of the 24 legitimate balls in their away fixture against Punjab and conceded just a solitary boundary - off the very last ball of the innings where the tallest batter featuring in the tournament, Marco Jansen, used his feet to get under the ball to hit a six straight down the ground.

This change is indicative of the larger trend where the reverse swing has played a crucial role as the season progressed. Revoking the ban on saliva a few days ahead of the start of the 18th edition has had such a profound influence but as most things that go in vogue these times, it needed someone to show it is effective. And it was Hazlewood's long time new ball partner Mitchell Starc that gave it a superb exhibition.

In a humdinger against Rajasthan Royals at Kotla, Starc used reverse swing to tail the ball back to the batters as he defended 31 runs (with opposition having eight wickets at their disposal) in the last three overs and again just nine runs in the final over. He had to go out and do it all over again in the Super Over and did that with aplomb. He bowled a very full length with an average length of 3 meters and got it to reverse 1.2 degrees on average in the 18th and 20th over. In the Super Over, he went even fuller, average length 2.26 meters, and extracted an average swing of 1.8 degrees.

Starc swing in overs 11-20 this IPL

On an average, Starc has extracted 1.01 degrees of movement in the second half of the innings (overs 11-20) with an older ball. Of his six wickets in this phase, five have come off fuller lengths with each of those extracting a swing of over one degree.

Royals found themselves at the receiving end once again three days later, this time at the home bastion in Jaipur with the protagonist being Avesh Khan. He helped LSG defend 25 runs off 18 balls, again with eight wickets at opposition's disposal, largely resorting to yorkers. His average length in his three over spell (16th, 18th & 20th) was 2.46 meters and he generated an average swing of 1.72 degrees. After conceding 13 runs of his first over in the Powerplay, he finished spell 3/37 (3/24 in his second spell).

Avesh Khan vs RR, Jaipur (Match #36)

Though Starc was one of the early adopters of reverse swing - he bowled a well set Nicholas Pooran in Vizag with a full length ball that swung in 1.85 degrees to the southpaw - it was his spell against Royals that catapulted reverse swing to the limelight. Thus, it can be considered an inflection point in the season as far as the increase in use of reverse swing. Both attempted yorkers and attacking/straight yorkers in death overs seeing a significant increase in the few games since. Up until Delhi Capitals' batting innings that day, there was a 41% attempted yorkers by seamers in death overs (16-20) that has risen to 54% in nine innings since, as per data logs. The bigger surge has been in the share of straight yorkers, as a percentage of attempted yorkers. From 35% of the yorkers (one in three) in the first 61 innings, the share of attacking yorkers has gone up to 63% since (two in three).

Fast bowlers in death overs

Teams were also starting to bowl more overs of spin, especially wrist spin, at the specialist pace hitters batting down the order at the start of the season but the reverse swing has tilted the scale in favour of fast bowlers again. Spinners bowled 40% of the balls at death up until Capitals' batting innings against Royals while it has shrunk to 28% since.

Taking the data after first 37 games from each season since IPL 2022, the first full IPL season hosted entirely in India post the saliva ban, there is a sharp increase in attacking yorkers as a share of attempted yorkers. It read 20.9% in 2022 and 21.3% in 2023 but dropped to 15.5% last year where the scoring rates reached to an all-time high and the bowlers regularly wanted to hide the ball away from the hitting arch of batters. This season 40.7% of the attempted yorkers have been aimed at the stumps highlighting the larger trend.

The reverse swing has also given the bowlers a higher margin of error while attempting yorkers. While the yorker has always been high impact delivery, the collateral damage is if one errs with the length on either side of it, the scoring rate is in the double figures. While the economy rate when one misses a straight yorker is still in double digits in 2025, the damage has happened when bowlers have erred on the fuller side bowling full tosses as economy of 13.50 suggests. If they miss on the shorter side and pitch it up fuller, they concede at 8.75/over and pick up a wicket every 7.2 balls.

ER in attempting straight yorkers (after first 37 matches)

Seamers attempting attacking yorkers in IPL 2025

After an all time high in scoring rates across all phases in IPL 2024, the rates have dropped the highest in death overs and slightly less so in the late middle overs (11-15). The reverse swing has certainly revitalized the seam bowling attacks, that has even prompted talks from ICC of similar changes in use of saliva in International formats. As the summer reaches its summit, the tracks are going to get more abrasive and that could further fuel reverse swing in the second half of the tournament. But as of now, it has played a massive part in reinstating the bat-ball balance somewhat to the optimal.

All stats correct till end of PBKS vs RCB match (game #37).