Harshal Patel

He responded by relocating to Haryana, where former England cricketer Ian Pont helped refine his bowling. Patel's first-class debut came for Haryana against Delhi in 2011, and he collected 28 wickets in 7 matches that season. His domestic output stayed strong: 29 wickets from 8 games at an average of 23.75 in the 2013-14 Ranji Trophy, then 22 wickets from 8 games in 2015-16 after coming back from an injury.

In the IPL, Mumbai Indians signed him in 2010 before he joined Royal Challengers Bangalore for the 2012 season. He spent the years up to 2017 with RCB, mostly on the edge of a powerful side and rarely getting an extended run, and then moved to Delhi Daredevils for 2018. A skiddy bowler, he relied above all on the slower ball to fool batters at the death.

His return to RCB in a 2021 trade from Delhi transformed his career. Armed with a dipping yorker and a well-disguised slower delivery, he was extremely hard to score off late in an innings. That season brought a hat-trick against Mumbai Indians and top spot on the wicket-taking list with 32 victims. Two quieter seasons followed, yielding 19 and 14 wickets, after which RCB released him and Punjab Kings signed him for 2024. He again finished as the competition's leading wicket-taker, this time with 24, becoming only the second Indian after Bhuvneshwar Kumar to claim the Purple Cap more than once and the first to do it with different franchises.

His IPL success earned him a T20I debut for India against New Zealand in November 2021, and he was named in the squad for the 2022 T20 World Cup without playing a match. He could not reproduce his franchise form at international level, and his 25th and most recent T20I came in January 2023.