Nos. 7-6: Jasprit Bumrah, Chris Gayle

Bumrah: unplayable, but you've got to play him out © BCCI

No. 7, Jasprit Bumrah

by Sidharth Monga
Bumrah is quite simply one of the two greatest fast bowlers to grace T20 cricket. Lasith Malinga and he appeared together for Mumbai Indians in five editions of the IPL; they won four of those.

Bumrah is not a massive wicket-taker; his 17.7 balls per wicket in all T20s is not among the top ten strike rates among fast bowlers who have at least 275 wickets each. That's because he doesn't go looking for wickets at the cost of his team. His economy rate of 6.89, on the other hand, is the best among fast bowlers with 275 wickets or more. Malinga is second, at 7.07 an over.

Bumrah is a rare all-phase bowler. He can move the new ball with immaculate control, he can hit hard lengths in the middle overs, and he can nail his yorkers and variations at the death. His hyperextension, and consequently, relatively late release of the ball, becomes even more lethal in the shortest format, where you are obligated to hit out. Not only does he give you less time to judge length, he also gets the ball to lift - pitch fuller than anticipated - which gives him larger room for error on the yorker.

Not able to hit out against Bumrah, batters feel compelled to take inordinate amounts of risk against other bowlers. At his best, Bumrah turns matches into 20 overs versus 16, plus any bonus deliveries the opposition can eke out of Bumrah's four.

T20 is a format dominated by batters. The quality of bowling can often be immaterial because you have ten wickets to lose over a short period. You hit even good balls, happy to lose the odd wicket. There is often little correlation between the quality of the bowling and the runs scored off it. To stand out in this format as someone who must be played out is the biggest tribute there can be to Bumrah.

Career high: Mumbai Indians scored 148 and won by one run in the 2019 IPL final. Bumrah bowled one over in the powerplay for five runs, took out Ambati Rayudu in his only middle-overs over, and then returned at the death, conceding just eight runs in two overs to go with the wicket of Dwayne Bravo. His 4-0-16-2 secured MI their title.

Gayle: runs for fun, sixes for free © BCCI/IPL

No. 6, Chris Gayle

by George Binoy
The OG. In the T20 cosmos, it's Gayle. No question.

For some fearsome ball-strikers like Sanath Jayasuriya and Adam Gilchrist, the T20 boom came too late in their careers. Gayle was days short of 26, in the prime of a cricketer's life, when he played his first T20 match. A shining example of perfect timing.

The format muddled about on the fringes of cricket's consciousness in its early years, struggling for acceptance from the establishment. Its undeniable appeal, however, led the ICC to organise the first T20 World Cup in 2007. Gayle blitzed the first of his record 22 hundreds in the tournament opener, and put himself on top of the most-wanted list when T20 leagues began mushrooming all over the world in subsequent years.

His persona made him the poster boy for the format: 100% pure entertainer. Dreadlocks, flamboyant wardrobe, washboard abs, sense of humour, dancing feet, a love for a good time - Gayle had all that and showed it off. So when he proclaimed himself the "Universe Boss" at some point, the rest of us just ran with it.

No one dealt in the currency of T20 cricket, sixes, better than Gayle did. He loved hitting them, loved talking about hitting them, and let everyone know how great he was at it. He remains the only batter with more than 1000 sixes, averaging more than two per innings.

His methods were simple: stay balanced in his crease and use his powerful six-foot frame and long reach to launch the ball in the arc from cover to midwicket. Rarely did he charge at the bowler. Rarely did he reverse- or slog-sweep, or scoop. Gayle was all hand-eye coordination. He often even took his time to get his eye in before unleashing carnage. Old-school cool.

There are only three players in the T20 game with more than 5000 runs at an average of more than 35 and a strike rate of more than 140 - AB de Villiers, David Warner, and Gayle, who finished at the age of 42 with 14,562 runs.

Career high: Gayle has hit ten or more sixes in a T20 innings on 18 occasions. For perspective on how staggering that is, Evin Lewis and Shreyas Iyer are next with four such innings each, followed by Andre Russell with three. The most memorable of those Gayle performances was for Royal Challengers Bengaluru - the franchise with whom he made his name in the T20 game - against Pune Warriors in the 2013 IPL. He hit 17 sixes that day - a record for most sixes in an innings that he broke four and a half years later - on his way to a century off 30 balls, which was the fastest at the time.

In a time when the value of T20 records is questionable because of how every game played between the ICC's 108 member countries is considered an international match, Gayle's 175 not out off 66 balls in Bangalore 12 years ago remains the highest individual score in the format.

Stats in factfile sidebars are for all T20 matches, minus internationals, and current as up to the start of the 2025 IPL. League wins cover tournaments of four teams and above, and include seasons where the player appeared in at least one match for the winning team

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