IPL 2019: The first ever happenings in the tournament's history
The 2019 Indian Premier League (IPL) is easily one of the closely fought editions of the tournament which ended with a thriller of a final won by Mumbai Indians. The final four were not confirmed until the last league game while none of the eight teams won at least one game against the remaining seven franchises. Chasing team got over the line in the final over on as many as 18 instances while the team batting first won by less than ten runs on four occasions in this edition.
In the opening game of the season, the Royal Challengers Bangalore were bowled out for only 70 runs against the Chennai Super Kings. The RCB opener Parthiv Patel nearly carried his bat as he scored 29 off 35 balls and was dismissed in the 18th over as the 10th wicket. In this process, Parthiv became the first player to bat with remaining ten batsmen in an IPL inning.
Sunrisers Hyderabad became the first team to make it to the playoffs despite winning only six games. All the teams that qualified for the second round in the first 11 editions of the IPL won at least seven matches. The Royal Challengers, who finished at the bottom, had 11 points. The 11 points are the highest for any team in the IPL that ended up with a wooden spoon.
The Delhi Capitals bundled out the Sunrisers for just 116 while defending their total of 155/7. The chief destroyers for Delhi with the ball were Kagiso Rabada (4/22), Keemo Paul (3/17) and Chris Morris (3/22) who shared ten wickets between them. Thus, they registered the first instance of all ten wickets bagged by the foreigners in an IPL inning. In fact, this was also only the 2nd instance of all ten wickets in an IPL inning going to the pacers. The first one was by KKR in the 2017 IPL game when they bowled out RCB to 49; the lowest total in this history of the IPL.
In the 6-over game against the Rajasthan Royals, the RCB skipper Virat Kohli struck sixes on the first two balls of the game off Varun Aaron‘s bowling. Thus, Kohli recorded the first ever instance of hitting sixes on the first two legitimate deliveries in an IPL inning.
A hat-trick of century standsDavid Warner and Jonny Bairstow lit up the IPL 2019 by sharing century opening partnerships in each of the first three matches for the Sunrisers Hyderabad. The Australia-England duo thus became the first in the IPL to share a hat-trick of century stands.
Truly the ‘Indian’ Premier League
As many as 13 instances of a team fielding with only three foreigners have been recorded in this edition of the IPL. In the previous 11 editions, all the teams collectively recorded only 15 such instances including six of those in 2017 itself. The 2019 season also witnessed two of the three IPL matches where both the teams did not utilize the maximum limit of overseas players.