RCB have the (Hazle)wood on their opponents now

Being at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium is an experience. When things are going the home side Royal Challengers Bengaluru's (RCB) way, one needs to strain his ear to listen to the person next to him inside a soundproof room. When it's not, the silence can get disconcerting.

On Thursday, at the end of the 18th over, the Chinnaswamy Stadium got really quiet. The 30,000-strong crowd had just witnessed their star bowler Bhuvneshwar Kumar being thrashed for 22 runs by Rajasthan Royals' (RR) Dhruv Jurel and Shubham Dubey. The RCB chants weren't ringing around the ground anymore, there were no flags waving. With 18 needed off 12 balls, this was now RR's game to lose. Were RCB about to go down at home for a fourth straight time? Surely nine an over at the Chinnaswamy is a cakewalk.

Enter Josh Hazlewood. A solitary run off the 19th over, two wickets, and RR did not know what hit them. It was a classic case of sticking to the plan: hard lengths mixed with the occasional yorker and change of pace. And just like that, Hazlegod (that's what the RCB faithful call him) had flipped the narrative again, and the crowd found its voice… big time.

Hazlewood has always been a frugal powerplay bowler, and it's no different in the IPL. His high release points, because of which he generates the extra bounce, coupled with the subtle movement off the deck have often been a nightmare for batters. In IPL 2025, he has also been a death-bowling sensation.

Entering the tournament, Hazlewood had bowled 141 balls in the death since the first time he played in the league in 2020. Off those, he picked up 13 wickets at an economy of 10.00. This season, he's already bowled 59 balls in the death and picked up six wickets. Only Matheesha Pathirana (seven) has more wickets than him, while his economy of 8.23 is the third-best for any bowler with a minimum of five overs in the death.

What's crucial is that Hazlewood seems to have gotten a hang of the Chinnaswamy surface. He had a tough beginning here, going for a combined 83 runs in 6.5 overs in the first two games against Gujarat Titans and Delhi Capitals. But the rain-shortened game against Punjab Kings, where he almost broke open the game, helped him find a template.

Against RR, 17 of the 24 deliveries that he bowled were short of a good length, which fetched him wickets of Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shimron Hetmyer and Jofra Archer. It wasn't the easiest of starts for him here as well, with Jaiswal laying into him (26 off 11 balls), but Hazlewood stuck to that hard-length plan and hit the jackpot.

"It's just sticking to your strengths," Hazlewood said after his four-wicket burst gave RCB their first win at home. "The bounce here has been quite steep throughout the whole tournament so far and that hard length was still hard to hit, so I was just about mixing it up with, you know, the odd yorker, the odd bouncer, change of pace, so the normal stuff, but it's just the order in which you apply those balls.

"I think for that six to eight metres [length], the strike rate was about 100. If you can hang around there more often than not, bring the batsman forward, without bowling the half-volley, I think that's the way forward for us."

But what about the pressure when he is bowling to two set batters with the required rate only at nine an over? "I think it almost takes the pressure off to a degree," Hazlewood said. "From 18 in the last two overs, it is very much in the batters' favour and they should win the game from there. I think that almost relieves you a little bit.

"[If] you have 25 or 27 to play with, then the pressure is on the bowling team. I felt that I could [be] nice and relaxed, stick to my strengths on this wicket. It was a hard ball to hit that back of a length and then mix it up with the odd yorker. So [I was] happy to execute that and sort of get monkey off the back of that first win at home."

While Hazlewood's one-run 19th over will remain the talking point, his 17th over was equally important. With RR needing 46 off the last four overs, with six wickets in hand, he got the key wicket of Hetmyer and conceded just six. Those two overs, which went for just seven, softened the impact Bhuvneshwar's 22-run over created.

"I think both those overs showed the class of the guy," RCB head coach Andy Flower said after the game. "He's a class operator and he's a world-class bowler. He is great under pressure in any format of the game, he thinks clearly and he's got great skill. I know he's known for his heavy length bowling but he's got some great all-round skills.

"He mixes in those yorkers, wide yorkers, slower balls and he seems to know what type of ball to bowl at the right time. So it's great having a guy like him in our side, in our squad and part of a very strong three-pronged attack."

Minutes after the dust had settled on the contest, and the players were congratulating each other, the cameras panned to Virat Kohli. There was a sheepish smile on his face as he jogged towards Hazlewood with childlike enthusiasm and then picked him up with the bowler breaking into a wide grin.

Out of the 16 wickets Hazlewood has picked this season, 13 have come in the second innings with RCB defending a score. Not all these wickets have come in a winning cause, but in Hazlewood, RCB know they have a rare bowler who can be destructive in the powerplay and the death. Can he be the ticket to their maiden IPL trophy?