On a night Sunrisers Hyderabad chased down 243 with eight balls to spare, their spin bowling coach Muttiah Muralitharan had a simple message for bowlers struggling in IPL 2026: accept it, and adapt.
“It’s very difficult for a bowler because these days every team has an opening pair that doesn’t care about in or out, they just go after the bowling,” Muralitharan said at the post-match press conference. “When we used to play, about 40 to 50 runs was a good score with one wicket losing in six overs, now the average is 70 to 80.”
The shift, he said, was as much about mindset as skill. He pointed to uncapped 23-year-old Salil Arora’s no-look six off Jasprit Bumrah as the clearest example. “Even a good bowler goes for a six, even Bumrah goes for one or two balls. When a new boy Salil hits a six, it’s unbelievable — you don’t think someone with the calibre of Bumrah comes and a young boy will hit a six because he will think about how am I going to survive Bumrah. But nowadays, no — how am I going to hit a six, that’s their approach.
Confidence levels are gone up because people have showed this is the way to play the modern game and youngsters are following that.”
For bowlers, Muralitharan offered no easy comfort. “There is not much to say. They have to practise a lot and be as accurate as possible. On your day, you might do well, even if you do well sometimes you are on the receiving end because of the wicket and the conditions.”
He was equally candid about spin bowling’s structural problem — that young spinners were no longer being taught to turn the ball. “They only try to bowl quicker, and not try to spin it. Because they are not getting that ability from a younger age, you can’t come to Under-19s and try to spin the ball because their muscle memory is already there. When you are age of 10, 11, 12, try to spin — we need to spin to beat the bat. But if you can’t spin, you see in training how batters face throwdowns and hit sixes. It looks like a throwdown bowler bowling at you.”
Asked how he or Shane Warne would have fared on today’s pitches, Muralitharan was blunt. “We would have turned the ball, but we would have not made a big dent. We could have got one or two wickets, maybe they would have scored 40 runs easily. I have played about 170 T20 games, but at that time the power hitting wasn’t as great as now. Nowadays, 50 runs is a great deal for a spinner, 40 runs means you’ve bowled well. The game has changed, we can’t compare the eras.”
On whether the IPL could or should strike a better balance between bat and ball, Muralitharan was realistic. The tournament, he said, was built for entertainment — and entertainment meant boundaries.
“I don’t think pushing the boundary ropes, when the ball is flying over the ropes everywhere, will change things. If we give fair wickets, the spectators will say it’s become boring because the T20 followers want entertainment, so they want to see the fours and sixes. That’s why the tournament is built like that. It is a big business at the moment, sponsors and everything, so you will lose the sponsors and interest of the people if you change it.”
The arms race, he said, would simply continue. “Sunrisers started this and now everyone is adapting. Bowlers will go back from this tournament and figure out how to contain. They will come up with something, and the batsmen will find something else — this is the way the modern cricketers are going.”
