The Vijay Hazare trophy (VHT) is the premier List A cricket tournament held in India and it is played among all the state cricket federations of the country. Find out more about the tournament’s history and winners here.
In India, the domestic circuit is always competitive with talents churning out year after year and VHT is one of the avenues where players emerge. So in this article, we will delve deep into the bowling side of things in this prestigious tournament. There is a famous saying in cricket that bowlers win tournaments and this holds true in the VHT. The team that has the leading wicket-takers has always performed well in the tourney and Vinay Kumar’s 2013/14 for Karnataka is an example.
Let us see the other bowlers who have made a cut in this list of the most wickets in a single VHT edition.
| Player | Matches | Wickets | Average | Year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vinay Kumar (Karnataka) | 8 | 28 | 12.39 | 2013/14 |
| Shahbaz Nadeem (Jharkhand) | 9 | 24 | 13.04 | 2018/19 |
| Pritam Das (Assam) | 9 | 23 | 9.04 | 2019/20 |
| Mohammed Siraj (Hyderabad) | 7 | 23 | 15.65 | 2017/18 |
| Gaurav Yadad (Madhya Pradesh) | 9 | 23 | 18.91 | 2019/20 |
| Varun Chakaravarhty (Tamil Nadu) | 9 | 22 | 16.68 | 2018/19 |
| Ajay Sarkar (Tripura) | 9 | 22 | 17.81 | 2019/20 |
| Shoaib Ahmed (Hyderabad) | 6 | 21 | 10.52 | 2008/09 |
| Jasprit Bumrah (Gujarat) | 9 | 21 | 16.09 | 2015/16 |
| Roosh Kalaria (Gujarat) | 11 | 21 | 16.52 | 2019/20 |
Key Season-wise Bowling Records in the Vijay Hazare Trophy
A total of 17 players have picked up 20 or more wickets in a single edition of the Vijay Hazare Trophy. This list includes UP’s Shivam Sharma (21 wickets), while Roshan Alam of Assam, Abhimanyu Mithun of Karnataka, Rajasthan’s Rahul Chahar, TN’s Aswin Christ and Yo Mahesh, and Punjab’s Arshdeep Singh have all picked up exactly 20 wickets each in a season of the VHT.
Arshdeep Singh was the most recent addition to this list, having scalped 20 wickets in the season that just concluded. He did so at an excellent average of 18.25, which included a five-wicket haul in just seven outings for Punjab.
Pritam Das’ bowling average of 9.04 is the lowest ever in a single edition of VHT for a bowler who has taken more than 20 wickets.
A record three five-wicket hauls were taken by Vinay Kumar, Mohammed Siraj, and Shoaib Ahmed in a single VHT edition, the most for any bowler in the tournament’s history.
Vinay Kumar, representing Karnataka, picked a whopping 28 wickets in the 2013/14 edition, a record that will be a challenging task to replicate or surpass in future editions.
Also Read: Indian Bowlers with 10 Wickets in an Innings in First-class Cricket
