The grip suggested a slower ball. The loading suggested a slower ball. Nicholas Pooran, one of the most destructive left-handers in T20 cricket, read it as the slower ball. The ball arrived at 140.6 kmph. Pooran was late.
It was Wednesday night at Chinnaswamy. Hazlewood had just taken his first wicket of IPL 2026 — on his return from injury, in front of a crowd that knows him well. He had already forced Rishabh Pant off, retired hurt, after striking his right elbow with a sharp lifter. The delivery that dismissed Pooran explained everything: why he is central to RCB’s title defence — and why the IPL took so long to fully value him.
Andre Adams has a simple explanation for why Hazlewood works in T20 cricket, even when conventional wisdom said he shouldn’t.
“He’s not super fast. But he’s fast enough.”
For years, that was the issue. While Mitchell Starc and Pat Cummins drew headline contracts, Hazlewood waited. He wasn’t express pace, went the logic. Too predictable in his lengths for a format built on variation. Adams, who worked with him at New South Wales from 2018 to 2023, saw it differently. Underrated, yes — but misunderstood.
“When I was here, they talked about him being the most underrated bowler and the most accurate bowler,” he told this paper. Underrated was right. But the reasoning behind it was wrong.
Adams laid out the pace-economy argument plainly. “If you look at the super-fast bowlers, they tend to have quite high economy rates in T20 cricket. Once you get into the 140s and towards the later edge of the 140s, that’s where your economy rate goes up. An outside edge where you’ve defeated the batsman goes for four or six. If you’re a bit slower, that carries to third man and it’s a wicket.”
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Hazlewood sits in the late 130s, touching the early 140s when, as Adams puts it, “he’s really excited.” What he brings instead of raw pace is something harder to manufacture — natural bounce from a good length, the ability to move it both ways off the seam, and an armoury of variations that even the batsman at the crease struggles to read in time.
It wasn’t always this complete. At Chennai Super Kings, he was primarily a new-ball operator. It worked — eleven wickets in nine games, a crucial role in CSK’s 2021 title. But when he moved to RCB and Chinnaswamy, he had to adapt. The older ball. The death overs. New weapons required. “He really enjoys the challenge of working on something new and getting better. When you mix up a good slow ball, a good yorker, with his natural pace and length, that’s pretty challenging,” Adams told this paper.
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The Pooran wicket was not the first time the trick had worked. In September 2024, in Southampton, Hazlewood loaded up against Liam Livingstone with the back of his hand facing the batsman — the standard cue for a slower one. Then he released the quick one. A stunned Livingstone chopped it onto his stumps.
Ambati Rayudu noticed the same pattern during last year’s IPL. “He is loading up as if he is bowling a slower ball, but bowling quick short-of-length balls,” Rayudu said on air. “There were at least three or four of those balls that the batsmen were late.” Aaron Finch added: “They were trying to slog it over midwicket but it would hit the splice of the bat and drip out to cover or midwicket.”
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Then there is the wobble ball — perhaps his most undetectable weapon. Unlike Starc, whose version involves an exaggerated finger position cutting across a tilted seam, Hazlewood’s is barely visible. The index finger sits marginally outside the seam. The middle finger rests on the seam. At release, it is last to leave the ball, pushing it into wobble. He picked it up from bowling coach David Saker, uses it in Tests and T20s alike, and persuaded Starc to add it to his own repertoire.
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The numbers now reflect what the eye had been seeing for some time. In four IPL seasons, Hazlewood has taken 45 wickets in 27 games. Jasprit Bumrah has eight more, but across twelve additional matches. Hazlewood’s strike rate of 18.64 is better than Bumrah’s across this period, and better than any fast bowler with 40 or more wickets in the same span. His economy of 8.43 is third on that list, behind only Bumrah and Trent Boult.
“He has probably the hardest length of all three bowlers to hit,” Adams told this paper — all three being Hazlewood, Starc, and Cummins, the Australian pace trinity that has defined Test cricket for a decade. In T20, of the three, only Hazlewood’s economy rate suggests he was built for it.
Australia coach Andrew McDonald put it simply. “If you give a highly-skilled bowler a chance in the format, he will work it out.”
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He arrived at Chinnaswamy on Wednesday and bowled four overs for 20 runs and the wicket of Pooran. RCB’s title defence is alive. Hazlewood’s hand is steady.
He is loading up as if he is bowling a slower ball. He is not.
