IPL 2023: Piyush Chawla, a two-time World Cup winner, enjoys his time

The Mumbai Indians camp must be breathing a sigh of relief after opening their account in IPL 2023 on Tuesday night – with the top three batters showing a calmness during their chase of 173 on a tricky Kotla wicket.

However, it was their veteran leg spinner Piyush Chawla, who put the skids on Delhi Capitals’ batting with a haul of 3-22 earlier to put the five-time champions in control.

The cherubic Chawla struck telling blows by removing the experienced Manish Pandey, Rovman Powell and Lalit Yadav and proved to be simply unplayable on a helpful surface at the Kotla. The googly, which got rid of Yadav, zipping past a defensive bat was a quite a ripper.

No wonder, the old is gold reference came back once again on social media. Rahul Sharma, a former India leggie, tweeted: "Old is gold top spell #piyushchawla brotherman 4-022-3."

Now in his mid 30s, Chawla is another perfect case of been there, done that – though he still retains the hunger to perform in pressure situations. A measure of his longevity as a player lies in the fact that he is only among the four players in active cricket from that Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s bunch which won the first edition of T20 World Cup in 2007 – the other three being 'MSD' himself, Dinesh Karthik and current Indian skipper Rohit Sharma.

He was also a part of the 2011 World Cup winning squad four years later as a back-up spinner – of which the rest of the squad has moved on to be TV pundits or into Masters cricket. The Aligarh-born wrist spinner, who had served the Kolkata Knight Riders the longest, apart from playing for Punjab Kings and Chennai Super Kings, is now with Mumbai Paltan as a leader of their spin bowling group.

A piece of statistic which often passes the radar is that along with another senior pro Amit Mishra (playing for Lucknow Supergiants), they are two of the top five wicket takers in the history of the league. While Mishra is at No.4 with 169 wickets till date, Chawla at five with 161.

What keeps Chawla ticking over the years? It’s a question of knowing one’s body and believing in "match practice," according to him. "It’s true that I don’t play much cricket round the year anymore, but I believe in match situations where I give my best rather than bowling at the nets. I play in domestic first class matches like the Vijay Hazare Trophy and the Syed Mushtaq Ali tournaments, apart from some club tournaments," he said at the post-match media conference.

Speaking about the transformation of the T20 game over the years, Chawla was happy that the role of those in his trade are getting the due importance. "See, leg spinners are your wicket-taking options because they can turn the ball both ways. If you change your wrist position slightly, it can give you a sort of variation," he said.

Replying to a question whether he fashioned himself as an impact player as per the new rule, Chawla observed on a lighter note: "Not quite, I also bat lower down the order."