Wanindu Hasaranga produced a magical spell in IPL 2022 while playing the 54th match of the tournament against SunRisers Hyderabad at the Wankhede Stadium on Sunday. The Sri Lanka leg-spinner took five wickets while defending his team’s 192 for 2. 

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Justifying his price tag of Rs 10 crore, Hasanraga, who is playing for Royal Challengers Bangalore, reached the second position on the IPL wicket-takers chart with 21 scalps in 12 matches. 

His five for 18 against SRH denoted the 24-year-old spinner’s potential as an emerging talent. He became the second bowler to take a fifer in IPL 2022. India’s Yuzvendra Chahal was the first one to pursue the feat. But Hasaranga’s 5 for 18 is the best bowling figure of the season so far.

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Hasaranga’s five victims were Markram, Pooran, Suchith, Shashank Singh and Umran Malik.

The leggie was born on July 29, 1997, in Sri Lanka’s southwestern city of Galle. He played for Sri Lanka’s Under-19 squads in the 2014 and 2016 U-19 World Cups before graduating to senior level cricket. He gained prominence in 2017 while playing in the Sri Lanka Premier League, where he scored 586 runs at an average of 39.06 and a strike rate of 97. 

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After he impressed selectors with his performance in the ICC U-19 World Cup in 2016, he was picked for Sri Lanka’s home series against Zimbabwe. He claimed a hat-trick in his international ODI debut against Zimbabwe.

Hasaranga played his debut T20I for Sri Lanka in 2019. He excelled as a bowling all-rounder in his T20 games, appearing in 45 matches and taking 71 wickets at an economy rate of 6.08. 

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His brightest moment came in Pakistan in 2019 when he stepped up with impressive performances in the T20Is, including a Man of the Series effort in blanking the hosts and the world’s then number one side 3-0.

He also performed well against India when the visitors played Sri Lanka in July 2021, taking four wickets and leading the Sri Lankans to a 2-1 T20 series victory over India. According to ICC rankings, by the end of the series, Hasaranga had risen to the second-best T20 bowler in the world. 

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In the 2021 ICC T20 World Cup in the UAE, Hasaranga became the second player to register a hat-trick, following Curtis Campher of Ireland, who picked four in four as many deliveries against the Netherlands in the preliminary round. Hasaranga took the hat-trick against South Africa.