3 Bowlers Who Can Win Purple Cap In IPL 2025

The Purpe Cap is awarded to the leading wicket-taker in the Indian Premier League (IPL). While Pakistan's Sohail Tanvir was the first bowler to win the Purple Cap in 2008, it has been won multiple times only by three bowlers — Dwayne Bravo, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, and Harshal Patel. 

Harshal won the cap in IPL 2024 where he picked 24 wickets in 14 games. 

A total of three bowlers have taken 30+ wickets in a season: Harshal (2021), Bravo (2013) and Kagiso Rabada (2020). Among these three, Harshal and Bravo hold the joint record for the most wickets taken in a season (32). 

Let’s see the three most probable candidates who can win the Purple Cap this year. 

Varun Chakravarty 

People can’t read him to save their lives. Forget playing him to score runs. 

Varun Chakravarty 2.0 has been a revelation as a strike bowler for India, spinning the ball both ways with a lot of dip and top spin and at speeds touching 100kmph. 

He has been really hard to get away, and has already been a serial wicket-taker for India in both T20I and ODI cricket, picking wickets at really crucial points and almost on demand, just like he picked Travis Head in the semifinal of the Champions Trophy against Australia. 

With him in such good form, it would be idiotic to bet on anyone but him as the potential leading wicket-taker in the league. 

Jasprit Bumrah 

Who else but him?

Bumrah’s fitness status might still be unsure, but if he turns up on the ground, you know not only he’ll be really hard to score against, but batters will probably also end up losing their wicket by his persona. 

He was in supreme touch when he played in the Border Gavaskar Trophy. Even in the last IPL 2024, where batters were hitting everything into space, he was hardly giving any extra runs. Such was his threat that batters were just playing his overs out. 

Hence, if Bumrah turns up for MI in the first half of the competition and plays along, he’ll be a very strong contender for the Purple Cap. 

Matheesha Pathirana 

Chennai Super King’s ace fast bowler, Pathirana’s below the sea level bowling action is still a mystery in world cricket. While he hasn’t played a lot outside of the IPL, on very few occasions have batters been able to line him up. With him getting the ball to tail in late due to the natural lateral movement his action generates, he is even tougher to face. 

If Pathirana plays the full season for CSK, he’ll also bowl the crucial overs at the death, where wickets might fall in a heap to him. 

Additionally, CSK have a really strong armada of defensive spinners in Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja, and he can be the man to pull the trigger after they have done their job on the spin friendly surfaces of Chennai. At the end, it would all boil down to his fitness. He also has a slightly new action, and that would be a challenge as well for the batters.