Rasikh Salam: I realised if your yorker isn't perfect, you can't survive in the IPL

IPL 2026 was about realisations for Rasikh Salam. His first memory of playing in the tournament back in 2019 are a bit hazy – he remembers the towering personalities he walked amidst in the Mumbai Indians dressing room and being told by captain Rohit Sharma to bowl 'bindaas' after being handed the ball in the first over of his debut. It's the role he yearned for then, and even does now, but his expectations have had to align with the needs of his new franchise.

The skiddy fast bowler from Jammu & Kashmir, who always dreams of bowling with the new ball, received a different set of instructions at RCB this year. Conversations about role clarity led him to being told that his overs will be spread across the three phases. "This year they [support staff] made it clear – you might have to bowl one or two overs in the Powerplay, one in the middle overs and one or two at the death. So I prepared for a role like this before this year's IPL," Rasikh tells Cricbuzz.

The 'preparation' he talks about are the intense sessions he indulged in to achieve repeatability and consistency with his variations. With Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Josh Hazlewood shouldering most of the early Powerplay load, Rasikh knew he needed more arrows in his quiver.

"I was given a different role where I had to bowl the 4th or the 6th over. So, to do that, I can't just bowl only one type of delivery consistently. I can't just bowl length, length, length, because the IPL has flat wickets. So I realised I have to focus on variations. I have to focus on my yorkers, slower ones and slower bouncers… Even the length ball can be important, but I can't bowl length every ball. Any bowler who bowls only length balls in the 4th, 5th or 6th overs, will go for 15-20 runs."

All of this led to a lot of pre-season simulations, where he set himself up to bowl in different scenarios. This involved practicing with a new ball too, for the unlikely event of being summoned to start the bowling innings. The coaches, after all, told him to be on standby for the first over should Bhuvneshwar not be available for some reason.

"Before the season I went to Bengaluru. Twice or thrice a week I was bowling, and doing gym work on other days. My focus was on bowling two overs with the new ball because maybe there was a possibility that I would have to bowl with the new ball.

"I used to bowl one or two overs with a semi-new ball, and a couple at the death – I was preparing myself for everything. Sometimes I bowled with a single wicket to aim at, sometimes with a batter there. Along with length balls and yorkers, I had to work on variations as well. Whether that's slower bouncer, back-of-the-hand slower one… I already had those in my game, but I worked hard to perfect them because I was given a role where I needed to use more of them," Rasikh opines.

The 2024 season was his first full dig after a tumultuous period that saw a two-year ban for an age-related offence (submitting faulty birth certificate) and an injury almost immediately after his return from this hiatus in 2022. In the years away, he found support at Mumbai Indians who roped him in as a net bowler, but getting back to the top needed a consistent run in the league. KKR picked him in 2022 but he made just two appearances before an injury laid him low for another season.

[Image: Rasikh earned his stripes this season by being a brave bowler who had the skills to stand out even while not carrying the expectations of a primary wicket-taker in the team]

Delhi Capitals in 2024 offered a fresh lifeline, where he played eight matches and returned nine wickets – 6 in the middle overs and three at the death. The takeaways from that stint was for him to improve the accuracy of his yorkers. For more than two years now, Rasikh has taken special efforts to perfect a delivery that has already belonged in his armoury.

"After playing for Delhi Capitals [in 2024], I started preparing for death bowling. Before that my focus was to bowl 2-3 overs with the new ball and maybe I'll bowl one over at the death. I wasn't training too much for death overs.

"Now when you see the game is evolving so much, we have to evolve with it. So I worked a lot on bowling at the death and sharpening my yorker. I realised that if your yorker isn't perfect, you can't survive in the IPL. It becomes tough to survive in any kind of T20 cricket, if you don't have a good yorker and variations. I worked a lot on that," he offers.

All of these efforts culminated nicely in a 19-wicket season in 2026 – well spread out with 10 of those coming at the death, five in the Powerplay and four through the middle. From a third/fourth choice seamer, RCB perhaps could not have asked for more. As he cools his heels following a successful stint like this, a question on what his favourite dismissal of the season was, stumps him momentarily.

"Favourite? umm, who all did I dismiss?… Maybe, Travis Head? or Cameron Green?," he offers tentatively. Both great choices – to Head, he bowled a 134.9kmph yorker from round the wicket to floor his off-stump and to Green, a hard length ball at a similar pace to clean him up.

But a mention of Shreyas Iyer triggers a different memory. "Oh yes Shreyas Iyer, sorry. I liked these three wickets a lot. Shreyas Iyer, Travis Head and Cameron Green," he says, before going into detail about planning for the PBKS (and now India) captain. In a 3:30 PM game in Dharamsala, Rasikh bowled a delivery in the fourth over that straightened off a length at the last minute and surprised Shreyas with a bit of bounce, taking a faint outside edge to Jitesh Sharma.

"You take Shreyas bhai's wicket. We had planned to bowl hard lengths the moment he comes to bat. The plan was to hit that length. Now, he got out that day but maybe on another day he wouldn't, but it was our plan to bowl that length to him. If it was someone else bowling instead of me, he would've stuck to the same plan and bowled the same ball," he reveals.

Rasikh earned his stripes this season by being a brave bowler who had the skills to stand out even while not carrying the expectations of a primary wicket-taker in the team. He added a new dimension to an already exceptional RCB attack merely by not being just a defensive option to contain runs through the middle. As batters got past Bhuvneshwar and Hazlewood early on, they perhaps saw Rasikh as a release option. He understood that early, adapted and finished with even better returns than the Australian.

[Image: He arrived at this season having largely warmed the RCB bench in 2025, but nonetheless came with a sense of gratitude towards the franchise]

"Obviously they [batters] will look to attack me. I will have to deal with that. I will have to discuss how to do that with my bowling coach or head coach. If they charge at me, what will my plan B be? We discussed all that. But I am not a bowler who you can just charge and hit against. I have the skill to stop the batter from hitting. I always try that," he says.

Central to Rasikh's success this season and his uptake with plans was the clarity of the information exchange that took place in real time during matches. He had the luxury of looking around and finding a couple of stalwarts like Bhuvneshwar and Hazlewood filling him in on how the pitch was behaving and what might work.

"When I was bowling the 4th or 5th over, they [Bhuvneshwar and Hazlewood] used to give me ideas. You might have noticed that I bowled a lot of cross-seam and scrambled seam deliveries this year. That was because I used to get a message from them that the wicket was behaving favourably when we bowled on the seam. Whenever Bhuvi bhai or Hoff were playing, they would bowl the first couple of overs and then tell me what's working," he reveals.

Naturally, Rasikh gravitated towards them even when a match wasn't on. There was a lot of fast bowling education to take on in between matches and in practice sessions. An insight into hitting the same length consistently or disguising a knuckle ball to perfection could've been acceptable conversations, but Rasikh often chose a different direction.

"I was always hanging around Bhuvneshwar [Kumar], Hazlewood and Jacob Duffy. Almost always two of the four of us would practice together. Sometimes it'd be me and Bhuvi bhai, sometimes me and Hazlewood, sometimes me and Duffy. I used to talk to them all the time. Not necessarily about a particular delivery like the knuckle ball, but more about mindset, how to handle pressure situations. When we are playing a final or semifinal, how to deal with that pressure. I used to talk about all that with them," he says.

This line of thought came from Rasikh's constant urge to upskill the mental side of his game, and read the sport and situations better. He arrived at this season having largely warmed the RCB bench in 2025, but nonetheless came with a sense of gratitude towards the franchise.

"I didn't play (much last season) and still they didn't release me. So I had it in my mind that this year I have to give them back something. I wanted to give something back to them for showing the trust in me. I wanted to build on that trust. I had a desire in me that I should do something for the team," he says.

With his wickets tally, and the bowling smarts across phases, RCB can feel vindicated – not just for beating competition to his signature before the 2025 season for 6 crore, but also holding on and trusting him a year later in what turned out to be an emphatic title defence. As for him, there are unfortunately no guarantees in a world as cruel as the IPL. But all of his skills that were on full display this season should count for something.

This is the first of many features in the Cricbuzz series – IPL Off-Season – where we will bring you stories from the T20 tournament all through the year.