The Rashid Effect was always on show, the 'biggest achievement' just took its time coming

It is one of the anomalies of T20 cricket that until Sunday, Rashid Khan, one of the handful of all-time greats of the format, had not been part of a winning XI in a big T20 tournament final.

He had won the Desert Challenge in the UAE and the Shpageeza Cricket League at home in 2017, but these are not tournaments where you encounter the best players of the world.

There is no obvious correlation: it is not like teams exhaust their purse on him [although they should] and end up with lesser teams, nor does he suffer from stage fright on the big night. For some reason, it hadn't happened.

It's one of those things, which he corrected with the IPL 2022 final.

Rashid was glad he finally ticked it off. "It's the biggest achievement of your career as a player to be part of a winning IPL team," Rashid told Star Sports after the match. "For this competition, you have to be well prepared and be prepared for all areas. Then only you will be able to win a big competition like this.

"A win here needs a lot of hard work, a lot of practice, a lot of good energy, and I think we as a team did really well. It is one of the biggest achievements in my cricket career."

Now to an anomaly that can be explained unlike this one. Rashid has been playing all around the world in all T20 tournaments but has never ended as the clear highest wicket-taker. Twice he has been the joint-highest wicket-taker, but usually you don't see him among the top wicket-takers.

It was the reason one of the Sunrisers Hyderabad coaches, Brian Lara, gave for not retaining him prior to the latest season. "I have a great respect for Rashid Khan but I believe we have the right combination," Lara told Star Sports. "Rashid Khan was someone who opposition teams decided to defend against, he was not much of a wicket-taker."

That's because teams prefer to sit in when Rashid bowls. And Rashid, like someone who truly gets T20, doesn't go chasing individual glory. He keeps creating wickets for his team-mates.

Traditional stats will put Rashid at No. 8 this year, a good eight wickets behind the leader, but his economy rate of 6.6 gets even better on ESPNcricinfo's Smart Stats. Only two bowlers - Sunil Narine and Mohsin Khan - have a better Smart Economy than Rashid this IPL. Narine, like Rashid, is another true T20 great who doesn't go chasing wickets because he knows his bowling creates wickets for others. On total bowling impact in our Smart Stats, Rashid sits at No. 5.

There is no bigger example of his impact than the two playoffs Gujarat Titans played against Rajasthan Royals where the opposition basically wrote off his four overs. In Qualifier 1, it was quite a sight to see the best batter of the tournament, with only three wickets down and time running out, choosing to just play out the 16th over, bowled by Rashid. Jos Buttler knew he just could not take any risks.

In eight overs in the two playoff matches, Rashid conceded only one boundary, that too thanks to a misfield. More incredibly, there were zero boundary attempts against him. Twenty per cent of an innings is too long a cease fire, but Rashid left Royals no choice.

For, like Narine, Rashid has all the ingredients. There is hardly a batter who can claim to pick Rashid because he can bowl legbreaks with the wrong'un release. And if you are not picking a bowler out of the hand, you need one of the two: either a half-volley or the ability to step out. Just like Narine, Rashid's mastery of length is immaculate, and his pace makes sure you can't step out to him. You can still guess and try to go after him, but that will give him wickets. And Royals - with R Ashwin batting at No. 7 and at times higher - were in no position to give him wickets. It was in his four overs that Royals lost both the matches.

Rashid did have to make a mid-season adjustment, though, after the left-handed opener from Sunrisers, Abhishek Sharma, got stuck into him. On that day, Rashid made up for it with a match-winning 31 of 11 with the bat, but for the rest of the season, he made sure nobody got the better of his bowling.

"That was something I had in mind that I should bring my length back a little bit," Rashid told Star Sports during the final. "That is because of the wickets in Mumbai and here as well. Because of the red soil, I had to adjust myself because the length I bowl elsewhere was not helping because the ball was coming on nicely and there wasn't enough turn for me in the wickets. So, I pulled it back a little bit, and that's why I got better economy, and that helped the team in the middle."

It's not like that adjustment would have impressed Sunrisers much because he didn't suddenly become a "wicket-taker". But Sunrisers' loss was always going to be another team's gain. There was a big tussle for Rashid at the 2022 auction, to the extent that Titans' coach Ashish Nehra arrived at a unique arrangement to pay both his first draft picks, Hardik Pandya and Rashid, equally. Now Rashid has an IPL title, and the world seems a fairer place.