If Sandeep Sharma's life could be summed up with a line, it would read - swing it like Sharma. In rapidly changing times, when T20s are forcing bowlers to look up to variations, Sandeep stuck to conventional swing bowling and fetched rich dividends in the Indian Premier League. A regular name in the Kings XI Punjab lineup from 2013 to 2017, Sandeep featured in two Under-19 World Cups for India.

The legend has it that Sandeep was a batter during his school days but took up bowling only after his coach advised him to do so. Sharma's good showing in the IPL earned him an India cap in 2014. But he was not able to impress for the team during the tour of Zimbabwe. However, having lost the India berth, Sandeep toiled hard in the domestic circuit.

IPL through the years

Sandeep Sharma, at a very ripe age, single-handedly shouldered the bowling responsibilities of Kings XI Punjab during 2013-17 seasons of the IPL. An out-and-out swing bowler, Sandeep used to rely on his conventional strengths and impressed one and all since his debut IPL game with the franchise.

On May 5 2017, at the Chinnaswamy stadium in Bengaluru, Sharma became the first bowler to dismiss Chris Gayle, Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers (the best batting trio at the time) in the same game to lead his side to a victory in a low-scoring thriller. In a heated bidding battle between KKR and KXIP ahead of the 2018 IPL, SRH waited for all the enthuse to fizzle out and hit the final nail by bagging him for a whopping three crore rupees, one of the expensive Indian buys of the season. The 2018 season saw him pick 12 wickets from 12 games at an average of 27.7 at a meager economy rate of 7.56. He had decent returns in 2019 and 2020 as well, picking up 12 and 14 wickets respectively. 2021, however, saw a major dip in his fortunes as he was picked for just 7 games and dropped after he scalped just 3 wickets. He was picked up by the Punjab franchise again in 2022 but he didn’t have much to show for in the 5 games he played. In 2023, after going unsold in the auction, Sharma was signed by the Rajasthan Royals as a replacement to the injured Prasidh Krishna.