Most wickets in an IPL tournament is not just a battle for the purple cap that stands a bowler apart from rest of the players but it's more important because whoever leads following table has helped his team in winning matches. In first year, in 2008, Sohail Tanvir of Rajasthan Royals finished with 22 wickets and his team won the tournament. Second year, 2009, RP Singh got 23 wickets and Deccan Chargers won that Indian permier league tournament. Year 2010 was little different when Pragyan Ojha finished with leading wicket taker but Chennai Super Kings won thanks to their batting supermacy..Now, the question is which bowler in IPL 2011 will take the most wickets in this two month long series?
Lasith Malinga finished with most wickets in IPL and already broke the record of most wickets in an IPL season as well as now has the second slot in list of most wickets in IPL overall. Then, there's broad day-light before others top performers likes Doug Bollinger, Sreenath Aravind, Rahul Sharma, Munaf Patel, Dale Steyn, Yusuf Pathan and others make an entry. Following list is limited to bowlers with at least a dozen wickets in IPL 4..
| Leading wicket takers in IPL 2011 so far. | ||||||||
| Bowler (Team) | Wkts | T20s | Overs | Mdns | Runs | Best | Econ | 4w/5w |
| Lasith Malinga (Mumbai) | 28 | 16 | 63.0 | 2 | 375 | 5/13 | 5.95 | 0/1 |
| Munaf Patel (Mumbai) | 22 | 15 | 54.2 | 1 | 358 | 5/21 | 6.58 | 0/1 |
| Sreenath Aravind (Bangalore) | 21 | 13 | 46.0 | 0 | 368 | 4/14 | 8.00 | 1/0 |
| R Ashwin (Chennai) | 20 | 16 | 63.0 | 1 | 388 | 3/16 | 6.15 | 0/0 |
| Amit Mishra (Deccan) | 19 | 14 | 53.2 | 2 | 358 | 4/9 | 6.71 | 0/0 |
| Doug Bollinger (Chennai) | 17 | 13 | 47.0 | 1 | 329 | 3/21 | 7.00 | 0/0 |
| Rahul Sharma (Pune) | 16 | 14 | 50.0 | 1 | 273 | 3/13 | 5.46 | 0/0 |
| Iqbal Abdulla (Kolkata) | 16 | 15 | 50.0 | 0 | 305 | 3/24 | 6.10 | 0/0 |
| Piyush Chawla (Punjab) | 16 | 12 | 41.2 | 0 | 336 | 4/17 | 8.12 | 1/0 |
| Ryan Harris (Punjab) | 16 | 13 | 47.0 | 1 | 382 | 3/28 | 8.12 | 0/0 |
| Albie Morkel (Chennai) | 15 | 15 | 45.0 | 1 | 382 | 3/29 | 8.48 | 0/0 |
| Dale Steyn (Deccan) | 14 | 12 | 45.3 | 1 | 299 | 3/16 | 6.57 | 0/0 |
| Harbhajan Singh (Mumbai) | 14 | 14 | 49.0 | 1 | 330 | 5/18 | 6.73 | 0/1 |
| Zaheer Khan (Bangalore) | 14 | 15 | 59.0 | 1 | 455 | 3/32 | 7.71 | 0/0 |
| Yusuf Pathan (Kolkata) | 13 | 15 | 39.0 | 1 | 238 | 3/20 | 6.10 | 0/0 |
| Shane Warne (Rajasthan) | 13 | 13 | 47.0 | 0 | 297 | 3/16 | 6.31 | 0/0 |
| Morne Morkel (Delhi) | 13 | 11 | 43.0 | 0 | 325 | 3/18 | 7.55 | 0/0 |
| Rudra Pratap Singh (Kochi) | 13 | 14 | 50.0 | 0 | 345 | 4/25 | 6.90 | 1/0 |
| Daniel Vettori (Bangalore) | 12 | 13 | 51.4 | 0 | 311 | 3/19 | 6.01 | 0/0 |
| R Vinay Kumar (Kochi) | 12 | 12 | 47.4 | 0 | 277 | 3/19 | 5.81 | 0/0 |
| Shakib Al Hasan (Kolkata) | 11 | 7 | 25.3 | 0 | 175 | 3/28 | 6.86 | 0/0 |
