Last ball wins in T20/IPL matches
Continuing from his previous column, our expert trains his eye on last-ball victories yet again, but this time in Twenty20 and IPL games.
This follows my last article on ODI matches in which the result hung in balance until the last ball.
As already explained, only matches won by teams batting first have been considered. It is not possible to evaluate the actual situation when a team wins by x runs since we do not have information on how many runs were scored off the last ball. It could be 6 or a wicket could have been captured. On the other hand, a chasing win is clearer. Runs were needed, and scored off the last ball.
The only addition in this T20/IPL analysis is that the tied matches have been included since these were unresolved at the end of the 119th ball and there is an eliminator available to decide a winner.
First the T20 matches which hung in balance until the last ball:
| Id | Year | FBt | Score | SBt | Score | Result |
| 173 | 2010 | Ind | 163/ 5 | Slk | 167/5 | Sri Lanka won by 5 wickets |
| 90 | 2009 | Eng | 162/ 5 | Hol | 163/6 | Netherlands won by 4 wickets |
| 78 | 2008 | Nzl | 155/ 7 | Win | 155/8 | Match tied. West Indies won |
| 85 | 2009 | Ind | 149/ 6 | Nzl | 150/5 | New Zealand won by 5 wickets |
| 29 | 2007 | Ind | 141/ 9 | Pak | 141/7 | Match tied. India won |
| 71 | 2008 | Can | 135/ 7 | Zim | 135/9 | Match tied. Zimbabwe won |
| 5 | 2006 | Win | 126/ 7 | Nzl | 126/8 | Match tied. New Zealand won |
India have lost two such matches. New Zealand won two such cliff-hangers, including defence of a low total of 126 runs.
Now the IPL/CL matches which were not finished until the last ball.
| Id | Year | FBt | Score | SBt | Score | Result |
| 110 | 2009 | CSK | 188/3 | KKR | 189/ 3 | Kol Knight Riders won by 7 wkts |
| 28 | 2008 | DD | 187/5 | CSK | 188/ 6 | Chenn Super Kings won by 4 wkts |
| 59 | 2008 | CSK | 163/5 | RR | 164/ 7 | Rajasthan Royals won by 3 wkts |
| 214 | 2010 | CSK | 162/6 | VBR | 162/10 | Tied. Victoria won eliminator |
| 107 | 2009 | KKR | 160/5 | DC | 166/ 4 | Deccan Chargers won by 6 wkts |
| 123 | 2009 | DC | 153/9 | ST | 157/ 9 | Somerset won by 1 wicket |
| 86 | 2009 | KKR | 153/3 | KXP | 154/ 4 | Kings XI Punjab won by 6 wkts |
| 53 | 2008 | MI | 145/7 | RR | 146/ 5 | Rajasthan Royals won by 5 wkts |
| 129 | 2009 | SX | 119/7 | DE | 119/ 4 | Tied. Eagles won eliminator |
20 overs were played for both first and second batting teams.
Rajasthan Royals won two last-ball wins, both in the 2008 season, and probably went a long way towards their winning IPL 1.
Surprisingly, Chennai Super Kings, arguably the strongest IPL team, have lost three such matches, including a one-over eliminator.
Sussex Eagles defended a low total of 119 and then went on to win the eliminator.
In terms of frequency of such matches, I had identified 32 such matches out of the 3000+ ODI matches. This means that such last-ball finishes occur once in 95 matches or so. Here we have 7 such finishes out of 192 T20 matches and 9 such finishes out of 224 IPL/CL matches. The frequency is around once in 25 matches.
This is because of two reasons. The reduction of overs by 60% means that the chances of such finishes are increased considerably. The other significant reason is the necessity to have a result through either a bowl-out or one-over-eliminator. It can be seen that as many as 4 T20 and 2 IPL/CL matches have been decided through this tie-breaker.
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