The story so far

This is a summary of the 33 matches played until last night in the 2012 Indian T20 League.

We have reached approximately halfway through the league stage and this article looks at the obvious and not-so-obvious measures of the tournament so far and compares them to the previous four editions, especially the fourth one last year.

First, the summary table. The brief comments are given later.



The discernible changes are summarized below.

1. In general, the chasing team has a better chance of winning in T20 matches. Here also that is the trend. Only in the third edition was this trend reversed. 19 of 32 matches have been won by the chasing teams this year.

2. The average first innings score has improved slightly from 152 to 155. However, the average winning first innings score has remained at 172. No great changes in these.
 
3. The average win-margin in runs has dropped from 34.0 to 31.2 indicating close matches. This is further strengthened when we look at the chasing wins. The average wicket margin has dropped to 6.3 from 6.9. But more obviously, the average balls left is only 9.6, as compared to well over 15 for the previous four editions of the league.

4. The scoring rate has remained rock-steady at 7.79, almost the same as the last year. However, the Runs Per Wicket value has dropped by 1. The bowler strike rate has also dropped by 1 balls/wicket. This shows a welcome trend towards the bowler.

5. There is a distinct drop in the extras per match from 16.8 to 15.1. The no balls per match has had a huge drop, from 1.18 to 0.81. For the first time, it has gone below one per match. The free-hit rule seems to be working.

6. The fours hit per match has dropped by 2. However, there is an increase in the number of sixes hit per match. This year’s edition is fast approaching the first one’s (2008) figure of more than 10 sixes per match.

7. The boundary share has dropped by 2%. This is obvious when we see that the fours have dropped by two and sixes have moved up by 1, leading to a drop of 2 runs in boundaries per match.

8. The average number of run-outs per match has moved up from 1.01 to 1.22.


NOTE: All stats mentioned here were checked until April 26, 2012