Star Batsmen in the IPL

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

The fourth edition of the Indian Premier League will be back in 2011 with more teams and more players up for grabs in the upcoming auction.

There has been a lot of talk about player retention heading into the auction for Indian Premier League (IPL) season four. Different franchises have adopted different strategies - Mumbai and Chennai, who were the most successful teams last year, retained four players each. The other six franchises with an option to retain kept four players cumulatively.

This means that there will be plenty of top players up for grabs at the auction. In an effort to understand which batsmen franchises should target, we decided to look at past performances to identify the stars from IPL seasons 1 and 2. In a subsequent article, we will look at a more detailed analysis of IPL season 3. In the analysis below, only batsmen who have played in at least 20 matches have been considered, which means the likes of Hayden, Symonds, Taylor and McCullum have been left out. 

The bubble graph helps us identify the most consistent players across the first two seasons of the IPL. The horizontal axis represents runs per innings (RPI), while the vertical is strike rate. The size of bubble represents number of runs scored.

The more top right a batsman is on the graph above, the higher his strike rate and RPI implying the better his performance. Gilchrist and Raina turn out to be the most consistent performers, while Sehwag and Yusuf Pathan have the highest strike rates.
Meanwhile, de Villiers, Gambhir, Rohit Sharma and Dhoni also have good records.
 
Another measure of overall batting performance is the Batting Momentum, which combines runs per innings and strike rate into one single measure. The table below shows the top 15 batsmen for the first two seasons of the IPL.

Player	Runs	Runs per innings	Strike rate	Batting Momentum
Gilchrist, AC	931	31.0	144.8	44.9
Raina, SK	855	30.5	141.6	43.2
Jayasuriya, ST	735	28.3	146.7	41.5
Sehwag, V	604	24.2	168.7	40.8
Pathan, YK	678	24.2	159.2	38.5
Sangakkara, KC	652	29.6	124.9	37.0
de Villiers, AB	560	29.5	123.6	36.4
Dhoni, MS	746	27.6	130.7	36.1
Sharma, RG	766	27.4	130.3	35.6
Gambhir, G	820	28.3	124.8	35.3
Dilshan, TM	522	26.1	124.3	32.4
Smith, GC	653	28.4	113.0	32.1
Tendulkar, SR	552	27.6	115.0	31.7
Yuvraj Singh	639	22.8	133.4	30.4
Dravid, RS	642	24.7	120.7	29.8

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Based on this analysis, you would think franchises should keep an eye out for players like Yusuf Pathan, AB de Villiers, Rohit Sharma and Gautam Gambhir. Age is a factor franchises must consider, which is probably why someone like a Gilchrist was not retained. Overall, there are going to be a lot of big names to choose from and franchises need to value players wisely. As we get closer to the IPL auction, we will continue to analyze player valuations and identify the men to watch for in the next edition of the country’s premier T20 competition.

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.