IPL 2021, Overseas Replacement Player Analysis

Good or Bad?

IPL Day is almost upon us - just two days remain before the world’s premier T20 tournament gets re-started. Pedants among the readers might be saying ‘what about the T20 World Cup?’ by this point, but my thoughts are clear - the IPL is the best. My models prove as much, too, with many T20 international teams being extremely sub-standard compared to much of the franchise landscape according to my conclusions from historical data.

I digress, anyway. The entire point of this latest Substack article is to talk about the IPL replacement players, not whether Sri Lanka would come bottom of the T20 Blast. With the Covid situation changing plenty, and bubble fatigue (which I have huge sympathy for, for both players and staff) causing issues, plus the usual array of injuries, IPL teams have been shopping. No auction this time, just negotiated contracts for players who were originally unsold in the first auction and now have teams falling over themselves trying to purchase them. However, I want to make something abundantly clear…

The Covid situation makes things tough for teams, that much can be certain. Logistics are challenging on occasion. Teams have to deal with national boards hastily arranging series which could never have been predicted in advance. Some players may not want to travel or play with a World Cup so close. Teams are probably dealing in an imperfect world, but good recruitment is still abundantly possible. There are very good players unsold, better than some who were picked up as replacements (or even some in the original auction) who would love to play in this tournament, I can tell you that right now. It’s easy to travel from the UK to the UAE, for example, right now - anyone can just catch any flight they want.

Rather like some businesses in the current world appear to be using Covid as an convenient excuse for inefficiency or laziness, IPL teams should not get away with poor recruitment at the current time - and we also know that there was plenty of poor recruitment performed by cricket teams before Covid even existed!

With that preamble out of the way, let’s go through the list of IPL replacement players and who they are replacing…

Chennai Super Kings/Mumbai Indians: No replacement players

Delhi Capitals: Ben Dwarshuis replaces Chris Woakes.

Kolkata Knight Riders: Tim Southee replaces Pat Cummins

Punjab Kings: Adil Rashid, Nathan Ellis and Aiden Markram replace Jhye Richardson, Riley Meredith and Dawid Malan

Rajasthan Royals: Glenn Phillips, Tabraiz Shamsi and Evin Lewis replace Jofra Archer, Andrew Tye and Jos Buttler

Royal Challengers Bangalore: George Garton, Wanindu Hasaranga, Dushmantha Chameera and Tim David replace Kane Richardson, Adam Zampa, Daniel Sams and Finn Allen

Sunrisers Hyderabad: Sherfane Rutherford replaces Jonny Bairstow

Ben Dwarshuis: The recruitment of Dwarshuis strikes me as an odd choice, for numerous reasons. Firstly, it still seems that the ‘Big Bash Tax’ in the IPL is alive and kicking (also see Nathan Ellis) with teams still seeming to be keen on taking bowlers from Australia despite there being historical evidence to suggest that bowlers from the Big Bash struggle to replicate their figures, or close to their figures elsewhere.

In Dwarshuis’ last two tournaments - the 2020/21 Big Bash and the recent T20 Blast in England, he’s gone for almost nine an over, a figure not particularly creating much confidence that he’d go for much under ten an over in the higher standard IPL. From a replacement perspective, it would seem logical that Dwarshuis would take Woakes’ Powerplay overs, and the Australian has done well in that phase, costing just 7.06 runs per over from 2019 onwards - very impressive numbers indeed - but perhaps also like Woakes, death numbers aren’t as inspiring. Dwarshuis has 9.6 economy in that phase during that time period, which in a fairly low-scoring home league isn’t particularly great. Perhaps Delhi also wanted him for being a left-armer, and if so they’ve hit the double tick for IPL recruitment taxes - Big Bash and left-armer.

Finally, his batting is, in my view, not as useful as Woakes in this format. He’s hit just 11.80% boundaries from 2019 onwards, which isn’t great at all as a lower-order player looking to try and hit at the death. Delhi would want him to up this figure to 16% (at a bare minimum) to provide any value with the bat, and I don’t really see him as anything higher than a number nine on this evidence.

Tim Southee: Another replacement player that I’m somewhat uninspired by. Pat Cummins, who Southee is replacing, is one of the premier bowlers in world cricket and has also carved a niche for himself with rapidly improving hitting (he hit as many sixes as Eoin Morgan and Dinesh Karthik combined in the current IPL season before the tournament paused) and it’s also worth re-iterating that KKR paid 15.5 Crore (around £1.5m) for the Australian. Southee isn’t worth remotely close to this eye-watering amount and the 32 year old hasn’t even played that much non-international T20 in recent years.

Southee has played far more T20 international cricket than domestic, and a glance at his 2019+ data would suggest to the untrained eye that he’s actually not too bad - an economy rate of 8.07, balls per wicket figure of just under 18 and a boundary conceded percentage of 17.13% are decent for sure.

However, if we filter Southee’s 2019+ data to show performances against England, Australia, West Indies and India - arguably the four best T20 international teams currently - the numbers markedly change to an economy rate of 8.96, and balls per wicket of 23.68. Essentially, as opposition quality has risen, so have Southee’s numbers, and not in a good way. We will also, obviously, see higher quality opposition in the IPL, so I’m sceptical about Southee’s chances of being a better than average bowler in the remainder of this year’s tournament.

Adil Rashid: I can remember getting into a rather heated Twitter debate with several ex-England players who now work in the media when Rashid wasn’t signed in the auction before this season’s tournament started. Debate was probably a rather kind word though, because their position was about as flexible as concrete.

Their point was that Rashid was one of the best leg spinners in the world, and so therefore clearly deserved an IPL contract, which I think is a pretty first-level point of view. My argument was that supply and demand dynamics should dictate optimal recruitment strategy in drafts and auctions, so therefore it wasn’t unreasonable for IPL teams, who already had their spin bases largely covered and were also often happy to back domestic spinners over overseas spinners due to not wishing to use an overseas spot on a spinner, to take this approach.

Anyway, we all know Rashid is very good but that wasn’t the point really. He’s joined Punjab Kings and it will be interesting to see his level of game time considering they also have the very promising Ravi Bishnoi as a direct positional rival as a domestic player.

Nathan Ellis: We go back to the Big Bash tax again! I actually don’t mind the signing of Ellis but he’s rather unexposed at this point in time from an expectation perspective, having only played a couple of Big Bash seasons. He’s been more economical than Dwarshuis (low 8s combined for the seasons) and what I do like about him is that he has reasonable numbers despite bowling an extremely high percentage of his overs at the death.

In fact, Ellis has bowled about 44% of his Big Bash overs at the death, which makes him one of the highest-percentage bowlers of death overs around. That domestic death economy is decent, at a shade below 8.80, and he’s conceded less than a boundary per over at the death too - all very promising.

I’m expecting the increase in standard in the IPL to do some damage to those numbers but some upside looks to be there. Given the absence of both Jhye Richardson and Riley Meredith, and the traditional bowling woes of PBKS, Ellis has a decent chance of playing and I’m looking forward to seeing how he gets on. Of course, what we will never know is whether PBKS went down the same thought process with their recruitment, or whether they saw him take a hat-trick against Bangladesh’s tail on his T20 debut for Australia and thought ‘that’s our man’.

Aiden Markram: Let’s go back to the start. PBKS’ recruitment of Dawid Malan was strange to start with. The ‘world number one’ T20 international batter was never likely to be a good fit for them for several reasons. Firstly, they already had captain KL Rahul playing his anchor role, and secondly, their bowling isn’t good enough to warrant playing one anchor, let alone two. Teams can only play anchors if their bowling is average at worst, and two anchors only if their bowling is world class - otherwise they’ll find it very difficult indeed to win the boundary percentage count on a regular basis.

Rather like how he is with England (which his national team still are reticent to acknowledge), Malan is a good player playing for the wrong team. If you put him in the better bowling teams (think Australia maybe, or India) he could do pretty well. If you put him in a mediocre bowling team, you have made a mistake.

With the withdrawal of Malan with bubble fatigue, PBKS had an open goal to rectify their previous mistake. The opportunities were plentiful to find an attacking batter to complement KL Rahul’s stability. Alex Hales, Josh Inglis and Rahmanullah Gurbaz, to name but three, were options and there were plenty more besides.

Instead, they ended up with Markram who isn’t a disaster but, according to my data, isn’t as good as some they could have chosen. The South African strikes at 147 in T20 internationals from 2019 onwards and that looks good until you realise that over half of the series were against either Ireland or Sri Lanka. He’s also barely played domestic T20 in that time period as well. This is a big upgrade in opposition standard from domestic cricket in South Africa and T20 internationals against fairly mediocre opposition and I’d be pretty surprised if he struck at 130+ for PBKS unless they get some gifts at Sharjah.

Glenn Phillips, Evin Lewis and Tabraiz Shamsi: I want to evaluate Rajasthan Royals’ replacements all in one go, because they aren’t really like for like at all with what they had (Jofra Archer, AJ Tye, Jos Buttler). They’ve lost one of the world’s premier pace bowlers in Archer and already had bad bowling numbers in the last completed season, so his continued absence is likely to be a real blow. They will be hoping that Mustafizur continues his renaissance but apart from the man from Bangladesh, and to some extent Chris Morris, their pace bowling group does little to strike fear into the hearts of opposition batters.

Bowling-wise, I can understand why they’ve gone for Shamsi as an extra spin option. After a couple of excellent years, Shreyas Gopal has struggled more of late and they probably wanted an overseas spin option to cover any struggles from their local spinners. Shamsi ranked number one in the T20 international rankings, and I’d certainly debate that - but he’s decent enough.

Royals have lost both Jos Buttler and Ben Stokes from their original squad, plus Archer, so I’m surprised they went for two out and out batters as replacements. Some may say that Oshane Thomas covers that (he was Stokes original replacement) but I’m unsure of his quality at this level - he went at 11+ in the 2019 and 2020 CPL before an improvement this year in what was a very bowler-friendly tournament.

They’ve chosen to take two batters in Phillips and Lewis. I like the Lewis pick-up - they’ve found another left-hander to bat at the top - with all their other non-opener LHB likely to come in at 6+ and it’s worth pointing out that Lewis has scored more 6s than 4s in domestic T20 from 2019 onwards, which puts him in a very rare bracket of ultra-attacking players. He comes off an incredible recent CPL and has long-term pedigree - this isn’t recency bias at play - he hit a simply stunning 14.56% of balls faced for six in the 2021 CPL, a higher percentage than many batters hit for four and six combined. However, Royals must not pair him with fellow LHB Yashasvi Jaiswal at the top of the order, given Lewis’ strike rate issues against off-spin bowling - it would be an obvious match-up move for opposition teams to exploit this if it happens.

In my view, Phillips is decent but there were potentially better options. Many people rate him pretty highly and upside is certainly there but he hits at less than 19% boundaries in all domestic/franchise T20 from 2019 onwards, and when that includes 3 seasons of the Super Smash too, it’s not particularly top-level. However, there’s not any glaring match-up weaknesses for the New Zealander, so that’s a positive.

George Garton: I really like the recruitment of Garton by RCB. He’s evidently shown he’s on a nice upward ability curve in English domestic cricket, and is a potential three in one player, with bowling his main suit backed up by being a gun fielder and an improving batter. Essentially he’s replacing the left-arm option of Daniel Sams and bowling-wise, I think he’s a solid upgrade over the Australian, although Sams is arguably a better hitter.

Despite playing in what are generally batter-friendly conditions, across the Blast/Hundred, Garton has excellent numbers in both the Powerplay and death phases, although due to Sussex/Southern Brave’s abundance of riches in the death overs, hasn’t bowled a ton in that phase. But he has all the potential to be a 2/2 Powerplay/death bowler - a valuable asset in short-format cricket. This second half of the IPL gives RCB a great chance to assess Garton as a potential long-term option for them, and I think it’s pretty smart recruitment.

Wanindu Hasaranga: Speaking of smart recruitment, RCB have done it again with Hasaranga, who has been on my radar for several years. A top-level leg spinner who can bat (although he only very rarely hits sixes) is a real rare resource in T20 cricket, and he’s backed up a stunning Lanka Premier League series with quality numbers at international level - economy just over 6.5 runs per over, and around 14 balls per wicket. He’s also done it against the better international teams, which is a clear point in his favour. Hasaranga will replace Adam Zampa, and I can’t wait to see how he performs at this higher level.

Dushmantha Chameera: RCB have also roped in fellow Sri Lankan Chameera to their squad, with the pacer arguably having more to prove than his countryman, Hasaranga. I haven’t seen much of Chameera but until recently his numbers were pretty mediocre - he got smashed around in the LPL but has done well for Sri Lanka against England and India. I’m sceptical of his potential at a higher level given he is 29 years of age but I wouldn’t completely write him off - there appears to be some upside there but it looks a bit of a gamble to me.

Tim David: The Singaporean replaces Finn Allen, who is unavailable for RCB. Having played for Birmingham Phoenix this summer in The Hundred, you don’t need to convince me of Finn’s talents, although he didn’t feature for RCB in the first half of the tournament - a domestic opening pairing of Paddikal and Kohli were preferred, and I think that’s the best usage of the current version of Kohli.

The thing is, when you replace a player like Finn Allen, essentially you need to replace his boundary production. I’ve spoken on numerous occasions about how important winning the boundary percentage count is in T20 cricket, and losing Allen means you need to find someone who is an equivalent intent machine to the New Zealander.

Although he bats lower down the order, RCB have found that in Tim David. I wrote in my previous Substack article that he just about qualifies still as a ‘hipster’s choice’ for T20 recruitment but it is clear that his talents are becoming more renowned by teams around the world. He hit more sixes than fours in the recent CPL and his 20% boundaries in what was a pretty low-scoring competition was excellent. He also impressed in the recent PSL - plus smashing it in the 50 over domestic competition in England this summer which led to a brief Hundred deal as a replacement player. David is clearly a player who is capable of teeing off from ball one and has the intent and quality to do so, and I’m very excited to see him in the upcoming IPL if he gets a chance. He’s on a massive upward curve and is another smart piece of business by RCB.

Sherfane Rutherford: Bottom-placed Sunrisers Hyderabad probably wished that a few of their current players were unavailable for the restart of the IPL, but instead they’ve been forced to lose arguably their best batter, Jonny Bairstow, instead.

SRH have chosen to replace Bairstow’s top of the order presence with lower-order hitter Rutherford, which means that almost 37 year old Wriddhiman Saha will need to play as a keeper (unless they pick back-up Shreevats Goswami) and it will be interesting to see how the West Indian fares after last featuring at this level at Delhi Capitals in 2019.

Rutherford has struggled for consistency in recent years, with a strong recent PSL bookended by several mediocre CPL campaigns where he struggled for boundary production - not ideal at all for a lower order hitter. He does, however, have a clear six-hitting dynamic and SRH really needed someone to pair up with the ultra-promising Abdul Samad to add finishing power, so let’s see whether Rutherford can enhance his reputation over the next month or so.