Some IPL data
A view on the tournament so far...
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The IPL is getting to the business end of the group stage, and it’s shaping up to be one of the tightest qualification battles of all time. With most teams having played 11/14 matches, all 10 teams can, in theory, still qualify, although for those teams with six losses, it really is last-chance saloon with eight wins (an 8-6 record) plausibly needed to qualify. Seven wins and a positive net run rate should be the minimum qualification requirement, but that would take some luck - and in the case of RCB, PBKS, SRH and DC - a pretty sizeable turnaround for their net run rate.
First up, does the league table reflect the net boundary count for teams so far. It’s an extremely reliable metric whereby a team with +1 or better historically has an excellent chance of qualification in T20 leagues, while teams with -1 or worse is very unlikely to have a successful season.
CSK and RR lead the net boundary percentage table by some distance ahead of GT. Both CSK and GT are, being the top two teams in the points table, extremely likely to qualify. RR failing to do so (they probably need 2 wins from 3 matches to qualify) would look like being a particular outlier. It’s also worth noting that as with last season, GT’s results have significantly outperformed their net boundary percentage - so their non-boundary run production/prevention is likely off the charts. More on that later.
At the bottom, all of DC/PBKS/SRH/RCB were the troubled four teams detailed above who are in last-chance saloon probably needing to win all their remaining matches to have a decent likelihood of qualifying. So as you can see, yet again, the net boundary percentage is a very accurate predictor of success/failure for T20 teams across leagues worldwide.
The dynamics of each team’s boundary production and prevention is detailed below:-
CSK/RR are in the ideal strong hitting/strong prevention area, so again, it looks like a real outlier if RR don’t qualify. There are three ‘batting-strong’ teams - PBKS, KKR and MI - and in the case of MI this was extremely predictable before the tournament started. Having worked with PBKS previously I actually think they have a decent bowling group but I’m not convinced by their strategic decisions - bowling Harpreet Brar just one over on a slow pitch against KKR when opposition spinners had already shown a huge degree of success compared to pacers is just one example.
While injury hasn’t always made this possible, I’m on record saying several times pre-tournament that I love the option of a really bowling-strong PBKS XI (easy to construct with impact subs) with both Nathan Ellis and Kagiso Rabada joining Sam Curran, Rahul Chahar and Arshdeep Singh. In my view, the ability gap between Matt Short/Bhanuka Rajapaksa/Sikandar Raza and a domestic batter (Atharva Taide) is much smaller than the gap between either Ellis/Rabada and a domestic pace option.
Conversely, DC/LSG/GT are bowling-strong teams. The LSG dynamic isn’t the usual thing I’d expect from Andy Flower’s teams but they appear to be keen to play on bowler-friendly surfaces. DC have had hitting issues for several years now and in my opinion, this can only be solved by recruiting better.
SRH and RCB are tucked into the least ideal top-left corner. SRH have been my disappointment this season so far, with my doubts about an inexperienced coach/captain combo proving well-founded to date. RCB’s loss yesterday makes them unlikely to qualify, and having outperformed the net boundary count two years in a row to qualify previously, doing so a third time should be beyond them.
A few paragraphs ago, I mentioned about DC’s hitting issues. On a regular basis, they are towards the bottom of the six-hitting charts in seasons and this has again manifested itself:-
If a team is hitting below 5% sixes when the league average so far is 6.5%, they are opening themselves up to losing matches when they are equal or slightly winning the net boundary percentage count in matches - this is often where the 13% of net boundary percentage winners in matches lose.
DC are bottom here by some distance, with SRH hardly impressing either. Stacked with hitters and potential batting match-winners, it’s not a surprise to see KKR or MI towards the top. Ruturaj Gaikwad’s evolution into more of a six-hitter has been a real boost for CSK. DC in particular need to find players with a better 6:4 ratio with their recruitment.
Moving away from boundary-hitting, I referred earlier to GT surely having off the chart non-boundary run production, and indeed this is the case:-
In fact, they are scoring around seven additional runs per 100 balls (around 8.5 per 120 ball innings) in non-boundary runs than the average team. So, on average the opposition need to hit roughly two more boundaries per innings to be par with them. Despite a slightly below-average boundary percentage, but a good bowling attack, it starts to explain their success.
KKR’s non-boundary run production is little short of disastrous. Again, pretty predictable - a number of their batters are notorious for this. Couple DC’s six-hitting issues with below-average non-boundary run production, and you can see why they’ve had problems. Their current team combo, however, with Phil Salt as keeper instead of domestic options, looks more suited to improve their numbers. Here’s what I said about that on Twitter when Salt made his debut a couple of weeks ago - he’s now averaging 30 at a strike rate of 178 so far with a boundary percentage in the high 20s:-
This is getting pretty long now, so I’ll finish with a look at player performances. First of all, a chart looking at run production data for the 52 batters facing 100+ balls this season:-
The intersecting lines are the average player figures for this season’s tournament, and create quadrants to quantify batter run production. Given that the average figures also include batting performances from bowlers, any frontline batter being in the bottom-left quadrant is far from ideal.
Batters being in the top-left corner, particularly those who cost a lot at auction or are overseas players, is also far from ideal. These batters have to make up so much in non-boundary run production that they are facing an uphill battle on a consistent basis - and often stand accused of leaving their team-mates with too much to do. The only player I’d give a bit of a free pass to here is Hardik Pandya who has clearly taken on a specific role for his team (GT) which is rather different to his previous hitting role for MI. KL Rahul’s presence in the top-left corner (just) shows that strike rates DO matter.
It’s interesting to note that PBKS (Livingstone, Jitesh, Dhawan, Prabhsimran) have a number of above-average boundary-hitters and if they’d have been able to combine these with a bowling-strong team as stated previously, I genuinely think their position could be much improved. KKR (Roy, Gurbaz, Russell) have some very low non-boundary strike rate batters, which explains their team performance in the previous chart which looked at that. On that subject, Rohit Sharma’s non-boundary run production is about as low as I’ve ever seen from a frontline batter (even Chris Gayle had better seasons than this for that metric) and I’d be pretty concerned about age-related decline if I was MI.
Onto bowlers, I want to split the performance between spinners and pacers - it’s unfair to compare the two bowling types due to the phases in which they tend to operate. As with batters, it’s tricky to chart stuff like wicket-taking/strike rate over three-quarters of a season because the fairly small sample sizes create wild fluctuations. So for bowlers I’m looking at boundary % conceded vs dot ball %.
Spinners:-
It’s interesting to see that most of the spinners on the far left of the chart are finger spinners, whereas the right side is largely dominated by leg spinners. It’s the classic risk/reward of defense versus attack - the spinners on the right side are generally pretty high quality, and have taken wickets at a low balls per wicket figure (mostly below 20, which is good for spinners).
Pacers:-
The renaissance of Mohit Sharma and the emergence of Matheesha Pathirana should be the headlines from this chart. Both have been extremely impressive from a run prevention perspective.
Pathirana has fascinated me for a good couple of years now. I was actually part of the recruitment team that picked him up as an emerging player for the T10 in 2021 (all our emerging picks, him and Will Smeed - plus Tom Hartley as a replacement have aged pretty well so far). Unfortunately Pathirana was unable to join us for the tournament, but we would have given him his first taste of franchise cricket. Being ahead of the curve in predicting young talent is an area that I have worked intensively on and being able to find the next superstar is of huge benefit to teams.
Nicknamed ‘Junior Malinga’, the reason Pathirana fascinated me is mainly down to his unique action which has an even lower release point than his countryman. When I was working at Leicestershire, we had a lot of success with Naveen-ul-Haq (another player who was identified very early in his T20 career and is now having a superb debut IPL having recently broken into the LSG team) as a bowler with a unique action, and I definitely think that these type of bowlers have a ‘sight unseen’ benefit. Naveen has taken more T20 Blast wickets than any other bowler across the last two seasons, and has come 1st and 2nd for wicket-taking (despite playing zero knockout matches) in the tournament in 2021 and 2022, respectively.
Moving on to the dot ball geniuses, these should focus more on Powerplay bowlers (Shami is notable, plus Ishant Sharma to a lesser extent) but Siraj stands out too - he’s had an impressive tournament. Nathan Ellis’ low boundary percentage conceded again marks him out as a death bowler with extreme talent, and our pick-up of him at PBKS continues to look superb value. It blows my mind that he struggles to be a regular in the Australian T20 team.
I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I’ve enjoyed writing this, and please feel free to contact me either by the comment section below or via email.