Saturday 5 May 2012

Big innings in the IPL


The IPL is a fair way through now, and it's a good time to look back at some of the highlights.

The highest scorers are widely recognised, but often the highest score is not the one that makes the biggest contribution. Take for example the match between Chennai Super Kings and the Deccan Chargers at Vizag. Jadeja hit 48 off 29, a good knock, and one that really set his team up well. When he got out his team looked set for about 175-180, with 2 and a half overs left. Then up steppe Dwayne Bravo. He got to 43 off 18, and carried the team through to 193. It's not that Jadeja did not contribute to the team's total, but despite scoring 5 runs less, Bravo's made a bigger contribution.

I think Cricinfo's S Rajesh came up with the batting index before me (although I developed it independently) as a better way to measure a batsman's performance over a career/season of limited overs cricket than their average. I use that idea (runs squared divided by dismissals and deliveries faced) to look at individual innings. I don't give any bonus for not outs, because I haven't found a way that does that that I feel is fair for individual innings and because the team is effectively all out after 20 overs anyway, so a not out is not as valuable in T20's as it is in the longer forms. So I simply square the runs scored and divide it by the balls faced to find the innings index.

Here is the table of the 25 biggest contributions so far:

NameRunsBallsIndexvsLocationDate
AM Rahane 103* 60176.8v RCB Bangalore 15-4
G Gambhir 9351169.6v RCB Kolkata 28-4
KP Pietersen 103* 64165.8v Chargers Delhi 19-4
V Sehwag 87* 48157.7v Warriors Pune 24-4
AB de Villiers 59* 23151.3v Royals Jaipur 23-4
AM Rahane 9866145.5v Kings XI Jaipur 6-4
V Sehwag 7338140.2v Royals Jaipur 1-5
OA Shah 6026138.5v RCB Bangalore 15-4
OA Shah 7642137.5v Mum Indians Mumbai 11-4
CH Gayle 8148136.7v Warriors Bangalore 17-4
V Sehwag 7339136.6v Mum Indians Delhi 27-4
CH Gayle 8756135.2v Kings XI Mohali 20-4
CL White 7846132.3v Warriors Pune 26-4
CH Gayle 6835132.1v Super Kings Chennai 12-4
JP Duminy 58* 26129.4v Royals Jaipur 17-4
KC Sangakkara 8252129.3v Warriors Cuttack 1-5
JD Ryder 8658127.5v Daredevils Delhi 21-4
CH Gayle 8658127.5v KKR Kolkata 28-4
KA Pollard 6433124.1v Royals Mumbai 11-4
JEC Franklin 7951122.4v Kings XI Mumbai 22-4
CL White 7445121.7v Warriors Cuttack 1-5
CH Gayle 7142120v Kings XI Bangalore 2-5
SE Marsh 68* 40115.6v Mum Indians Mumbai 22-4
DJ Hussey 68* 40115.6v Mum Indians Mohali 25-4
MK Pandey 80* 56114.3v Daredevils Pune 24-4


Some interesting points here:

Chris Gayle makes up 20% of this list. Half of the times he has gone out to bat he has made a big contribution. He is easily the most consistent batsman in the tournament.

Sehwag makes it into the list 3 times and has 2 more innings with an index score of over 100.

There are a few teams that are good at stopping batsmen making big contributions. The best at it is KKR. Only 2 of the top 80 innings were scored against KKR. This is possibly why they have conceded a lot less runs than anyone else.

There are no sub-50 scores on the list, but number 26 on the list is a quite extraordinary innings from Albie Morkel. There are a few interesting innings that didn't make the top 25, here are some of them, including the Bravo and Jadeja innings above:

NameRunsBallsIndexvsLocationDate
JA Morkel 287112v RCB Chennai 12-4
BJ Hodge 48* 21109.7v Chargers Jaipur 17-4
DJ Bravo 43* 18102.7v Chargers Visakhapatnam 7-4
SPD Smith 34* 1388.9v Daredevils Delhi 21-4
RA Jadeja 482979.4v Chargers Visakhapatnam 7-4


I like this method of rating innings, as it gives players at the top and the bottom of the innings an equal chance of producing an innings that count.

Over the next week or so, I'm going to bring out a few different stats from the IPL - let me know if there is anything that you want to know about, and I'll see what I can do.

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