Indian Premier League (IPL)

[Kumar]

Chennai pitch appears to be favoring spinners and is bigger ground, while the mumbai pitch is pretty flat and much smaller!

[PKBasu]

KKR needed 31 runs off the last 30 balls, with Shakib and DK batting, and Andre Russell, Cummins and Bhajji still to come (plus tailenders Varun and Prasidh). Yet they contrived to score just 20 runs off those last 30 balls, and lose 3 wickets along the way. Inexplicable!!

[PKBasu]

Another repeat result. May be there is something in the pitch for the left arm spinners. Today it was the turn of Shahbaz Ahmed (one of the stars of Bengal's run to the Ranji final in the last tournament 2 years ago) to shine, with 3 wickets for 7 in 2 overs. Jason Holder also showed his utility. Today it was SRH (Hyderabad) who succumbed to the pressure, after Warner had set it up perfectly for the rest of his batsmen, but Manish Pandey made a mess of things with his crawl.

[prasen9]

So, after 2 games each and an extra game, the batting is sorting out. Here is how the Indian's rank (qual: avg. 25, SR 140) ranked by SR:

Samson, Hooda, Shaw, Tripathi, Rahul, Jadeja, Pant, SA Yadav, Dhawan.

And just below 140 next is Raina.

We will see where this ends up being after the season. But, it is interesting to see that the youngsters Samson, Pant, Shaw and inexperienced SAY do well. Rahul and Dhawan are also keeping pace and Hooda and Tripathi have joined in. Raina can really hit and is a left-hander. He used to be able to bowl an over or two if required too. Let's see.

[prasen9]

After three matches per team, this is how the Indian batter's rank (qual: avg. 25, SR 140) ranked by SR:

Shaw, Mayank, Samson, Hooda, Dhawan, Tripathi, SAY, Unadkat (!), Rahul, Jadeja

[prasen9]

After four matches, this is the order:

Shaw, Samson, Hooda, Jadeja, SAY, Dhawan, Padikkal, Karthik, Mayank, Shahrukh, Rahul.

[PKBasu]

We need a metric that measures both speed of scoring and the number of runs. Rapid scoring of a small number of runs (a la Shaw) isn't quite the same thing as a match-winning knock like Padikkal's yesterday (even if nominally slower).

[Atithee]

And some measure of standard deviation. Samson has played one inning of substance. As have Shaw and Paddikal too.

[prasen9]

My requirement of an average of 25 runs/inning serves to bring some measure of consistency. Yes, fully agree that we need and have been needing some smartstats to make this work. ESPN will not release theirs and there has been no other player in the market to fill the void. In Baseball, there are many players such as FanGraphs, etc. who have designed smart stats and as such ESPN's stats are rather useless there.

But the point PKB made is very valid despite my using a cutoff. Shaw averages 28, Samson 36, while Dhawan is 58 and Padikkal 69. For a small difference in SR, I would possibly choose the much higher average. A simple stat would be the product of your SR and average but there are flaws with that too. SmartStats exist but everyone is lazy enough to not want to put it out and maintain it as ESPN (and a few others) do with regular stats.

[PKBasu]

The old order has been upended after the first third or so of this year's IPL. RCB, the perennial under-performer (and owned by the rogue Vijay Mallya, of course), are on top, having won all their 4 matches this year. Ambani-owned MI (who usually boss the IPL) are languishing in 4th, equal on points with Punjab Kings (with ownership with Preity Zinta and ex-boyfriend Jay? Wadia, great-grandson of Jinnah). Punjab in the last two seasons were notorious for narrowly losing matches despite great batting by Rahul-Mayank. Today, they didn't suffer any of those jitters, with an emphatic win over MI. Mayank hasn't quite regained form, but Rahul remains his normal enigmatic self -- either drought (below 10) or flood (50+) with nothing in between.

[prasen9]

Historically speaking, the top two teams are CSK and MI who have won about 60% of their games. They are at #2 and #4. Not bad for small sample size. Yes, MI's not working well is a surprise given their batting order and bowling strength.

Hyderabad and KKR are #3 and #4 at #6 and #7, also a tad surprising. Both these teams are awful this year.

RR is #5 historically and are at #8, again a tad surprising that they are that bad.

RCB is #6 and they are #1 this year; the true surprise.

Punjab is #7 and they are #5.

DC is #8 and they are #2, another huge surprise.

So, essentially RCB and DC are revamped and doing very well and pushing everyone else down.

[Kumar]

Just curious who owns the stats for IPL! Is it owned by the league and websites have to pay to run analytics on them?

I think Samson has been disappointing after his initial 100! Granted RR has their two top foreign talents on shelf and their 16 Crore man disappointing so far! I am not sure he is able to handle the pressure of captaincy! For the same reaso, I am little disappointed with pant being a captain as well! Worried that he will lose the joy with which he plays

[prasen9]

Can you really even own the basic stats? I think anyone can use them and calculate something and put it up on their website, e.g., SR * avg. I have had one of my capstone project teams interested in cricket crawl scorecards and commentary (of international matches) and their bots have not been banned. Of course, stats such as speed of ball, etc. may be proprietary and not available publicly.

[Kumar]

Could any one have a day like Jadeja in history of T20 ever?
37 runs scored of final over for 62 runs of 28 balls, 3 wickets for 13 runs off 4 overs and a direct hit run out of Dan Christian

He has been having a sensational IPL season this year

[Kumar]

Can you really even own the basic stats? I think anyone can use them and calculate something and put it up on their website, e.g., SR * avg. I have had one of my capstone project teams interested in cricket crawl scorecards and commentary (of international matches) and their bots have not been banned. Of course, stats such as speed of ball, etc. may be proprietary and not available publicly.

Remember reading about a case, but it looks like u may be right! MLB actually lost a lawsuit claiming they owned it !

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20060 ... 0214.shtml