IPL
Column
Where is it Played?
The Indian Premier League (IPL) is the biggest club cricket tournament in the world. It is the cricketing equivalent of the UEFA Champions League, NFL and Wimbledon. Every year there is a draft and the franchises choose their players, pay them insane wages, for under two months work. This analysis will hopefully explain both the sport and show why it is so popular.
Keeping Mumbai A Happy City!
Column
The more runs the better
The team that scores most runs (think points) wins. A team has some players who are primarily on the team to bat (although everyone on the team can bat) and score runs for the team.
SR Tendulkar is a legend of world cricket and an Indian hero, but Sharma is their top scorer of all time.
Batting
Column
How Do Batsmen Make Runs?
Facing more balls definitely helps, and to face more bowls a batsman needs to stay on the pitch and not get ‘out’. An interesting result here is that in 2011 SR Tendulkar faced more balls than in 2010, but scored less runs. This chart also indicates a batsmans strike rate, which is the metric which judges how fast a batsman makes runs, or how aggressive a batsman is.
Srike rate
Strike rate is how many runs would a batsman score if he faced a hundred balls, at his current rate of scoring. This metric can be misleading. A high strike rate doesn’t necessarily mean a batsman has or will score a lot of runs.
Boundaries
If a batsman hits the ball all the way to the rope surrounding the pitch, it’s called a boundary. If it bounces before the boundary rope the batsman gets four runs, if he hits it over the boundary rope without bouncing, he gets six runs. Six is the maximum a batsman can score off one ball. So it’s unsurprising to see the correlation between strike rate and how often a player hits a boundary.
Comparing Sharma and Pollard in the IPL
Batting average is metric for how many runs a batsman will score each time he bats. A batsman bats once a match until he gets out or the overs are completed. This graph shows that RG Sharma has very consistent average, peaking in 2016. KA Pollards is more volatile over time. Both were scoring a lot of runs in 2013 and 2015, Mumbai Indians winning seasons.
Sharma and Pollard Comparison
A cricket colloquialism is ‘Gun Batsman’ which means a world class batsman, it describes a player who scores a lot of runs very fast, so a high strike rate and a high average. Pollard in 2015 can only be described as a gun batsman. He is however very inconsistent across seasons, predicting how he batted in 2017 would be hard. Whereas RG SHarma is a lot more consistent, although Pollard in 2014 batted more like Sharma than Sharma himself does.
Column
RG Sharma 2015
KA Pollard 2015
Bowling
Column
Getting the Batsman Out
A wicket/dismissal is when the team that is bowling get the batsman out.When one team bats, the other team bowls. The bowling team selects a bowler and bowls(throws the ball) at the batsman. Behind the batsman are three sticks, called the wickets. If the bowler hits the wickets with the ball, then the batsman is “out”. His wicket has been ‘taken’. He must leave the pitch and is replaced by a new batsman until there are no members of the other team left to bat. Then they are all out. There are 10 ways the bowling team can take a batsman’s wicket. A wicket is a good thing for the bowling team, a bad thing for the batting team.
Bowler Wickets
The bowler is officially credited with certain types of wickets, although they will selfishly claim responsibility for all types. (1) Bowled: The bowler bowls the ball and hits the wickets. (2) Caught: Batsman hits the ball and it is caught. (3) LBW: The bowler bowls, the batsman used his leg to stop the ball hitting the wickets instead of his bat. (4) Stumped: Too technical to explain here!
Economy (the lower the better)
Confusingly for economists, bowlers/teams want as low an economy as possible. If a bowler/team has a high economy, then they are deemed ‘expensive’. The economy metric is used to see how good team/bowler is a preventing the oppostion from scoring runs. Mumbai therefore are the fourth best team at preventing the opposition from scoring runs.
Bowlers for Mumbai Indians 2015
Low economy is good! So M de Lange and SL Malinga are the best at preventing oppstion players from scoring runs. HH Pandya is therefore expensive!
But who bowled the most in 2015?
No he wasn’t!
Column
Bowling Style
Strike rate is how often a bowler takes a wicket. Economy reducing the batsmans ability to score. HH Pandya does neither!
The Run Cost of a Wicket
Average for a bowler is the amount of runs given up for a wicket. Average and strike rate seem pretty correlated. Again this graph doesn’t look good for HH Pandya! Bowlers want low stats.
Death Overs
Column
Death Overs = The Last Overs
The captain chooses who bowls and when they bowl. When a team bowls second, the opposition know exactly how many runs they need to score (for example ten runs off seven balls, or thirty runs off 12 balls) so the final few overs of the match are usually the most, exciting, tense and nerve racking. This is where SL Malinga and co earn their money. Note Harbajan Singn bowled the second most amount of balls for Mumbai Indians but none in the death overs.
Column
Stopping the Oppostion Scoring the Winning Runs
MJ McClenaghan has the best economy in the death overs. R Vinay Kumar the worst.
Who’s saved to the Death?
An over lasts six balls. A bowler can bowl a maximum of 4 overs in a match. Twenty20 cricket means each team gets 20 overs to bowl and 20 to bat. A match thereofre lasts 40 overs - about three hours.
Beautiful
Column {data-width= 400, .tabset}
This Chart
This graph is fantastic. It shows us exactly how the captain of the Mumbai Indians used his bowlers and how they performed in terms of their economy based on the overs they bowled in. Each bowler will get his own analysis. More specifically, it gives us insight not only into the bowlers performance but also into the decision making of the captain. The captain chooses who bowls, he is the mastermind/strategist and his bowlers are his weopons/tools.
Harbhajan Singh
This bowler bowled the second most balls during the 2015 season but none after the fourteenth over. This indicates how solid the captian was in his plan on how he would use this bowler. He rarely bowled in the first overs as well, the majority of his overs came in the middle. As to his performance, it is remarkably consistent around eight runs an over. With single overs going for under three runs. Economy wise that is fantastic.
KA Pollard
He has a outlier in the seventeenth over, where presumably he gave away a lot of runs. He only bowled 0.83 overs in this over, which indicates that the macth ended in this over as the opposition accumlated the runs they needed for a win. Apart from this blemish, the captian obviously trusted himm and for good reason. His economy in the final over is very low.
MJ McClenaghan
Used as a starter and finisher. It’s not possible to tell from this graph if he bowled all four overs at the start or at the end, but if he is used at the start, the graph suggests his economy rapidly increases (in cricket terms high economy is bad). When used in the eighteenth over his economy is as good as SL Malinga’s, so he’s a great option to have. Although he had one terrible over when he was used in the middle overs. Over number 11.
R Vinay Kumar
Sparingly used at the start but when he was, his economy is fantastic, under three an over. The lowest of all the bowlers in the first four overs. This graph suggests he was dramatically underused in the opening overs. As the match progresses though, his economy gets greater and greater, and although he is used a lot in the final over, his economy is not as good as KA Pollards. This graph begs the question as to whether the captain used him optimally.
SL Malinga
Legendary in cricket due to an unusal technique and incredibly good bowling, used similarly to MJ McClenaghan. Almost the only bowler of the attack who bowled in the nineteenth over, so one of the death overs. He seems to be trusted for good reason. It also shows that batsman in the first overs would struggle to make runs off him.