TRENDS ANALYSIS
Follow Us*All stats till IPL 2024, Match 9, unless stated otherwise
Home advantage
All teams look to make the most of playing at home, and so far in the 2024 edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL), all franchises have remarkably succeeded in maintaining a 100% win record at home.
While these are still early stages in the tournament, it is interesting to note that the IPL has never witnessed such a run. In seasons where the tournament has had a home-away concept, the most a home side has won in the first nine matches has been seven, which was achieved in 2017 and 2018. Will this trend continue in the next 9-10 games, or will we finally see an away team walk away with two points soon?
Finger spinners > wrist-spinners?
While both leg-spinners and finger spinners have picked up a similar amount of wickets, the latter have shown much more control as their economy rate of 8.34 depicts. The likes of Harpreet Brar, Mayank Dagar, Ravichandran Ashwin, Sunil Narine, and R Sai Kishore, among others, have managed to keep the batters in check.
While the most prominent wrist-spinners in the competition - Yuzvendra Chahal (Econ 7.33) and Kuldeep Yadav (7.62) - have managed to get a grip on the scoring rate, the likes of Piyush Chawla (13), Rashid Khan (9), Ravi Bishnoi (9.5), Rahul Chahar (9.80) and Mayank Markande (11.37) have been unable to have any sort of control thus far.
Perhaps a sign of the surfaces being largely true thus far.
Go big AND go home
So far in IPL 2024, there have been 11 instances where a batter has hit a six and perished the very next ball. The opening nine games have been run-fests, with the batters scoring at a run-rate of 9.50. On what have been very good batting surfaces so far, the batters have not shut shop even after clobbering a big one. Perhaps the impact player rule has allowed the batters to play a little more fearlessly.
The 'two bouncers' rule proving to be effective
We have seen significantly more short balls in the first nine matches this season compared to the 2023 edition. As a result, short deliveries have fetched more wickets compared to last season. As many as 17 wickets have been picked up with short deliveries, accounting for nearly 21% of the pacers’ wickets.
In comparison, at this stage last year, just 12 wickets had fallen to short deliveries, which was close to 17% of the total wickets snapped by the pacers.
Clearly, the 'two bouncers' rule introduced by the BCCI has empowered the speedsters to bowl more aggressively.
Catching problems?
Nine games in, Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) are the only team with 100% catch efficiency. Incidentally, after nine games last season, there was also just one team with a similar record – Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR). Another coincidence is Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) have a 50% catch efficiency this season, while that honour went to Mumbai Indians (MI) in 2023.
Either way, put simply, catching has not been great so far this season, with 23 catches being spilled in total. IPL 2024 has thus far seen a catch efficiency of 79%. At this stage last season, the overall catch efficiency (all teams combined) was 82%.
This season, we have seen the likes of Virat Kohli get dropped on zero against Punjab, and he made them pay with a match-winning fifty. As did Travis Head when he was dropped on five — he went on to clobber an 18-ball fifty against Mumbai.
What has been the impact of toss?
Win the toss, win the match? Not really. In six of the nine matches so far this season, the team winning the toss have gone on to lose the match. Out of that, on five occasions, the captains have opted to bowl and have ended on the losing side. Clearly, chasing has been difficult this season. Only three times has a team batting second gone on to win a game, which is slightly better than last season, where we saw the chasing team winning just twice in the first nine matches.
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