The Women’s World Cup is here. And as we like to do here, we have our team maps to work out who does what and when.

These numbers come from our special sauce algorithms, which tell you what you need to know about each team. Will Australia win? Who is the most likely team to beat them? And how will New Zealand go back-to-back without any batting?

Welcome to the Women’s World Cup team maps.

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Even though Australia lost the semi-final of the last T20 (and ODI) World Cup, they have a 10-2 record in T20Is in this time period. Both the losses came against India, who are the only team to defeat them in a series since then. They swept the rest of the sides - England, New Zealand and the West Indies.

Of the top five ranked teams, they are clearly the best on three out of six metrics - powerplay batting, middle overs batting and powerplay bowling. Georgia Voll is the attacking opener, while Beth Mooney is the anchor in this partnership.

These two have also been Australia’s most successful batters in the middle phase. They are both incredible at avoiding dots and running between the wickets. However, Phoebe Litchfield and Ellyse Perry have both been underwhelming for Australia in this period. But their franchise T20 stats are solid. Plus Ash Gardner hasn’t played many T20Is, and we know she’s good at cricket.

Strangely, they seem to taper off at the end of the innings. But they have plenty of all-rounders, and they bat very deep. If they can work out Annabel Sutherland’s optimal batting position, that can further strengthen them. Probably a floater role in a collapse situation makes the most sense looking at her conventional gameplay.

Sutherland has also, by far and away, been Australia’s best seamer. She has the most new ball wickets for them. Megan Schutt and Alana King have also done well early on, while Kim Garth’s performances have been a bit below par in the first six overs. The two leggies starred through the middle overs, and nobody can seem to score off Sutherland either. Molineux hasn’t played too much cricket due to injuries. Once again, they are below par at the death. The issue isn’t wickets, it’s that teams have managed to find boundaries off them.

If we compare India to them, they are significantly better at the death on either side of the ball. Richa Ghosh and Harmanpreet Kaur do the bulk of the work for India in the final four overs, and they’re successful at it in the WPL too. A set Jemimah Rodrigues can also utilize this phase very well, plus they have the high-intent Bharti Fulmali in their team too.

They’re also a strong powerplay batting team, thanks to Shafali Verma and Smriti Mandhana. However, Jemimah - who usually bats at No.3 - likes to take her time and settle in when the field is up. Like Australia, both the openers are also effective after the field restrictions are over, and Jemimah is also elite. Harmanpreet Kaur is more of an anchor from overs 7 to 16. In the England series, we also saw Yastika Bhatia start quick in the powerplay and then slow down after the field was spread out.

However, India have really struggled with the new ball. They go for a few runs, and don’t take loads of wickets. None of their main quicks have provided that impetus. WPL star Nandani Sharma is also in the squad, but she wasn’t hugely successful in the powerplay in the tournament either. Deepti Sharma has been very economical, but she didn’t get to bowl in this phase in the recent series in England.

But they catch up in the middle period, actually edging out Australia ever so slightly on our team maps. They have heaps of quality spin bowling options, and their seamers have also taken wickets.

Their death overs success is primarily down to them protecting runs at the end. Sree Charani is their main bowler here. And while Deepti and Arundhati Reddy have been a bit expensive, they’re among India’s most used bowling options at the end. Radha Yadav also has excellent stats for India, though from a very small sample. Plus, this is exactly where Nandani and Shreyanka Patil were at their best in the WPL.

India were on a series winning run in T20Is after they exited the last T20 World Cup in the group stage. Even after the ODI World Cup victory, they beat Australia in Australia in the shortest format. But they’re coming into the tournament after losing 1-4 in South Africa and 1-2 in England. And in truth, outside of middle overs bowling, they weren’t up to the mark on these two tours.

Let’s compare India to the team they most recently lost, England. Both these teams are very similar in terms of win-loss ratios since the last mega event. But the hosts are not as good as India with the bat in any period of the game, though they are above average at everything.

Nat Sciver-Brunt has been their best batter in the powerplay, and she mainly bats at 3 and 4. Their openers have been susceptible to getting out early, and they don’t really score at uber-attacking rates either. They did promote Alice Capsey up top this summer, so they’ll hope she can set the tone of their innings if she’s opening.

They do get better in the middle overs. When their openers get past the early phase, they are able to cash in. Sciver-Brunt and Heather Knight provide stability in the middle, though it’ll be interesting to see how fast they score after a good platform. Capsey and Amy Jones also performed well versus India recently.

Knight and Sophie Ecclestone have been their key batters at the death, but off late the left-handed Freya Kemp has also smashed the ball in the last few overs. And if Sciver-Brunt is set, she can also damage opposition attacks.

England are a better new ball bowling unit on our maps than India. On raw stats, there’s actually not much between them and Australia. But it’s been harder to score runs in England in the first six overs, and if that trend continues this World Cup, they should be fine. Lauren Bell is their main wicket-taker in this phase, and they also have spin options in Linsey Smith and Charlie Dean that can take the new ball. Lauren Filer has been an economical seamer early in the innings, but she hasn’t taken plenty of wickets.

They are 7% better in the middle overs. Usually, you’d expect Ecclestone to be the main player here. She is still good, of course, but Charlie Dean has been even more exceptional. Also, Ecclestone’s wickets have dried up a bit this summer. And at the end, it’s Ecclestone, Bell, Dean, Linsey and Issy Wong that have bowled the majority of the overs and done a solid job.

Remember, they also have the 18-year-old Tilly Corteen-Coleman who was superb in the Hundred last year. She bowled well in both the powerplay and middle, so it will be interesting to see how they deploy her overs if she starts.

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This is a weird sentence, but now we have looked at the favourites, let’s look at the finalists of the last T20 World Cup - New Zealand and South Africa.

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Jacques Kallis is one of the greatest cricketers to have ever lived, but he was not a cricketer ahead of his time.

A case could be made for Kallis being amongst the ten best Test batters in history, who was a formidable fifth bowling option too. As far as all-rounders go, only Garry Sobers and Imran Khan have claims of outshining him. His bowling numbers might flatter on paper, given how he played his home cricket in South Africa - but that very fact makes his batting averages look other-worldly.

The South African all-round behemoth was adjudged the best male cricketer of the 21st century by ESPNcricinfo. While that could be debatable, what is not up for debate is Kallis being a bonafide legend of the game, and a sureshot entrant to the all-timers list.

What he’s not, though, is a time-traveller. Definitely not. He didn’t play the game as if he had arrived from the future. If anything, he was aligned with the times that he played in, and some might even refute that statement if they have T20 batting on their minds.

We often speak of, or read about, batters who were ahead of their time.

Victor Trumper activated the on-side with his cross-batted shots, Viv Richards was a ball striking anomaly, AB de Villiers introduced 360-degree play, and Adam Gilchrist changed the role of a wicketkeeper-batter forever.

Then you have the blitzy trio of Sanath Jayasuriya, Shahid Afridi, and Andrew Symonds, who could give you crucial overs with the ball as well. Had they been born a decade later, they would have enjoyed the most lucrative T20 contracts that billionaire franchise owners could offer.

More recently, we have seen someone like Abhishek Sharma going hell for leather in T20 cricket with unimaginable consistency. As of today, there exists a 15-year-old boy from Bihar who is making Abhishek look like antiquity faster than you can fully pronounce Sooryavanshi.

All of these names played cricket ingested with intent pills, and were, or are, ahead of their time. But none of them earned their time-traveller tag because of their bowling skills. Batriarchy is still the one principle that rules us all.

But bowlers form one half of cricket. And a fair few of them have displayed wizardry straight out of a time machine, over the last nearly 150 years of Test cricket.

Traditionally, fans have bestowed batters with godhood. Sachin Tendulkar might come to mind, but before him there was WG Grace. To defeat this alleged god, cricket needed a demon. Enter, Frederick Robert Spofforth.

A towering figure, with hair parted through the middle, sporting a bushy and pointed moustache, Spofforth certainly had the look of a demon. With a cricket ball in his hand, he completed his transformation to Lucifer incarnate.

Living up to his moniker, Spofforth’s main weapon was swing bowling, which is obviously the devil’s work. He was the first to hoop the ball in the air, and in the famous Oval Test in 1882, he had England’s bearded deity down on his haunches.

Out of 20 English wickets, Spofforth accounted for 14, helping Australia defend 85 runs in the fourth innings against a team considered far superior to them. Spofforth’s ability to swing the red cherry gave birth to both international cricket and the Ashes. To further elevate his credentials, he is also the first hattrick-hero in Tests. Not only was Spofforth a relic from the future, he was perhaps the first time-traveller cricket had ever seen.

About a decade after Spofforth hung up his boots, a young wrist spinner from Oxford University kicked off his first-class career. If you Google the name Bernard Bosanquet, the first result is the Wikipedia page of an English philosopher. The father of the googly is not even the most famous Bernard Bosanquet.

Inventing the wrong’un was not something he was lauded for, however. In fact, English cricket was so vehemently opposed to the googly, known as the Bosie back then, that there were efforts to deem the delivery type illegal.

England’s loss turned out to be South Africa’s gain, as Bosanquet taught his craft to Middlesex teammate Reggie Schwarz, who further imparted this knowledge to his South African compatriots. Next thing you know, a four-pronged attack of legspinners, armed with the wrong’un, floored England in back-to-back home Test series. The past might well be one of the best teachers, but in this case, the Englishmen failed to comprehend a lesson from the future.

Wrist spin mystery is not restricted to googlies. In 1925 Australian legspinner Clarrie Grimmett made his international debut, and amassed 200 Test wickets in 36 games. At the time, no other bowler had gotten to this landmark in fewer games. He achieved this feat by outfoxing batters with his invention called the flipper, a delivery which was spammed by many future wristies including the late great Shane Warne. Grimmett’s record stood for a whopping 82 years, up until 2018 when another leggie from Pakistan, Yasir Shah, usurped him.

Speaking of spinners ahead of their time, many would remember Ajantha Mendis wreaking havoc with his carrom ball, up until he was found out. He had a short period under the sun, but since then, we have seen the carrom ball become mainstream.

Most people, however, might not know that it was not Mendis who came up with this finger-flicking innovation. That honour belongs to Australian tweaker Jack Iverson, who featured in just five Tests and 34 first-class games in the early 1950s. It took over half a century for cricket to catch up with Iverson’s genius - fortifying his position as a bowler well ahead of his time.

The last spinner worth mentioning here is one of Pakistan’s finest offbreak bowlers, Saqlain Mushtaq, who stumbled upon a pot of gold by fiddling with a table tennis ball. The Urdu word “doosra” literally translates to “the other one” in English, and even though this variation is defunct in modern-day cricket due to restrictions around how many degrees a bowling arm is allowed to bend, it remains the most lethal weapon finger spinners have ever had.

From the mid-1990s to early 2010s we saw several doosra bowlers dominate, most notably Sri Lankan legend Muttiah Muralitharan, who boasts the record of most wickets in both ODIs and Tests. None of this chaos would have been possible without Saqlain’s accidental trip, traversing through the fragments of time. Maybe it will come back someday, like the carrom ball. Science is the man after all.

Spofforth was the pioneer of swing, but conventional swing bowling has never been remotely as sexy as reverse swing. Pakistan’s deadly duo of Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis might be hailed as the greatest exponents of reverse swing, which is probably a fair statement, but they were not trail-blazers.

The art of scuffing up the ball on one side and shining it on the other was passed down to the two Ws by Imran Khan, who in his youth had learned it from Sarfraz Nawaz. A stocky bowler with long hair and a burly moustache, Sarfraz did not invent reverse swing, which had emerged in Pakistan earlier, courtesy of placid tracks which offered negligible purchase to bowlers, under the blazing sun.

Sarfraz did, however, play the biggest role in spreading this innovation, and even though his bowling numbers do not scream world-class, he deserves credit for his foresight. You surely warrant some acknowledgement for planting the seeds of one of cricket’s most exhilarating sights. It’s funny how it only took the sport about three decades to come to terms with a skill which was long thought of as cheating.

Come to think of it, the thrill that comes with witnessing reverse swing on display would not nearly be as intoxicating without the yorker. The death rattle created by a ball shattering the stumps is the best sound in all of cricket, and the visuals are always amplified when the base of the stumps is violated.

Cricket without the yorker is like basketball without the slam dunk. This hair-raising delivery has existed since the 1800s, but it was not until the late 1950s that it was made popular, by a fearsome tearaway quick from Barbados. Wes Hall should go down as one of the most important cricketers in the history of the sport, for without his contribution, it could have been devoid of toe-crushing carnage.

Adrenaline is the jugular of sport, and fast bowling is the ultimate adrenaline inducer in cricket. Express pace merchants have always been red-hot commodities in the game, but it was only after the career of Jeff Thomson that teams felt their necessity.

Bowling evolved from being under-arm to round-arm to over-arm, so slingy actions were not unusual back in the day. When the no-ball law switched from relying on the back foot to the front foot in 1963, we saw slingy bowling actions return.

If you think Lasith Malinga’s action was awkward, go search for Thomson’s name on YouTube. His numbers may not do justice to his talent, but he is the first of his kind to mix serious heat with a slingy action, rendering him ahead of his time on multiple fronts. Speed guns be damned.

While pace is necessary to get the juices flowing, batters these days in white-ball cricket are most often deceived by variations in pace. In this day and age there exist several different types of slower balls. Cutters, back of the hand slower ones, split finger deliveries, moon balls, and the ones that dip violently due to the Magnus effect.

Change of pace has become an essential component of the modern white-ball bowler’s artillery, and as the game continues to move forward, bowlers who are unable to vary their bowling speed are considered one dimensional. Who started it though?

The answer to that is complex, because in the earlier days of cricket it was harder to distinguish between fast bowlers and spinners. Cricketers like Sydney Barnes made a career out of bamboozling batters in this manner. But with time, the distinction between quicks and tweakers became more and more apparent.

That said, an Englishman by the name of Bill Lockwood is credited as the inventor of the slower ball, somewhere towards the end of the 19th century. It is remarkable how a delivery which is predominantly a limited-overs skill, had existed seventy years before the dawn of ODI cricket.

The slower one faded away from the scene after Lockwood, until another tall West Indian bowler from Barbados made it hip again. Franklyn Stephenson developed his version of the moon ball in the 1980s, deceiving batters by bowling what he called an off-spinning delivery with a fast bowler’s action. He was the first of many to deploy a subtle movement of fingers disguised in a fashion that batters were unable to pick. Sam Curran is basically Stephenson teleported from the past.

These days, you see some T20 seamer come up with a new adaptation of the slower ball every other minute, which makes it the most frequently occurring innovation in recent times. The last proper inflection point though, from a fast bowling perspective, was the advent of the wobble seam delivery.

The pace playing pandemic started around 2018 as fast bowlers across the world caught on to the art that England’s James Anderson had made mainstream. As a result, batters - even the best ones - saw their averages plummet, which gave rise to a bowler-dominant period in the longest format. Anderson deserves all the acclaim for spreading this delivery like wildfire, but he too picked it up from someone else.

Pakistan seamer Mohammad Asif was a bowler from a utopian future, where the ball danced at his whims. Vernon Philander claims that he never knew which direction the ball would nip towards when he bowled wobble seam, but if you have ever witnessed Asif play his tunes on a cricket pitch, he seemed in complete control. His off-field shenanigans deprived both the world and himself, of what could have been a magnificent career. Perhaps drugs and spot-fixing were legal in the utopian future he came from.

It is worth mentioning that Australian seamer Stuart Clark was devastating batters with the wobble seam delivery during Asif’s era as well. Some years before that, West Indian quick Courtney Walsh also bowled it, albeit unintentionally.

All these bowlers from the future gave cricket one, or a maximum of two, different skillsets - courtesy of a peculiar trick up their sleeve. The only fast bowler to have mastered everything that the craft has to offer, and be thought of as complete in every sense, is a living legend who was born in Ahmedabad some thirty-odd years ago.

Jasprit Bumrah belongs to the space age of cyborg bowlers. There is not a single type of delivery that he has not perfected. His yorker is one of the finest the game has ever seen, and his length is supreme for whatever plan he aims to execute. His slower ones cut in sharply like faster off-spinners, paying homage to those Barnes-esque hybrid bowlers of yesteryear.

He gets the ball to swing in the air and seam off the deck with the consistency of Scooby Doo gobbling down a free meal. His freak action allows him to deliver the ball later than other bowlers, helping him gain an extra yard of pace, which is a trait that would have certified him as a time traveller on its own.

As things stand, he is the only bowler in the history of Test cricket to take 200-plus wickets at a sub-20 bowling average. Without his services, India could not have lifted the last two T20 World Cups. Part alien, part robot, full-time freak of nature.

The format, phase of the game, opposition team, playing conditions, none of these things matter to him. Bumrah is inevitable, and has single-handedly done his bit to smash the Batriarchy. Maybe a couple of generations later, we will realise just what breed of time-traveller he was.

Will O’Rourke is one of the greatest blockers in cricket.

Can he bat? That is a complicated question. But can he stay in? Yes. And in the first innings, having a man whose best shot is mildly propping forward with no follow through and playing every ball under his eyes was almost perfect. It allowed Kyle Jamieson at the other end to keep swinging hard, and it was an annoying partnership.

But the thing with O’Rourke’s batting is it’s remarkably one note. In fact, it’s almost soundless. The ball hits the bat, and his hands are so soft that it muffles the impact entirely. He does not score runs, and we assumed he was the slowest scorer this century, which he is.

What we also found out is that he’s the slowest scorer ever in our database. 1532 players have faced 200 deliveries in Test cricket, and he has the lowest scoring rate of those we can check. He is cricket’s greatest non-scorer.

So he can hold up an end and frustrate teams. But you also know exactly what he is going to do (or in his case, not going to do) and plan accordingly. That is what Ben Stokes did. He brought in a silly point. A simple move to upset O’Rourke from his forward prop style.

Stokes makes so many changes in the field that it is hard to call this a moment of genius. If it hadn’t worked, he would’ve tried three gullies the ball after. Instead, the first ball he faced with this field, O’Rourke changed his method, pushed at a wide one, and was caught behind.

It was not a shot he plays, it was not a shot he should play, it was a mistake.

O’Rourke’s weird swipe was just the first error, an enormous canary in the coal mine of how this match would go. England worked things out, New Zealand made mistakes.

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England brought up their hundred in the first innings with a drop. Harry Brook had already been put down once by Devon Conway. But that was a full-blooded shot, this attempt was an in-between effort, a guided pull that looked like fielding practice for Rachin Ravindra.

The young Kiwi can field, but if you saw him in this match it would be much harder to make that argument. The catch out on the boundary was dropped by him. But weirdly, the ball was at his chest, and yet he was off the ground at the time. It was a terrible effort, only matched by him missing the ball entirely from a Ben Duckett flick in the second innings.

If that was it for the drops, it would be pretty poor. But twice Devon Conway also had a ball hit straight to him, and he also dropped it. The two of them missed four chances, and only added 50 runs while missing nearly every England batter who scored. All while their opposition only dropped their first chance when the game was pretty much over. Four mistakes between two players is quite the effort.

But when it came to errors, the Kiwi hands were not the worst. That would be the surface. This was the 150th Test at Lord’s, and without doing too much research, I would say it ranks somewhere between 145 and 150 if these surfaces were rated best to worst. On day one, there was inconsistent bounce. When the ball seamed, it did so like a finger spinner on day five at Galle. It got worse as the game went on. Worse bounce, worse seam.

The ICC’s lowest ratings for a pitch are unsatisfactory and unfit. This was an unfit surface.

But England worked that out, and New Zealand never really did.

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Ollie Robinson puts the ball in the right place.

His problems are with everything else. If cricket was simply about his one skill, he’d be one of the best in the world. Instead, he is not even in England’s team that much. His great bowling average is more of an albatross to him. How can you take wickets at 22, and be out of the side in your early 30s? Well, Ollie managed that.

And it wasn’t like he was just out of the side, or pushed out by other great bowlers. Last summer, England used what was left of Chris Woakes. Robinson hasn’t even been a fringe squad member.

Ollie Robinson might put the ball in the right place, but he put himself in a terrible one.

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On day two of the first Ashes Test at the Gabba in 2021/22, Robinson looked done. Physically, he was moving as if it was day 25 of the series, and England had been a bowler short. Looking at his figures is misleading, because he had 3/58 from his 23 overs. And that was against Travis Head, who was destroying everyone else.

But it was the optics; it was his first real bowling day, and he looked like he’d been locked in a sauna.

By the second Test, he was bowling offspin.

No one should ever knowingly bowl offies in Australia. Sure, if it’s your only option, and maybe if you were born there. But it’s the worst style for those conditions, and England had a seamer try them in the second Test of the summer.

Was this just fitness? Probably not.

It’s also the kind of bowler Robinson is. He is a new ball specialist in a way that say Brydon Carse isn’t. But that is who they had open the bowling for them in the last Ashes, while Ollie Robinson did content with his Golfluencer partner.

He’s not quite a ride or die new ball bowler, but there are elements of that. As often happens in England, his best period is when the lacquer comes off the ball. But after the 20 over mark, he can really struggle.

That is partly a skill thing, as his main offering is the wobbleball near the top of off. However, it is also because he slows down the longer he bowls. His second spells look laboured, his third are painful, and his fourth are often delivered like he’s blowing a shuttlecock.

In the 2023 Ashes, England decided to use him as a bouncer bowler on a weird Lord’s pitch. It was like watching the world’s toughest accountant fight Conor McGregor. It wasn’t that he had no ability to do it, but just why though?

And this is another issue England have with Robinson. They don’t just like bouncers, they love them. Brendon McCullum was the man who unleashed Neil Wagner on cricket. And so often their team plan is, “well nothing is working, so let’s spam bouncers”. Robinson really can’t do that.

England love fast, flat pitch, bouncer bowlers, and he is absolutely none of those.

It would be wrong to think he didn’t have any of the elements of what they wanted. He can be mouthy and strangely attacking for a bloke who bowls 80 mph deliveries. But they wanted people who would jump into burning buildings for wickets. And he was too tired to get out the ladder off the firetruck.

At least part of it is just that he is a pure English bowler from a long line of patient, metronomic trundlers who always don’t work that well overseas.

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In June 2021, he also got in trouble for old racist and sexist tweets. Yet, those messages had little to do with his career pattern.

Clearly, his fitness and his personality was part of it, plus elements of him being new ball or bust. But he did have one other skill, and that was economy. The problem was that England did not care about that at all.

Robinson is one of the most defended bowlers in the world. He is always at the top of the stumps, and he rarely strays much. You can work him, but there are not that many balls to attack. So most players just defend.

That means he has an obscenely low economy rate for anyone, but specifically for an English bowler. Now recently, they’ve only picked guys who go at around four runs an over, so it’s not shocking he looks good. But he is well under three runs an over in an era where most bowlers are not. And this talent is the one England valued the least.

They could understand the new ball bowling. But their selections tell you they did not care at all about Robinson keeping the runs down. In the Ashes, this became an epidemic. They allowed a usually stoic Aussie batting lineup to score quicker than them. And at home, they had two of their most economical bowlers in Jimmy and Ollie (not) enjoying the show.

Is he a better bowler than before? Maybe. He has never done that well against left-handers traditionally. Yet that did not look like an issue today. And being that he’s been one of the best against right-handers ever, this would be quite the leap.

But he is not back in the side because of his bowling getting better, but because he has finally understood there is more to cricket than a perfect seam. Because for a long time he’s proved that he is nearly unmatched in that way.

Today does not tell us about his third spells, fitness or how hard the team thinks he tries. This was a pitch made for him, against an out of form line up, that he would be expected to destroy.

What he does on flat pitches, in the second innings when he’s already bowled 35 overs is his real test. Today was just what everyone knew he could do, just a little bit better.

For the longest time, England kept him out of the team, but that was because Ollie Robinson put himself in the wrong place.

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There have been a lot of IPL matches, and it is okay if you can’t remember them all, what with all the talk of handshakes. But we watched all of them. And we remember at least most of them.

And as we like to do here, we want to give out awards for the best players in the IPL this year. We hate the caps, because they make little sense. So we’ve come up with our own ideas, and we hand out imaginary trophies.

So these are the goodies, given out to those who deserve them for being awesome.

You, and they, have earned them.

***

Most Improved Player: Ishan Kishan, Devdutt Padikkal, Washington Sundar (the batter), Nitish Kumar Reddy, Kartik Tyagi & Jason Holder

Kartik Tyagi remodelled his action and led the KKR pace attack. Jason Holder is almost like a middle overs cheat code for GT, and it’s his best ever IPL with the ball.

Washington Sundar has never been as productive with the bat in the league. Nitish’s improved speed, his spin-hitting has been incredible and he’s also improved versus the quicks. We covered Ishan Kishan’s coming of age in more detail during the T20 World Cup. But this has definitely been his best IPL season.

While Devdutt Padikkal had started his improvement arc from last season itself, this year is simply the best he’s ever batted in the competition. And that’s why he takes home this unprestigious Goodies award.

Best new ball bowler (The Bhuvi): Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Kagiso Rabada, Jofra Archer, Mohammed Siraj, AM Ghazanfar & Mohammed Shami

We named this award after Bhuvi, because we wanted to give him his flowers as he was nearing the end of his career. And then he only had this year.

He was not the only good new ball bowler, each of the first four names are potentially having an all-time great powerplay year. AM Ghazanfar makes it for being the standout spinner, while Shami also was a reason why LSG were a hard bowling team to go up against in the first six.

I think Bhuvneshwar Kumar just pips Kagiso Rabada for the award named after him, as he’s saving more runs and yet striking very frequently.

Can you win an award named after you? Apparently, you can.

Best middle overs bowler (The Rashid): Rashid Khan, Noor Ahmad, Sunil Narine, Varun Chakaravarthy, Yuzvendra Chahal, Krunal Pandya, Axar Patel, Ravindra Jadeja, Jamie Overton, Jason Holder & Eshan Malinga

The Rashid is the best middle overs bowler, and even though he’s not at his best anymore, he still makes the cut. His fellow Afghan spinner was also really vital for CSK. Nobody could score off the KKR duo, and nobody could catch off Yuzvendra Chahal. This is also a productive time for almost all the top-level SLAs.

We’ve got a bunch of quicks who also really nailed this part of the game. But Jamie Overton stands out the most on our true stats.

What were the odds of that before the season began?

Best death bowler (The Bumrah): Lungi Ngidi, Jofra Archer, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Jasprit Bumrah, Jamie Overton, Vaibhav Arora, Kartik Tyagi, Anshul Kamboj, Sakib Hussain, Josh Hazlewood & Rasikh Salam

Once again, the award namesake makes this list. It’s easily Jasprit Bumrah’s worst IPL season in the last decade, but still nobody is able to score off him at the end of games. Lungi Ngidi had the best true economy, and Jofra Archer and Bhuvneshwar Kumar didn't destroy teams just at the top.

Vaibhav Arora is the wildcard here, for we’ve always taken him to be mainly a new ball option. Josh Hazlewood’s new ball bowling hasn’t been like last time, but he’s been solid in the final four overs. RCB’s Rasikh Salam has also slowed teams down, and taken wickets - making the defending champions an effective death-bowling unit. Sakib Hussain is another find - he has been great with his change of pace. Jamie Overton carries over his middle overs work here. Anshul Kamboj and Kartik Tyagi have taken heaps of wickets.

But the winner is Lungi Ngidi, with Bhuvneshwar Kumar just missing out.

Best bowler (Real purple cap): Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Kagiso Rabada, Jofra Archer, Sunil Narine, Eshan Malinga, Jamie Overton, Sakib Hussain & Jason Holder

Interestingly, we don’t have standout spinners this year apart from the evergreen Sunil Narine. And we can clearly see two separate profiles of pacers here. But I think it’ll be gross injustice if Bhuvneshwar Kumar doesn’t take home this award, simply because we’ve often seen guys with most wickets take huge chunks of them at the death. I think Archer is the next-best overall. Bhuvi didn’t go far from being the first bowler in two of three phases and overall.

Best all-rounder (The Dre Russ): Nitish Kumar Reddy, Krunal Pandya, Ravindra Jadeja, Cameron Green & Jamie Overton

We’ve not actually had too many players bowl and bat at least 50 balls this year and do well. This category has been impact subbed. We’ve picked most of those guys here. I think this has to be Nitish Kumar Reddy, with Krunal Pandya and Ravindra Jadeja not far behind.

He got quicker, and started hitting sixes versus pace. Quite the upgrade.

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Best hitter (The Gayle): Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, Finn Allen, Priyansh Arya, Abhishek Sharma, Tim David & Rajat Patidar

After years of Chris Gayle being an absolute outlier when it came to hitting sixes, we now have the 15-year-old wunderkind decimating the best bowlers in the world. Priyansh Arya has also been an incredible powerplay basher, while Rajat Patidar and Tim David do in the middle and death overs. Abhishek Sharma has been really consistent with his hitting, which in itself is rare to pull off. Finn Allen has also destroyed teams on his day.

But we have to be joking if anyone other than Vaibhav Sooryavanshi wins this.

Best player of pace (The ABD): Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, Virat Kohli, Devdutt Padikkal, Ishan Kishan, Rajat Patidar, Tim David, Sai Sudharsan, Abhishek Sharma, Priyansh Arya & Prabhsimran Singh

You think of the best pacers in the league, and almost every single one of them has been taken down by Vaibhav Sooryavanshi. But hey, we have someone on the other end of the experience scale in Virat Kohli. He has been strong as ever with his classical style of play against the new ball, and has kept up the momentum in the middle overs too. His team’s No.3, Devdutt Padikkal, also stepped up.

Ishan Kishan is the other No.3 who makes it, and he was really good across all three phases. Rajat Patidar performed in the middle and death overs versus the quicks, while Tim David dominated them at the end. Sai Sudharasan deserves a mention for not getting out to them at an above par true SR too.

Abhishek Sharma is a must for his powerplay bashing, and Priyansh Arya had the ability to impact games against the quicks in an incredibly short period of time. Arya’s opening partner Prabhsimran Singh also made it work at the top, the two often breaking games early.

But the ultimate winner, of course, is Vaibhav Sooryavanshi.

Best work vs spin (The Yusuf): Abhishek Sharma, Cooper Connolly, Shubman Gill, Sai Sudharsan, Ishan Kishan, Heinrich Klaasen, Shreyas Iyer & KL Rahul

For The Yusuf, we’ve got heaps of players that have dominated against spin in their own ways. Abhishek Sharma is the most ruthless overall, while Cooper Connolly, Shubman Gill, Sai Sudharsan and Ishan Kishan are all really impressive too. Heinrich Klaasen, Shreyas Iyer and KL Rahul all play it really well and go at above average rates, but they don’t score at outlier speeds. I think this one’s between Abhishek Sharma and Shubman Gill, and just because the former smashes it so much more without getting out a lot, he wins it.

Best powerplay batter (The Warner): Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, Abhishek Sharma, Priyansh Arya, Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, Prabhsimran Singh & Devdutt Padikkal

The first cluster is the lunatic left-handers who scored at ground-breaking rates in the first six overs. Shubman Gill and Virat Kohli are more conventional batters that go at a healthy strike rate and have a repeatable formula for success against the hard, new ball. In fact, Gill has certainly worked on it, and is lofting the ball more. Prabhsimran Singh’s partnership with Priyansh Arya was the main reason for Punjab’s first half success. And Devdutt Padikkal has been a No.3 that’s performed really well when he’s in after a wicket in the powerplay.

But again, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi is just a level above everyone else, with Abhishek in second place.

Best middle overs batter (The Raina-AB): KL Rahul, Sai Sudharsan, Shubman Gill, Ishan Kishan, Cooper Connolly, Rajat Patidar, Heinrich Klaasen & Shreyas Iyer

Now there’s two types of middle overs beasts. The likes of KL Rahul, Sai Sudharsan and Shubman Gill are openers who actually really maximize this period. But we’ve got a cluster of non-opening middle overs legends as well. Heinrich Klaasen’s consistency has genuinely been unmatched, while Rajat Patidar and Ishan Kishan are dangerous at their best. And you do not want Shreyas Iyer in this phase when his team is chasing 10 RPO; it’s his bread and butter. Plus, Punjab also had Cooper Connolly doing well.

But I think I like Ishan Kishan’s case the most, because he’s destructive but also really repeatable at what he does. So he wins the award that’s half-named after his first IPL captain.

Best finisher (The Dhoni): Tim David, Donovan Ferreria, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Ashutosh Sharma, Rinku Singh, Washington Sundar & Marcus Stoinis

Finishing as a specialist skill can always be tricky, because you may or may not get enough deliveries in the middle. I really liked these guys as most of them were able to impact multiple games in this period. Washington Sundar is the big surprise here, while Rinku Singh perhaps bailed his team out the most.

But I think it’s between Tim David and Donovan Ferreira, and the former just about gets it.

Best batter (Real orange cap): Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, Abhishek Sharma, Ishan Kishan, Heinrich Klaasen, Sai Sudharsan & Shubman Gill

I’ve gone with two attacking outliers that have also managed to breach the 500-mark in the league stage. Ishan Kishan is more of a bridge, but he’s played some real high-quality knocks. Heinrich Klaasen has played in a completely different manner from the last three years, but he’s really raised the floor and even attacked hard on his best day. Sai Sudharsan and Shubman Gill aren’t massively different from other elite accumulators, but the way GT are set up, they desperately need runs from those two.

But once again, this piece is an excuse for Vaibhav Sooryavanshi to sweep as many awards as possible.

Best newcomer (The Vaibhav): Cooper Connolly, Finn Allen, Kartik Sharma, Sakib Hussain, AM Ghazanfar, Brijesh Sharma, Yash Raj Punja

And finally, the last award of the year is named after the young star himself. What he did in just seven games of IPL 2025 was genuinely unprecedented. We’ve got three internationals in Cooper Connolly, AM Ghazanfar and Finn Allen, even though the latter has been around the league but never actually gotten an opportunity until this time. Kartik Sharma has shown a lot of promise, even though his game is still in development. Yash Raj Punja is a young and tall leggie that has picked up wickets without conceding too many runs. Brijesh Sharma has been at his best through the middle overs.

But Sakib has been the find of the season with the ball, and I don’t think anyone else playing their first IPL this time has impressed more.

***

Those were the Goodies for this year. Will any of the winners be in contention next season too? You would think so, given how well some of them have done. And maybe they’ll do it well enough to have one of the awards named after them too.

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This piece contains extracts from The Art of Batting.

Around 70 million years ago, Tyrannosaurus rex was the hunter and Triceratops was its prey. But these two amazing animals were in the final fight of a war that had been raging for hundreds of millions of years. Before them was the Albertosaurus and Pachyrhinosaurus. The generation before was Teratophoneus and Kosmoceratops. Coming up the order was Gorgosaurus and Styracosaurus. Each generation there was basically a big huge Theropod who was trying to bite a tank-like horned Ceratopsid.

It was like they were made to fight each other.

Ceratopsians started with a pretty grill, which grew until it was almost like a shield to be used for defence. The Psittacosaurus was bipedal, and easy to knock over. The following generations had four legs and were more like tanks. Ceratopsians also got a lot bigger. By the end, they were a substantial dinosaur size with raw power. Then there are the horns, again, they started as not much more than something pretty to look at. But as they evolved their ended up with not just one weapon, but a multitude, and when partnered with their grill and strength, it turned them into a great defensive machine.

But at the same time their large carnivore theropod frenemies changed too. A Gorgosaurus is a big dinosaur, around eight meters long, but it’s late model version the T Rex was twelve meters. Ol Gorgo was what Ravi Shastri would call a big unit at three tonnes, sexy Rexy was up at seven. But the most important difference was their bite; the Gorgosaurus could chop at 3500 pounds of bite force, while the King of Jurassic Park bit down at 7000.

No one really knows whether the two were in this million-year evolutionary arms race, but on paper, it looks like they were.

One got stronger, the other one bit harder, and the dance continued until aliens came back and took their pets home.

Cricket has been in the same evolutionary war for more than 200 years between batters and bowlers.

***

The cricket community was upset at how many runs were being scored. Mostly because of all the boundaries. It was not the first time through its long history. These often ended in conversations about what was, or wasn’t, cricket.

But this time, they decided they needed a change. People were hitting the ball out of the ground, huge scores were boring fans. Something must change, they thought, and then brought in a radical new concept.

A net.

That would be placed around the outfield, instead of a rope or fence. A small three foot net that would collect the balls. Instead of a boundary, you got two runs, then had to leg the rest.

They trialled their new run-saving measure, and it had the opposite effect; people kept scoring fours, but they added fives. And on one ball, a ten was scored.

This was in 1900. The first full decade after cricket had changed, and already, people wanted it as it was before. But you cannot stop evolution and development.

Cricket has always changed, and many times that affects the balance between bat and ball.

***

The best batters of the early 1800s couldn’t average 20. Fuller Pilch, Nicholas Felix and Alfred Mynn were the Fab Four (or Terrific Three) of the pre-Oil era of the World. They were great, and yet none of them even averages 20 with the bat. Pilch would end his career with three hundreds in 229 games.

Yet in the next generation, WG Grace comes along and averages nearly forty, despite playing for 43 years. That is how much cricket started to change. Before the pitches were so bad, that a great batter was someone who made what we’d now expect from a decent number eight.

Cricket was always in constant evolution. When the balls were rolled along the ground, we played with something closer to a hockey stick. When they went slightly higher, the current style of bat was started. But they weighed over four pounds (modern bats are closer to 2p, 8oz) because the bowling was underarm. This allowed older, slower and stronger men to bat, but it wasn’t very skilful.

And more importantly, between 1788 and 1864, there was a cricket civil war. It was fought between the traditionalists, who believed that underarm bowling should be the only form, and those who saw how much better round-arm (and then overarm) bowling could become.

Throughout all that, the bowlers, regardless of style, dominated.

But there was one massive technology change that happened then. Before, you would walk out with a bat, and little else. But after a series of terrible broken legs, including to Alfred Mynn, leg guards came in. Almost straight away, people said they were against the spirit of cricket.

This and the overarm bowling combined to completely change our sport.

Before that, batters had two styles, frontfoot or backfoot, that they decided on before the delivery. Pads - at least in theory - allowed protection to make those decisions later.

The person who changed that was WG Grace. Because he lived in the final part of the cross-over period, it seemed to change his style. Meaning when the ball was full, he would come forward, and when short, go back.

Two years after overarm bowling was legal, 1866, Grace scored over 500 runs in first-class cricket and averaged 52. No one else made that many runs while averaging more than 33. And he was 17 years old.

Five years later, he was making over 2000 runs in a season more than double the next best player. And he averaged nearly 80, and that was also basically double the next best again.

In that year, he made 10 hundreds, the rest of cricket added seven more.

So footwork was really the batters’ first evolution to combat overarm bowling, and turning the game from one completely dominated by bowlers to the game we have now.

But almost instantly, the bowlers worked out they needed a new game plan too, and Grace’s Test nemesis, the Demon Fred Spofforth, came along.

Inventing swing, or swerve, as it was called then.

Spofforth studied baseball, and believed he could swing the ball left, right, up and down. So, with what? He was probably talking more about drift and drop. Either way, until that point, bowlers had never needed the ball to do much in the air. But Grace and the batters who followed him were too good, so Spofforth had to find a new way.

This led to bowlers using the seam more to get the ball to swing or deviate.

So now the bowlers had a whole new weapon, but the next change happened through agriculture. With muckspreaders and the liquidation of manure, suddenly, pitches became flatter from the 1890s. Quite simply, before they were shovelling shit to make the grass grow, making the surface impossible to bat on.

But that is where batters used their big advantage, those pads. Arthur Shrewsbury of England was an incredible player from the late 1800s and a great of early batting. On top of averaging 35.5 in Tests, he was also a master at pad play. What he did then will sound silly now, but he ensured his pads were there if he missed the ball. Bats did not get wider, but to bowlers, it would have felt that way.

Flat pitches and pads moved the game a lot. But the last big change in that era was that cricketers wised up. Until this point, because of the gentlemanly nature of cricket, it was seen as uncouth to try hit the ball to the legside.

That was changed by someone who was called Colonel H. H. Shri Sir Ranjitsinhji Vibhaji, Jam Sahib of Nawanagar, GCSI, GBE, but more famously known as Ranji. They named a first-class competition after him. Born and raised in India, he ended up learning his cricket in England. And this was an incredible player. Due to racism at the time, he only played 15 Test matches, but he averaged 45 in those. His first-class average was 56.4 with 24,692 runs. Against the three biggest counties – Yorkshire, Lancashire and Surrey – he made 6234 runs while averaging over 70 against the latter two and 50 against the first. This was a batter of incredible skill and talent.

But when he started, he wasn’t very good, because he was afraid of the ball. So his coach tied his foot to the ground, and Ranji had to come up with a new shot. That was the leg glance. And it opened up the field and became the first time cricketers were trying to hit to leg.

Victor Trumper took that idea and weaponised it. He didn’t really care where the ball was bowled, just where the fielders weren’t. And for the first time, teams had to bowl wide of the stumps to slow him down. That had never been needed before, as the wickets were so poor and no one was using the pads.

This led to Jack Hobbs, who is probably the first batter who looks like he could play in the modern game. He leads batting into the next few generations using the techniques that took over 100 years to build.

At the same time, the bowlers had to manipulate the ball better. With Spofforth’s first attempts with swing, bowlers worked that even more. And also started hitting the seam as well. The USA bowler Barton King came on the back of Australia left-arm swing bowler JJ Ferris and the man with the golden bowling average, George Lohmann.

However, it was spin that had the biggest impact, when Bernard Bosanquet invented the wrong’un. That ball for 25 years was seen as against the spirt of cricket. Again. But really it was the bowlers finding a way to slow batting down.

But as batters started to pick that, the skilful bowlers made way for faster men. Jack Gregory and Ted McDonald dominated the Ashes of 1921. And from there it seemed like faster bowlers on flatter wickets were the way forward. In county cricket, and the new team called the West Indies, they also tried shorter faster bowling.

It was not until the Ashes of 1932/33 that teams went all in with the bouncer. That series was called Bodyline.

It was not done in a bubble though, great batting was dominating cricket. The West Indies had George Headley, England’s trio was Jack Hobbs, Wally Hammond and Herbert Sutcliffe, New Zealand appeared with Stewie Dempster, and Australia had a bunch, but how about we just mention Don Bradman.

Bodyline was an entire cricket tactic around slowing down one man. But really, it was overdue. Batters had taken over the game, they had to be stopped.

England won the series bowling at their heads with as many fielders as they wanted behind square, it was a great tactic. However, it was seen as - you are not going to believe this - just not cricket.

But weirdly this time, it worked. And people just stopped bowling it. They changed the laws, and you couldn’t have more than two fielders behind square on the legside.

Bodyline was seen as a part of this. But actually, they didn’t change the law for decades.

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This is Peter May facing Ken “Slasher” McKay at the MCG in 1958/59; it might seem to a modern fan that he’s accidentally bowling down legside. But he wasn’t. Inswing bowlers, and also offspinners were aiming there on purpose.

They would do that with a field with a few legside catchers in place, and then a fine leg, because there was no rule on how many fielders behind square on the legside. Slasher was a medium pacer and fifth bowler, yet in his career, his economy was 1.78. On this day, as May scored his ton, he bowled nine overs for 16 runs.

This wasn’t just him; it was an entire decade. Left-arm finger spinners often bowled around the wicket as well.

This is Fazal Mahmood’s field in 1954. He was much more than a medium pacer, truly one of the best bowlers ever. And yet, it’s like he has a reverse slip cordon in place.

When Jim Laker takes his 19 wickets in a Test, you can see two fielders catching behind square at all times. What is hard to see is the other men, covering boundaries, or even just in the ring. This was about the bowlers getting wickets, but mostly it just ended runs.

I know this will sound weird, but bowlers couldn’t stop batters from scoring, so they stopped them from scoring.

Let me explain. The 1950s end up as such a weird decade in our history.

Every other period is clumped together with another decade. 1870s and 80s are close with the pre-liquid manure era. Then you have 1890s that match the 1900s, and the 1910s, which falls on either side of the war.

Most of the decades are grouped together then, from the 1920s until the 1990s. They are different at times, but similar enough. Then there is a jump up in the 2000s.

But look at the 1950s, completely on their own. It was as if cricket stood still.

In the early 1900s, baseball had what they call its dead ball era, when no one could hit home runs. In cricket, we took it a step further, no one could score runs, or get anyone out.

If you only look at decades since the end of the First World War, the 1950s stand out. They don’t look like they are part of the rest of cricket.

The drop off of runs after 1950 is really clear, and the MCC changed the laws in 1957, and by that stage they had to. The runs per over by that point had dropped to almost under two.

Another change happened around this time. Before World War 2, Australia, South Africa and the West Indies started covering their pitches. The reason was weather. A wet wicket in England, or even New Zealand, would be hard to bat on but rarely dangerous. A damp pitch in Australia would be horrendous.

So even though English cricket was upset, over time, wickets around the world became covered. It meant that conditions played less of a role. It also meant wickets were usually flatter, and crucially harder for longer.

It also created two different styles of cricket. Until this point finger spinners had been good everywhere. But now we had Asian wickets for finger spin, and others that were seam heavy.

From the 1920s to the 1950s, England used spinners for more than 40% of their overs. From the 1980s until now, it has been around 20% each decade. The 2020s started off with it under 20% for the first time ever. The same thing can be seen in Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and the West Indies.

Until 1963, Tests were dominated by finger spin, medium-paced seam bowlers and swing. The finger spinners and seamers struggled with the pitches as they got covered.

Swing bowling was killed by something else. We originally had a backfoot no ball in cricket, but the bowlers were sliding their feet. The decision was made to go to a frontfoot law.

This had unintended consequences: with the frontfoot no ball, bowlers no longer had low, slingy actions that produced swing. They came over the top of the ball, and they got taller, hitting the pitch harder.

This explosion all came together in the West Indies, where tall, hit-the-deck bowlers took over. It was about seam movement, and their two main deliveries were back of a length and bouncers.

This meant batting was no longer for technicians; there was more athleticism to it. And also, courage was required.

Batters would fight back, but with the help of equestrians. The first helmets didn’t really work, as they couldn’t handle the impact of the ball. The second lot didn’t work because they were motorbike helmets and no one could hear the calls. Finally the horse riding helmet manufacturers made the best option, and we’ve been tweaking it ever since.

It wasn’t just the heads that were in danger. In the mid 1970s, cricket didn’t even have proper thigh pads, within a few years the sport had them, helmets, chest pads and even early arm guards. Cricket was facing an invasion of pace, and the sport evolved almost as quick.

Everyone needed a backfoot game, and survival suddenly meant something very different in cricket.

Andy Lloyd was an English opening batter playing in his first match in 1984. He got to 17 not out before Malcolm Marshall ended his career. Lloyd has still never been dismissed in Tests.

What has never ceased to amaze me is that just as batters had to protect their head, bowlers found something to go after, their feet.

It took a couple of decades for reverse swing to go from something that happened by accident to being weaponised by Pakistani bowlers. And shortly after, elsewhere in the world. What this meant was that seam bowlers had become even more important, as they had their first ever old ball weapon.

For the first time since the 1950s, batting averages dipped below 30. Faster and taller bowlers dominated with a weapon they could use in their third spell.

But just as they started to take over, the market intervened. Many people say that batting is capitalist, and bowling is socialist. One is about the individual gains that hopefully trickle down to the rest of the team. The other is a collective effort in which only endless, communal hard work will save you. So it would make sense that cricket’s biggest capitalist gamble, limited overs, would help the batters.

Invented to get crowds in on Sundays in England, sponsored by countless cigarette brands, exploited by the rebellious Kerry Packer and then commodified by Asian cricket markets, limited overs cricket took over the 90s as the main form of entertainment.

The Australians had a headstart on everyone, as Packer played so many ODI games, and then the players started to take the format seriously earlier than most.

This helped their Test game, because in the 90s, frustrated by draws, they decided to use their limited overs skills to ensure their games ended quicker, and in their favour. In 1980, Australia scored at 2.7 runs an over, in 2003, they were the first side to score more than four.

The weird thing was that during the 90s, everyone was complaining that ODIs were ruining Test batting.

Yet, no one seemed to noticed that these new scoring rates meant that bowlers had ceased to be the only hunters in Tests. The 2000s were the first decade ever with a scoring rate of more than three an over. Every decade since the millennium has been over that mark.

Limited overs also changed batting in two very important ways. The reverse sweep was the first shot where you had to change your position before the ball was bowled and hope it worked. And after that, several different - but related - shots were invented to get the ball behind the keeper. Meaning that now the entire field was open.

In cricket, that almost felt like a scientific breakthrough. But the sport was about to have a real version of that.

After Muttiah Muralidaran made his debut, things changed. His action was weird. Bowlers had always delivered with the front of their wrists pointed at the target, or at least a flash of that happening when spin was bowling.

Murali inverted the wrist. When he delivered, it his wrist was staring back at him. His bowling style looked awkward and illegal. For generations, people like him had been shunned, but Sri Lanka fought back, and they brought science into the game.

This was the biomechanics era of our sport, which not only ultimately cleared for Murali, but also we found that all bowlers were actually straightening their arm.

This allowed for common sense, after generations of bowlers had been literally ‘thrown’ out of the sport, often on little more than weird actions, or because we didn’t know about hyperextension.

Of course, not everyone was happy about this new information era. It changed what we understood about cricket. Because as Saeed Ajmal once told us, science is the man.

Our next big change was when a little-known semi-professional cricketer named Paul Hawkins was given LBW for a duck on his pro debut. He invented a ballistics-inspired umpiring tool he called Hawkeye. Even before it was used to officiate decisions, it changed how umpires called them on the field. Altering lines for spinners and lengths for seamers.

It changed finger spin the most. In the early ball by ball era, we have data that says left handers were scoring more against offspin than right handers. From the moment the umpires start to self correct for LBWs, that changes.

A whole generation of tall batters with big front steps were suddenly struggling. Kevin Pietersen against left-arm spin became one of cricket’s first memes.

Shane Watson’s front pad became an even bigger one. Because while seamers were slower to work it out, soon they were pitching the ball up further, and bowling straighter. The line just outside offstump came in several inches.

That was partly because of DRS, but also a new delivery that had been invented. Well, not invented, harnessed. For a 100 years, bowlers ran in and tried to hit the seam. Attempting to keep the string as straight as possible. But for some bowlers that was tough, and the ball wobbled.

In the 2000s, Mohammad Asif and Stuart Clark perfected this delivery deliberately. Then Jimmy Anderson with English cricket spread it around the world.

When they did this, batters were dominating Tests. Since the beginning of ODIs, there was always more runs made by batters in red ball than 50 overs. And in the early 2000s, Test batting went into a crazy era, maybe the greatest period of the batriarchy ever.

But that was stopped by the wobbleball era (which also overlaps with WTC - but the averages dropped two years prior). It even changed the powerplay in limited overs, but the white ball is so bad, it ends quickly.

So in Tests, players started making fewer runs, and they seemingly all went to white ball.

Bowlers fought back in one format, and were almost replaced by robots in the others.

From 1960 until the end of 2025, the average of pace bowling per wicket was 30.7. That dropped to 25.4 in 2018, the lowest in that period. It was 26.3 in 2019 and 27.1 in 2021. This was incredibly low, and it meant that batters had to work out a whole new method. Modern legends like Steve Smith and Virat Kohli saw massive drops in their averages. There is always more than one reason why. But the wobbleball was certainly a huge part.

So batters did find a new way.

They called it Bazball.

In many ways, this is the modern version of the entire struggle. It was a combination of white and red ball skills, was short-lasting, and ultimately annoyed fans around the world. Maybe the perfect cricket invention for this era.

Bazball gave the modern world a unified, that’s just not cricket moment. In meme form.

***

The story goes that when the first forward defensive shot was played, people said that wasn’t cricket. This is a sport that seems to only look back, never forward. Yet, it has changed in every era.

But for all the push and pull of bat vs ball, the Impact Sub might have one of the biggest effects.

It is a quirk of fate that cricket never had substitutions. Basketball had subs from the 1890s. American football in the 1940s. And by the 1960s Football and Rugby did the same. There is no reason they need it and cricket doesn’t. A sport that goes for five days, and can have an injury in the first minute should need subs.

But no real movement ever came in to change it.

Eventually we had the ODI supersub rule, that made almost no sense at all. The Big Bash tried an X-Factor, a name that hid another flawed substitution theory. And now we have the Impact Sub. Still not an ideal plan, but the first to have a real impact on cricket.

The IPL was always a high-scoring league, but it was not a standout on runs per over. The Impact Sub has separated the IPL from all other franchises. It is not cricket, it is cricket with substitutions.

In the early 1800s, cricket started its decades long fight for and against the overarm delivery. If that had not been won, cricket wouldn’t be the second biggest sport in the world. In the 1970s, limited overs cricket started its journey to change the game commercially, turning it from a government run sport to pure capitalism.

And now we have the Impact Sub.

Is this cricket’s next great evolutionary leap? One that will help batters more than bowlers in their eternal battle. Bowling is not extinct, it just has to evolve.

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More teams have left the IPL. A team won a lot of games in the first half, then sort of mirrored that in the back half and couldn’t make it.

We have interesting teams to have a look at. Why they didn’t win this year, whether they were supposed to this year, or how well they did towards the end and it didn’t matter anyway.

This is part two of the IPL Exit Interviews.

CSK

Chennai Super Kings were involved in the biggest pre-season trade, as they bagged Sanju Samson in exchange for Ravindra Jadeja and Sam Curran. The deal was made official in November 2025, so well before his Player of the Tournament at the T20 World Cup. We said in last year’s exit interview that they had some exciting mid-season signings, plus they signed two young Indian talents - Kartik Sharma and Prashant Veer - for a combined sum of INR 28.4 crores. They were missing Nathan Ellis though, which made us worry about their death bowling.

They were close to a par batting team in the middle and death overs, but in the first six they were 20% short of par on our team map ratios. That was mainly down to skipper Ruturaj Gaikwad having the worst IPL season of his career. Specifically in the powerplay, he went at under 130 and was dismissed every 19 balls. Even Sanju Samson, who had a solid year overall, got past the powerplay only four out of 14 times. Ayush Mhatre and Urvil Patel gave a bunch of brisk starts, but their output wasn’t enough to make up for the big names faltering.

Of course, Samson was their best middle overs batter when he made it there, but the one who spent the most time was Kartik Sharma. He was slower than the mean in that phase, but he did hit sixes - 13 of them in 164 balls. However, he would often struggle to get off strike. They got sufficient game time from a young player they seemingly rate, so that’s a plus. Shivam Dube, Dewald Brevis and Sarfaraz Khan were disappointing.

Dube did get much better at the death, scoring 120 off 66 balls for only two dismissals. Kartik and Samson were also good for the limited deliveries they faced in the final four overs.

CSK struggled in the powerplay on the other side of the ball too. They only took 16 wickets in this phase across the league stage, which was equal to Kolkata. And only Delhi struck fewer times. Mukesh Choudhary was their most impressive quick. Anshul Kamboj bowled the most, but he went at more than ten an over and struck once every 25.4 deliveries. Khaleel Ahmed (before his injury) and Akeal Hosein choked the flow of runs. Matt Henry and Spencer Johnson combined went for plenty.

Their middle overs bowling was the highlight of the season, thanks to Jamie Overton and Noor Ahmad. They combined for 23 wickets between them, both going at around eight an over from 7 to 16. Akeal was impactful again, Gurjapneet Singh bowled a fair bit but was under-par both on true economy and wickets. Mukesh was also frugal in this period, though Kamboj went for runs.

Kamboj and Overton were their main bowlers at the death. The former took loads of wickets - 13 of them in 20.1 overs, and was a plus on economy too. Overton didn’t take bags of wickets, but he was more miserly.

They had a 4-3 record at home, defending totals versus DC and KKR and chasing against MI and LSG. Two of the losses were against GT and SRH, who have made the playoffs. So it was certainly better than their away run, but not even close to their most dominant years when they used to win over 70% of their matches at Chepauk.

Their bowling actually held up better than expected coming in, and their core batters were pretty much a let down outside of Samson, who himself wasn’t as consistent as you’d expect your star player to be.

Much like Rishabh Pant and Hardik Pandya, Ruturaj Gaikwad’s captaincy has been under the scanner as well. His own lack of intent with the bat - especially against SRH in a high-stakes clash - was a major talking point. Also, why did they keep benching Akeal from time to time?

To be fair to the CSK management, they had to deal with injuries throughout the year. And they did perform better than last year. But not making the playoffs thrice in a row is a failure for a team whose entire brand was making them regularly.

DC

Delhi’s biggest buy at the auction was Auqib Nabi, who has been the most successful first-class bowler for India over the last couple of seasons. He also had a solid SMAT season. Apart from spending INR 8.4 crores on him, they acquired the likes of Pathum Nissanka, David Miller, Lungi Ngidi and Ben Duckett (who pulled out). They perhaps got Nabi to fill the gap in their new ball bowling, but they again didn’t have a proven high-intent powerplay batter to partner KL once Duckett was out. Of course, Mitchell Starc also joined after the first eight games.

A bit like CSK and KKR, Delhi’s weakest spot this season has also been powerplay batting and bowling. They are a staggering 23% worse than expected, which adds up given they’ve lost lots of early wickets while still scoring at a slow pace. While KL Rahul had a solid season overall, he only struck at slightly more than 150 in the first six overs. Pathum Nissanka was better than him in powerplay, especially as he kept finding fours, but he’s a batter of the same profile as KL and not an uber-attacking opener. Nitish Rana also struggled to get off strike or find the boundary.

And Delhi had overlapping roles in their middle order too with both David Miller and Tristan Stubbs, who we have now established as finishing anchors. Stubbs was excellent at rotating strike, but he simply did not hit boundaries from overs 7 to 16. Miller was above average at hitting fours and singles, but under-par at the rest. The fact that they’re 5% ahead of par in this period is mainly thanks to KL Rahul’s outstanding season in the middle overs. Sameer Rizvi is a slow starter, but he played a couple of match-winning knocks in the first two games of the league, and Nitish Rana was also useful in this phase thrice.

In the final four overs, they are 5% better than par. Miller ups his strike rate big time, while Ashutosh Sharma is their highest and fastest run-getter here. Crazy that the latter wasn’t always a starter. But Stubbs again is below par on boundaries, which his true strike rate of -15 reflects quite well. That’s surprising when you consider that he hits at the end.

Lungi Ngidi and Axar Patel stemmed the flow of runs in the powerplay, but neither of them were strike bowling options. Mukesh Kumar, Auqib Nabi, Mitchell Starc and Kyle Jamieson all had a true economy close to or worse than -1.

Axar and Ngidi were also their best bowlers in the middle, but nobody else had that level of impact. Kuldeep Yadav struggled to contain and take wickets, while T Natarajan went at more than 11 and a half runs per over.

Their death bowling was the most productive phase. Ngidi was again the standout, conceding less than eight an over. Natarajan’s relative and raw numbers also improved at the back end. Mukesh was expensive, while Starc was 7/63 in 6 overs.

Their fielding was also shoddy. Cricket by JB’s Praatibh worked out that they had the second-costliest drops in the competition at the halfway stage. It’s also worth mentioning KL Rahul’s wicket-keeping wasn’t the most efficient either; he often fumbled and missed run outs.

From The Rough

IPL 2026: Catching Efficiencies, Unluckiest Bowlers & The PBKS Anomaly

Rob Barron’s passion for fielding and his incredible rage at the sight of fielders not catching the ball prompted me to look more closely at how players were doing on the field, specifically with their catching…

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a month ago · 8 likes · 2 comments · Praatibh Surana

Delhi have a pathetic 2-5 record at home; the worst in the entire competition along with Mumbai and Lucknow. They won their first and last games, but went winless for five straight matches in the middle. That was a huge dent to their playoff chances this year. Coach Hemang Badani clearly said they did not have control over the home wickets.

Madhav Tiwari played for Delhi towards the end of the league stage, and he looks like a solid option worth investing in. He can potentially provide them the balance they miss, especially if Axar’s batting is a concern next year too. Sahil Parakh is a young but high-intent batter, so it will be interesting to see what they make of him.

They have not made the playoffs since the IPL became a ten team league in 2022. But apart from 2023, Delhi are pretty much stuck as a mid-table team. They’re consistent, but consistently mediocre. If they want to break this streak for good, they really need high-impact players at the top on both sides of the ball.

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KKR

KKR came to the 2026 IPL auction with the highest purse. Their big money signings were Cameron Green, Matheesha Pathirana and Mustafizur Rahman. We know why Fizz didn’t make it, but Pathirana ended up bowling only eight balls this year. Their main Indian quick, Harshit Rana, was also ruled out. They got Finn Allen and Tim Seifert for 3.5 crores combined - an absolute bargain after the T20 World Cup. However, they never really paired the latter two together, as Ajinkya Rahane was the captain.

Their weakest phase with the bat was the powerplay, where they were 22% worse than expected. Rahane faced the most deliveries, and struck at less than 130. Angkrish Raghuvanshi and Cameron Green were also slow at the start. Finn Allen was dropped after the first five matches, where he made 81 runs at 193, but he played two huge knocks after he was back. He struck in the 180s in the first six overs, but it came at the cost of nine dismissals during the field restrictions.

KKR’s major concern in 2025 was their middle overs batting. According to our team maps, this time they performed 3% worse than the mean in those ten overs. But the craziest stat here is that Allen scored 142 off 50 balls the two times he made it past the powerplay. Raghuvanshi scored the most runs, while Green was also really solid. Though Green’s running between the wickets was pretty terrible at times. However, Rinku Singh, Rovman Powell, Ramandeep Singh and Rahane would often get stuck.

And in truth, they had three incredible games in the middle overs, but they were far from flawless.

Rinku, though, was their best batter at the death. He added 154 runs off 76 deliveries without being dismissed, and he even bailed his team out of trouble twice. Green only scored at eight an over, while Raghuvanshi went at more than two runs a ball.

Similarly, Kolkata failed to put the pressure back on with the new ball. Vaibhav Arora was their highest-usage bowler, and he neither saved runs, nor took plenty of wickets. Narine contained runs (again), while Tyagi took a few wickets but was expensive. They also used Green here, and that didn’t work out either. 28-year-old Saurabh Dubey looks like an exciting option for the future though.

The spin duo made it really hard for teams to score off them in the middle overs, while Tyagi was also at his miserly best in this phase. Anukul Roy and Green also took wickets, which meant they were still strong from overs 7 to 16. It’s fair to say this drove their comeback to a large extent.

True stats love their death bowling too, but I think that’s more of a mixed bag. They’ve often entered here when the game is either already lost or won. Arora was their most economical bowler at the end, while Tyagi was more hot and cold.

At home, they had a 3-3 record plus a washout against Punjab. They beat two eventual playoff teams in RR and GT, and won against MI too. LSG was a game they could have won if not for Mukul Choudhary playing an otherworldly knock. But SRH smashed them by 65 runs, while DC also got over the line by 40 runs (albeit in a dead rubber). They were 2-4 at home last time, so they got one extra win. But that’s clearly not enough to challenge for a playoffs spot.

I think Green had a promising year overall, and there aren’t loads of all-rounders around. So they need to decide if they want to back him, or if they can change their overseas combinations - because they’re spending a lot on him. But they also really need to invest in new ball batting and bowling, plus a spin-basher for the middle overs.

Maybe the change needs to start from the top. If they move on from Ajinkya Rahane, maybe they could actually field the opening pair that played a big role in New Zealand reaching the T20 World Cup final.

PBKS

What even happened here? But before we try to break down the madness, let’s look at what they did in the auctions.

They almost ran it back. However, they didn’t have Josh Inglis, who played a pivotal role at No.3. Instead, they signed Cooper Connolly, who played in that position the entire year. Ben Dwarshius was their other major overseas acquisition.

Team maps suggest that they were 18% better than par in the batting powerplay. On raw numbers, they’re not massively different from SRH. They did lose three wickets in this phase thrice during their losing streak - versus GT, SRH and RCB - though.

Priyansh Arya averaged 32 at 214. Prabhsimran Singh only got out four times in this phase and scored at ten an over. Connolly was a very slow starter though, striking in the 130s. And usually Shreyas wasn’t at his best either when he was in early.

But Connolly improved big time once the field was spread out. Prabhsimran didn’t always stay in for too long, but he also continued to go for it. However, their best middle overs batter was Shreyas Iyer, who had a balls per dismissal rate of 42 and had a strike rate of 176. Suryansh Shedge also played a great knock in this part of the innings. Hence, it was another productive period for them.

At the death, Marcus Stoinis slapped the ball around at 236, while Shashank Singh almost made two runs a ball. Connolly also scored really fast from limited deliveries, though most of it was in the game he got a hundred when it was pretty much over. But Shreyas didn’t score at the ruthless rate he did last season, and Marco Jansen didn’t step up either in this period.

So their batting was largely not a concern. But there are some things to look at like Connolly starting slow, or teams working out how to plan for Arya. Suryansh Shedge was also a positive for them, and they made that change once Nehal Wadhera clearly looked out of sorts.

However, their bowling was a mess. They were both expensive and not striking enough with the new ball. Arshdeep did take 7 wickets in 28 overs at an economy of 9.3, but the rest combined for 10 in nearly double the overs.

And their woes continued through the middle as well. Only Yuzvendra Chahal was able to strike consistently - despite all the drops off his bowling - and not be too expensive. Once again, Jansen or Xavier Bartlett just didn’t take enough wickets. And Arshdeep or Vijaykumar Vyshak didn’t have a great time either.

Each of Arshdeep, Jansen and Bartlett - their top three bowlers at the death in terms of usage - conceded more than 11 an over. Plus Ferguson also went for 56 in his four. Vyshak was the only promising bowler here.

Punjab had a 3-4 record at home, but importantly three of those losses were at Dharamshala. The Delhi and Mumbai games were close defeats, and had they won one of those, they might have been in the top four once again. Even against RR at Mullanpur, it wasn’t a straightforward loss, though their first win against GT at the same venue also went down to the wire.

Another thing that passed everyone’s eye test was their terrible fielding. Let’s go back to Praatibh’s piece, where he says their drops were the costliest after the first half of the league stage, but they also shelled them the most. Shashank Singh in particular did not have a good time.

From The Rough

IPL 2026: Catching Efficiencies, Unluckiest Bowlers & The PBKS Anomaly

Rob Barron’s passion for fielding and his incredible rage at the sight of fielders not catching the ball prompted me to look more closely at how players were doing on the field, specifically with their catching…

Read more

a month ago · 8 likes · 2 comments · Praatibh Surana

I don’t think they need to be reactionary with their batting, but they really have to sort out their bowling. Remember, they’ve spent 36 crores on Arshdeep Singh and Yuzvendra Chahal combined, and they honestly haven’t given those levels of returns across both seasons. And if Stoinis doesn’t add much with the ball, isn’t 11 crores overspending? Marco Jansen also hasn’t yet maximized his talent in white-ball cricket, so they’ll hope they get a great year out of him too next time.

The best way to sum up Punjab Kings’ season is that they had the best batting RPO and the worst bowling run rate at the end of the league stage. They went from 6 wins in 7 to losing as many on the bounce before they finally won their last one. But their fate was then in the hands of the other teams, and Rajasthan made the cut ahead of them.

And that is why they truly deserved that fifth spot.

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If you are old enough to have found yourself in a couple of jobs, you will understand what an exit interview is. When you start, there is so much hope and excitement. But exit interviews are the coldest cup of coffee being poured on your head just before you give up your security pass and are escorted from the premises.

That is what we provide here. Cold cups of coffee on the coldest teams in the league.

Where did it all go wrong? Did it ever go right? And what can they do next year?

Welcome to the LSG and MI exit interviews.

LSG

Before the start of the season, the big LSG question was about the bowling lineup they would eventually assemble. They had signed Wanindu Hasaranga for INR 2 crores at the auction, but a hamstring tear meant he was out.

While their powerplay batting looks ridiculously good on this team map here, there are meteor-sized caveats. Against MI, RCB and CSK from May 4 to 12, they made 90/1, 68/0 & 91/1 in the first six overs. But before the Mumbai game, they had already lost six out of eight, which then became seven in nine. Not to downplay those efforts, but was it perhaps a bit too late? In fact, the opening pair of Mitchell Marsh and Aiden Markram did a solid job last year, but we only saw them at the top four times this season. Josh Inglis coming in when they were all but done for the year certainly hurt them, as he could have played instead of the out-of-form Nicholas Pooran.

Last year, we said in the exit interview that they overperformed thanks to Nicholas Pooran being incredible early on. We also added that it’s basically impossible for Rishabh Pant to have that bad a year. Well, the latter ended up happening again, and now there’s a massive question mark on his T20 utility.

Combine that with Pooran’s all-time poor season, and your batting lineup is a staggering 20% worse than par from overs 7 to 16. Till the time they were mathematically alive in the competition, none of their batters struck at 150 in that phase. Even at the end of the batting innings, they often lost wickets and were also not able to accelerate. Though Mukul Choudhary did win them a game out of nowhere at the death.

Visiting teams have really struggled in the powerplay when they’ve come to Ekana. The bowling ratios show us that their pace attack was a real threat with the new ball. Mohammed Shami stepped up as the veteran, but the find of the tournament was Prince Yadav. Of course, Mohsin Khan was also dangerous in the limited games he played, but we remember his 2022 season as well.

Prince was excellent across phases, but LSG as a bowling unit couldn’t back up their new ball impact afterwards. Digvesh Rathi had a terrific first season, but this time he was more expensive and didn’t strike as often. Mayank Yadav also didn’t appear to be at his absolute best this time, though he barely played - two of his games were after they had the E next to their name. And Avesh Khan also struggled a lot.

At home, they went 2-5 last time, and this time too it’s 2-4. They lost the first four, before finally beating RCB and CSK - the latter once they were officially out of the league. They couldn’t chase 160 versus RR, and even though they took early wickets against Delhi, that ended up being a comfortable win for the visitors. Perhaps the KKR super-over game could have swung their way, but in truth, they never looked like they had a proper chasing template in that game.

Honestly, the biggest issue was just that they had Mohammed Shami at No.8 for the majority of the year. That’s just too shallow a batting lineup in the impact sub era, especially when two of your major players are horribly out of touch. You need to plan much better for these scenarios, though perhaps a fit Hasaranga would have helped with that.

So what happens next year? Is Rishabh Pant better off without captaincy? And have we just seen too many cooks in the LSG camp? Maybe they need their owner to scold them more.

Their new ball bowling was strong, and they’ve got heaps of Indian quicks. But the major concern still is that they lacked an identity; if they are a bowling team, surely that has to continue after the fielding restrictions. All year I asked, how is this team trying to win games. And next year, they need an answer to that.

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MI

Mumbai Indians came to the tournament with one of the strongest teams on paper. They didn’t change their core squad - which made the playoffs - from last year, adding Sherfane Rutherford, Shardul Thakur and Mayank Markande via cash trades, and Quinton de Kock in the auction.

MI didn’t have a positive impact with the bat in the first 16 overs of the innings. Their overall stats in the powerplay actually look better than the team map here shows, but the true values don’t love them because Wankhede has been a high-scoring venue.

In the five games Rohit was out, they tried three different opening partnerships, and only once did they get off to a strong start. Occasionally, one of the openers (mainly Ryan Rickelton) carrying on has bailed them out in the middle overs. And one reason for the slight plus at the end has to be Tilak Varma’s incredible acceleration when he made a hundred.

The only side with better new ball numbers than them last season was the title-winning RCB. Trent Boult and Deepak Chahar took early wickets at solid economy rates, but this time they combined for 3/197 in 16 overs till they were officially eliminated from the tournament. Hardik Pandya also conceded nearly three runs per over more than expected.

AM Ghazanfar was their only real wicket-taking threat early on. That, plus Bumrah still not being hit might be why MI are 2% better than par in the first six overs according to the team maps. On raw numbers, their economy was the worst for any team till May 12.

MI were also an incredible middle-overs bowling unit last time. Again, Mitchell Santner was solid till he was around, but Hardik didn’t strike as often, and Jasprit Bumrah just wasn’t close to that level.

Even at the end in 2025, they had both Bumrah and Boult firing. This time, they’ve struggled with wickets in final overs, but they also haven’t contained as well as in previous seasons. And in truth, it’s hard to do much at the end if you’re already behind the game by then.

If there’s a fact that tells us a lot about their chaotic year, it’s that till the RCB game, Corbin Bosch was their highest wicket-taker among the quicks. Yes, the same Bosch who only bowled 55 deliveries till then.

They had a 2-4 record at home, beating KKR to begin the season and LSG later on. They chased pretty well in those games thanks to the opening pair of Rohit & Rickelton. But arch-rivals CSK thrashed them by more than 100 runs, they failed to defend 195 against PBKS and 243 versus SRH, and even the RCB loss appears to be. Last season they went 5-2 at Wankhede, so it has been a pretty significant drop-off.

But essentially, the two biggest differences from that year were Suryakumar Yadav and Bumrah going from all-time great level years to not even ending up with par performances. SKY carried them in the middle overs, and Bumrah was an all-phase unicorn in 2025. But this time, he just struggled to pick any wickets across phases, even though scoring off him was still difficult.

There is still not a clear answer as to what Tilak’s ideal entry point should be - perhaps hitting pace at the death? And not only was Hardik diabolical at the end of games, but also in the middle. Even his bowling dropped off significantly, and there are massive question marks on his captaincy moves.

One thing I liked is that they worked out early on this was not their year. Of course, Will Jacks’ unavailability also caused balance issues. They used 24 players, trying to see if they could find a combo, which they didn’t, but it also allowed them to blood newer players.

What Mumbai proved this is year is when all your senior players lose form at once, it doesn’t matter how good you are on paper, because you’ve just set it alight.

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If you put a blindfold on Prasidh Krishna, place him at the top of his mark and told him to run in, he would bowl back of a length delivery just outside off-stump.

Every bowler has a place where they deliver. It takes years to find, and then is almost impossible to change. Your body works into a rhythm, and that is your spot.

But how often you can bowl it in T20 depends on how much it works. There is no point having a stock ball in this format unless no one can hit it. And in the case of Prasidh last year, it worked 25 times. Enough for him to get the most wickets.

What is incredible is how much he could just bowl his best ball over after over, and just pull it off. That kind of year is huge for a bowler. Because he didn’t need yorkers, or to bowl wide. He was almost indifferent to the stumps, and only bowled length occasionally.

Where Prasidh landed the ball was his zone, and he dominated with it.

Against the right-handers, we can see that outside the odd length ball coming back into the stumps, he hovered almost exclusively in his zone, peppering it and making you handle that delivery.

For the lefties he looked at the same spot, but added a ball at the top of off stump as well.

He was good against normal handed batters, averaging 24. Versus the southpaws, he dropped that to 12. None of them could stay in against him. They also barely scored at more than a run-a-ball.

He was a southpaw slayer.

This season, those same goofy-footed batters are scoring five more runs an over against him. And their average has gone from 12 to 66.

That’s a change.

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What is the greatest image in cricket? If you were a sculptor, it might be a perfect elbow up cover drive. If you’re filming, it would probably be a bowler leaping at the crease. And if you’re painting, the entire scene of a ground is majestic.

But there is something about stumps splattered from a fast bowler. The rawness, carnage and finality. They were there, the batter was supposed to protect them, and now it’s a wooden massacre. They sit splayed, the bails are who knows where, and the batter is terrified of looking back.

If you are in a ground, the biggest reaction of any crowd is always for a bowled. It’s primal. And this year in the IPL, you are less likely to see one than ever before.

Our sport’s greatest event is disappearing and being replaced by wides. The best thing in cricket, replaced by the worst.

***

Cricket used to be government-run. Sure, there was a slight difference, but it was a not-for-profit style. It was essentially run by grey men in old-boy blazers to sit in private dining rooms and get their friends free tickets. It was not marketed or monetised. It existed, and paid for itself, and that was all anyone needed from the sport.

But cricket is now at the whims of free markets and is a billion-dollar industry. The players get paid, probably still under their worth, but decent professional athlete wages. They work for billionaires, not cricket administrators exclusively. And the future of the game is no longer in committees, but instead moves on the whims of the market cycle.

That has affected how cricket is played on the field. In the early 2000s, teams looked at Moneyball as a template for limited-overs cricket. England used it even in Tests. TV companies like SuperSport, Channel Four and Channel Nine brought in gimmicks that eventually changed the sport on the pitch and became playing conditions.

Then through the Rajasthan Royals early analysis, cricket changed on the field at a rapid rate. Match-ups are now an old cricket phrase your uncle moans about.

And what the IPL did was not invent new tactics, but franchise them. Players and coaches move around the world playing in other leagues. They’re sponges, mopping up tips and tricks, but now they have the budget and time to use them at this level. Most non-Indian franchises don’t have time to think about what they are doing beforehand due to their low budgets. IPL teams spend months preparing for their league.

New Zealand cricketers would do similar things in the 80s, but they would be taking their ideas from local cricket, and fitting in between their jobs of teaching or driving cabs. The current brain trusts in the IPL are like cricket’s first funded strategic thinktanks.

But even with all that money, brains and time, the IPL was not all that different from any other league on the field. And that will not do when you are the most expensive show in town.

After the Hundred’s tinkering and the Big Bash’s random experiments, the IPL had the Impact Sub.

According to the officials at the time, “A number of team sports allow teams to make tactical substitutes i.e., football, rugby, basketball, baseball. The substitute is allowed to perform or participate like any other regular player.”

What is interesting about this change is that the unintended consequences were never tested in other lower leagues. The Impact Sub came into the SMAT (India’s second T20 league) in the same year. And even more incredibly, after bumping the rates up, it left, but left the RPO at the elevated level.

There is an argument made by many (and me frequently) that batters have been held back by orthodoxy way too much. The Impact Sub (along with the natural elevation of run scoring, T10 and even Bazball) has thrown that out the window. Batters know they can score quicker now, and they’re going for it. The Impact Sub going away might slow the rise, but not bring it back to previous levels.

Toothpaste does not easily go back into the tube.

There is no way those involved in the rule could have believed it would move this quickly. To the point where the chase for 300 scores now seems inevitable and once breached, will be consistently scaled.

It took the free market and breaking up of traditional cricket to get here - an experimental, half-thought-out rule change that has led to the greatest period of runflation in cricket history.

***

A few years back, the NBA had a problem: people stopped dunking on fast breaks. It is hard to dunk in the league, because there are a lot of very tall men to jump over. So the easiest time is when a steal or rebound turns into a fast break.

And once the offensive player has the ball and is ahead, there is little anyone can do to stop their highlight play.

So defences took an idea from European basketball and would simply grab a player in a non-traditional manner to make sure the referees saw it and called the foul. They were willing to give up one foul, to stop two automatic points.

The reason was to slow scoring, but it also stopped dunking. Which is one of basketball’s main attractions.

So the NBA introduced a rule that any foul like this resulted in a free throw from your best shooter, and you got the ball back. Now there was no reason to make this foul, as it would end up with more points, so it stopped. And the dunks came back.

Years ago, a cricketer pointed out to me that Chris Gayle had a huge amount of wides delivered to him. And I checked, and he was right. At a certain time in the innings, it made more sense to deliver a wide to him than let him reach the ball.

Not long after that, many players got the same treatment, and wide yorkers became a part of cricket. West Indians seem to almost always top these lists; no one wants to bowl anywhere near them.

But it makes sense for all cricket, while players have been better at hitting over the offside, usually power hits to go leg. That’s where the sixes are hit.

Bowling in T20 has been moving wider every year.

***

When DRS was introduced in cricket, many people opposed it. It wasn’t their cricket. It took a long time, nothing seemed to be sliding down legside, and the technology was clearly not perfect. It was just all wrong for them.

And many thought we could go back to a simpler time, when the TV audience knew the ball was out, but the umpire didn’t. That, of course, could never happen.

The fact that no balls and wides weren’t called with technology was also strange. So many mistakes were made by umpires, especially on wides, as batters move around the crease so much.

It is the correct decision to review wides. It is also the worst moment in cricket.

There is almost a dread that cricket fans have the moment a wide ball is bowled, and either the keeper or batter looks annoyed at the call. You know what is coming, time is about to stop still while grainy Patterson–Gimlin type footage and 1970s TV graphics appear on the screen. Some poor technician is trying to find the batter’s toes, the ball is blurred off near a weirdly drawn blue line, and for some reason, the entire thing takes three times longer than any other DRS decision.

And the pain of watching this is always worse, because you know, next ball, there will be another wide ball, and someone else will disagree with the decision, and the whole thing could happen again.

In what is the fastest-moving format of cricket, we have managed to make time stand still.

***

Mitchell Starc delivers a wide basically every two overs in the IPL, whereas Washington Sundar takes 12 overs to deliver one. And being he barely bowls any more, that means he might not even have one every year.

Clearly, there are different kinds of bowlers who are more likely to deliver them; most at the top are swing bowlers. It is an occupational hazard of that art.

The most interesting person here might be Kieron Pollard, a bowler who didn’t swing it much, but was always ahead of the game tactically. And he was one of the first bowlers to consistently bowl wide, and probably one of the first batters to have this delivered to him.

So Pollard would bowl very wide, not even at the death, and was also happy to bowl bouncers as well.

At the time, Pollard was going against the grain; now everyone is on his side.

There are 74 games played in the IPL now, and that was not always the case. But those many matches have happened before - from 2011-2013. At that stage we were looking at 600 wides delivered, the last four years it’s been around 800.

If you look at balls per no ball, there is no strong pattern here. It bounces around, but after 2018, bowlers’ frontfoots started crossing the line more. But after the Impact Sub, bowlers are not delivering them again.

Compare that with the wides, there used to be one every five overs, and we’re now down to every three. It is hard to look at this and not think the bowlers have made a conscious decision to uncouple themselves from the stumps.

But let’s split that up, yes wides are happening more all game through, but not massively. The wide rate was roughly the same, no matter when in the game you bowled them. That is no longer true. After 2016, we have seen every year a clear separation.

Of recent times at the death, we have more than doubled the amount. There is a wide every two overs, which is the same rate of Mitch Starc, the widest bowler in the league.

Wides at the death are now an epidemic.

***

It is up to bowlers to devise methods to stop batters. And that is not always going to be pretty. The Kedar Jadhav sidearm sling is not fun to watch. Mark Watt’s 30 yard delivery is clever, but that’s it. Dwayne Bravo’s around the wicket back heel yorkers are miserly and boring.

That is the job of these bowlers: to stop runs. So they are already the party poopers of this format. But we can accept them in this role, even if it stops some fun.

Even the wide yorker, sure it is a bit boring at times, but when delivered correctly it feels like a genuine part of the natural battle between bat and ball.

But there is no way to deliver this without bowling the occasional wide. To make the idea work, it has to be well out of the arc, so at best, the bowler has around a 30 cm window to put this ball. Oh, and the batter is moving too. So that window opens and closes randomly like an evil clown running a mini golf course.

There is no way to pull this delivery off legally more than about 60% of the time. Seamers hope that sometimes the ball will be hit, or mis-hit, to save them from the umpire’s wrath.

At best, for every ball delivered to hug the inside of the wide demarcation zone, we’re looking at about 30% that will be called if missed or left.

Sometimes, the real wide ones are just left. We can tolerate a leave in a Test, not in the death. No one wants to see any of this.

You can’t blame the bowlers, but also, is this what we want in the sport? There is a duty of care of the administrators to make cricket as watchable as possible. Now, clearly, they have shat every bed on this for generations.

But here it is more complicated; they have almost legislated bowlers into an apocalyptic future already, and the best defense bowlers have is hanging the ball wide, and it just turns out that is the absolute worst thing imaginable to view. We could bring in a condition that says it’s two runs for a wide (especially at the death). Penalising the bowlers for this is a hideous idea as they are already under attack.

But also, NO ONE WANTS TO WATCH WIDES.

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***

The biggest moment I have been in a ground for was not Martin Guptill’s run out, Carlos Brathwaite’s sixes, Anya Shrubsole’s spell or Ben Stokes’ winning runs at Headingley. It was Mitchell Starc to Brendon McCullum in the 2015 World Cup final. One ball. You can find the video on the subreddit known as Death Rattle Porn.

New Zealand were the side of the moment, and Australia were at home, in a full MCG. Starc was bowling fire, and McCullum was breathing fire. It was such a big moment. And when Starc bowled McCullum, the ground shook in a way I have never felt before.

Bowled hits different. We use the phrase castled, and not lightly. Your home has been raided, and you hear that death rattle.

But, we are hearing that less every year. We are close to hearing a death rattle on this as a T20 dismissal. It used to be around one in five wickets; now it’s hovering close to one in ten.

Until this year, LBWs had stayed the same. Meaning bowlers are still going for the stumps, they’re just not getting through as much. This is going to sound odd, but seamers are bowling as straight as they ever did, and also as wide as they ever have.

In the last few years, LBWs and bowleds at the death are moving towards each other, Compare that to 2014, where almost no LBWs happened at the end of games, and bowled was really common. That year, 1.62% of wickets at the death were off the pads, and 23.8% were bowled. In 2025, 6.9% were LBW, and castled was down to 13.8%.

Bowled has nearly halved. LBW has more than quadrupled.

How is that possible?

Well, there is a very clear reason for this. What used to happen is that batters would clear their front leg and swing hard through the ball. Meaning bowled was still a valid option, but LBW, not as much.

As bowlers went wider, even if you clear the front leg, you have to do it from in front of the stumps, so you can still reach the wide ones.

The geolocation of batters has changed. But the bowling, not as much.

There are still lots of balls at the stumps; in fact, this year there has been a rise. However, there is a difference.

From 2015-2018, the majority of death balls were at the base of the stumps or just outside off bail.

Those balls in the channel have almost all been replaced by wide full balls. On top of that, you will now see more bouncers as well. These obviously can also be called when they are too high.

So, yay, more wides.

If you look at Arshdeep Singh’s bowling at the death, you can see he is a combo of everything. Wide yorkers, a little bit of near off bail, various straight yorkers and heaps of short balls.

Compare that to Anshul Kamboj. He has two deliveries. Straight, or wide - both full. It is very rare for him to do anything else. For either guy, all those wide deliveries are moving batters in front of their stumps.

When Kamboj bowled Himmat Singh this year with a yorker, he had moved his place on the crease so he could reach the wide ones. The only reason he was bowled was because he got nutmegged. Through the legs is one of the few chances of anyone getting bowled any more.

***

There is an eternal battle in all sports when it comes to fans, hardcore versus casuals.

It is the hardcore fans watching this video now, those who complain on social media, who base their nights around who is playing the next game. No sport would ever survive without us. We are the reason cricket is the second biggest sport in the world. And we have always been treated like shit.

When sports want to get bigger, they don’t try to get casuals to be more hardcore; they try to find more casuals.

The IPL’s method to get people to cricket was through Bollywood. In England, the ECB consulted a website called Mumsnet and asked whether the games were too long. Even back as far as the first-ever tour of English cricketers to Australia in the 1850s, they were so worried cricket was not good enough entertainment that they brought in a hot air balloon during the lunch break.

Casual fans have always been courted, pleaded with and even begged to come to cricket. And the people who built the sport were ignored and taken for granted.

In modern T20 cricket, this plays out very clearly. There is a feeling among administrators (no one has ever shown me the data to back it up) that casual fans love runs, while hardcore fans usually prefer wickets.

Nothing is ever this clear, but on the basic level, if you are just watching a little bit of cricket, the exciting parts are probably the big hits. Those obsessing over every ball need the tension of wickets to break that up.

So, according to administrators at least, there are two clearly different products needed.

In that fight, we always see casuals win. The mass market pays more than the hardcore. And so this chase towards 300 with an impact sub is really less to do with cricket, and more to do with marketing.

What is strange is that in doing this, the only time where the runs and wickets markets overlap is at the death. There is almost always a chance of a wicket, that being hopefully bowled. And boundaries should come, with more sixes almost guaranteed.

The death is no longer that time. This year in the IPL, there have been fewer sixes than in any other recent year. But incredibly, there are so many sixes in the other parts of that game that they have almost merged. The ball clears the ropes every 10 balls at the death now, and 12 balls the rest of the time.

This has produced something we have seen in baseball with home runs. It means you get more exciting moments, but fewer balls are in play from ground hits. It turns it into a highlight sport. Which, for casual fans, is perfect.

That seems to be what the chase to 300 is getting us to as well.

Does it matter if there are more wide balls where nothing happens, if we still see more sixes overall? Should the end of the game have the same six rate as any other time? Is there an actual need to balance the bat and ball part of our sport?

The issue with cricket is that no one really asks, let alone answers, these questions. We have a general low murmur of moaning, and then surprise changes that no one asked for.

Should we be worried that 300 will soon be breached, or is that just the evolution of the sport where batters finally understand they don’t have to be conservative anymore?

Not all of this is down to the Impact Sub, some would argue (I did for about 15 years) that T20 bowlers were actually beating their conservative batters. And that one day, we would see a huge boom in runs. But the Impact Sub was like steroids in the 1980s to athletics, supersizing the results.

As the SMAT and the Indian team has shown us, taking the Impact Sub away doesn’t really slow them down. Batters’ consciousness has been altered. And we’re never going back to the pre-Impact Sub era.

The two best questions in cricket right now should be, is this how we want cricket to be played, and who are we making cricket for?

The good news is, in the last over, when your favourite fast bowler delivers a wide, that could never hit the stumps and rarely be hit for six. There is plenty of time to reflect on this while the bowling team is reviewing a wide.

If the greatest image in cricket was the stumps splayed, the worst might be the wide signal.

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Punjab drop catches, and they don’t take wickets. Yet (and this is a big yet), they have been near top of the table for most of the year.

In fact, they were undefeated for ages. Without bowlers taking poles, or fielders catching them. Maybe this is the only franchise in the IPL that could combine this kind of record. Until very recently, they have been a deeply unserious team. They are funny, even when they are good. The perfect combination.

Praatibh from Cricket by JB just did a piece looking at all the drops in the league, and they weren’t just in front, but three drops clear of second place. Missed chances don’t always mean what fans think they do. A team creating heaps of potential catches will often have more drops as well.

However for them, this obviously affected their bowling. Yuzi Chahal is having an ok season by numbers; if you factor in drops, he’d be doing much better. So they have a bowling line-up that should on paper, take wickets. But on the field, they are matched with a team without hands.

(Shashank Singh on his own is somehow to blame for 106% of their drops.)

This creates a situation where Punjab bowlers can’t take any wickets, which is one of the reasons their team should win games.

That means for them to win, which they have a lot, something went right. And this year, their opening partnership went about as right as anything has.

Before this year, Punjab had Prabhsimran Singh and Priyansh Arya, now they’ve been fully portmanteau-ed. That is the new trend, like it was for celebrity couples a decade or so back. But while JaiSoorya and Travishek are more natural pairings of players who would be stars on their own, this combination feels more random, almost accidental, and inspired from the seasons when Punjab were the clown car of chaos. Yet, they form this almost perfect modern opening partnership.

PrabhArya, the two harlequin hitters of the IPL, have won Punjab an awful lot of games in the last two years.

***

In the first Men’s World Cup on the opening day, India had to chase 335. Sunil Gavaskar scored 36 off 174 balls. He had decided that the target was too big to chase. He didn’t want India to be embarrassed by being bowled out. During the innings, a man ran out on the field to argue with him. Most of us find this funny now, but at the time, this was no joke.

51 years later, in a run chase of 265 in 20 overs, Prabhsimran Singh was 41 off 13 and Priyansh Arya was 37 off 11. They are the court jesters of chaos.

Gavaskar was making what he believed was the rational and pragmatic choice for his era and team. Prabhsimran Singh and Priyansh Arya took that logic, scrunched it up and set it on fire. The relationship between batters and what’s possible has been fundamentally rewired. And these two lunatics aren’t the next step in that evolution. They’re proof that it mutated.

After nine games, Prabhsimran and Arya as a pair have scored 360 runs this season. Their partnership average of 51 is the second highest this season. The crazier part is they’re going at 15 runs per over - nearly 3 points better than Sunrisers in second place.

For a minimum of 300 partnership runs in a season, Prabhsimran and Arya are the fastest-scoring opening pair ever. Travishek were all people could talk about two years ago, and they’re outperforming them comfortably - incidentally beating their 2024 RPO of 13.21 in the process.

They average 86 at 12.4 RPO in the powerplay. They average 20 more than Gujarat, a team set up to make their top order go deep.

After nine games, this was the second-highest average by a powerplay team in an IPL season and the highest RPO ever, with the second best-team being this year’s Boss Baby-led Rajasthan.

Punjab have chased five targets this season, three of them being above 210. In all these chases, these two systematically dismantled the equation needed to win. The required rates dropped by 0.99, 1.92 and 3.4. The last one was borderline insulting.

Before the season, I thought one of the issues for this team would be them regularly chasing 220 plus totals. Not because they didn’t have hitting, but because I wasn’t sure if it was repeatable.

In half a season, they became the most inevitable crushing machine in T20.

In those first nine games, Priyansh Arya scored 283 runs at a strike rate of 250 while averaging 42. Prabhsimran Singh was at 346 runs, striking at 179 and averaging 58. One of them almost always seems to pass 30, despite the fact the first ball is treated like the last delivery of the innings.

The first ten ball strike rates this season are 257 for Arya and 189 for Prabhsimran. They are first and seventh quickest. We’ve reached a point in T20 where a guy striking at 189 in his first ten balls is the “anchor”.

Prabhsimran Singh has been around in the IPL for a while now. He made his IPL debut in 2019 when he was just 19 years old. However, till 2022, he only played six IPL games.

2023 was his first full season, when he made 358 runs at an average of 25 and a strike rate of 150. A true average of -14 and a true strike rate of 14. He was a short-haul, big hitter. However, nearly a third of his runs came in one innings.

In 2024, they tried him as a number three, and it didn’t work. So he came back to open, and we have what he does now. In 2025, he scored 549 runs at a true average of -6 and a true strike rate of 16.

This year is a little different from 2025, because he’s not whacking spin, but destroying seam bowling. He stands deep in his crease; sometimes it feels like he might fart the bails off. But from that position, he is doing something crazy, smashing pace everywhere without being dismissed. Through nine games, his true average was 209 against it. Against spin, he wasn’t staying in or smashing it anywhere near that fast.

Throughout his career, Prabhsimran has been a destroyer of fuller lengths and bouncers.

However, a big reason for Prabhsimran’s development versus pace is him getting better versus both good and back-of-a-length deliveries.

In 2023, he could not stay in against any length that a normal human seam bowler would deliver to him.

When the bowler went into the wicket aimed at him, he was entirely stuck.

But he worked it out, and he has found a way to stay in against length, and whack it when it’s slightly shorter. With his power, he just needed a method; he has that now.

And what is wild is that he went from someone with weaknesses everywhere, to one of the best players in the league against seam.

And yet, for years, spin was his thing. If you think Prabhsimran is a whole new man, he is. But like he needs to keep his life in perfect harmony, he has somehow stopped doing well against spin. He was a monster before, and so far in 2026 he hasn’t been.

So this beast man changed his beast mode. But that is ok, as he is only half of PrabhArya.

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(You can find any explanations regarding our advanced metrics here.)

Priyansh Arya was a late bloomer. His big boom was after a huge 2024 Delhi Premier League season. He followed that up in the SMAT as well. And suddenly, he was an IPL cricketer.

In his first IPL season, he scored 475 runs. His true average was -13, and his true strike rate was 34. Here for a good time, not a long one.

Those numbers were similar across pace and spin; he just went much faster against the tweakers.

Again, like his brother from another mother, if seamers bowled a good or back of a length delivery to him, he really struggled. You just had to bowl quality deliveries to him and he was out.

If we look at the areas that troubled him the most, it was mainly good/back of a length outside off. He made 57 off 39 balls and was dismissed five times. This is classic Test match line and length, and it’s understandable why a man that’s only played three first class innings in his life would struggle against it.

In the same zone that troubled him last year, he’s made 53 off 17 balls and is yet to be dismissed. He’s turned what was an extreme weakness into an extreme strength.

It’s like he was a video game character who found power-up codes online.

In 2026, he had a true strike rate of 95 through the first nine games.

Against pace, he has a true average of 3 and a true strike rate of 82.

Actual video game numbers.

Both of these guys just re-coded themselves for the Impact Sub era.

It isn’t that Prabhsimran and Arya don’t have flaws. They have glorious ones.

Both have issues against back of a length at 140+ KPH. Between them, they are dismissed about every 6.5 balls against this. Think of Poor Prabhsimran stuck on the crease to Kagiso Rabada.

But the fun time good boys destroy bowlers when they miss the length. Arya against other lengths at high pace has a strike rate of 282. Prabhsimran against non-back of a length balls has a strike rate of 186. You either make them look silly, or they pump you. It’s Russian roulette batting.

So spin is the direction to choose, and we meant that very literally.

The ball that spins into Arya and away from Prabhsimran troubles both of them. This is a truly wonderful thing for teams, because one is a lefty and the other holds the bat right-handed. It is Arya, who is the freaky moonchild here.

Most left-handers grow up just wanting to eat the ball spinning back into them. Chris Gayle counts the sixes he hit from left-arm orthodox bowlers when sleeping at night. This is where southpaws get a huge advantage in T20. And Arya just gives it all back.

He cannot stay in long enough to feast. Ben Dunk would roll over in his grave at these numbers, were he actually dead.

Teams actually have a lot of options for spinning the ball into left-handers, because of all the righties out there. And Prabhsimram’s decline against spin has meant that you can bowl this to both of them.

But there is a funny thing about T20. In the powerplay, no matter how much a batting team might struggle against the turning ball, up front, with the field in, bowling teams get nervy.

This year, PrabhArya scored 19 runs off Harsh Dubey in an over, and 20 from Axar Patel. So teams have stopped bowling this direction of spin to them. If you look closer though, you’ll remember that Arya gave a half chance to Dubey and was dropped off Axar.

The greatest thing an attacking player can do is make you think there is nothing you can try against them. This year, PrabhArya have made their flaws almost invisible, while feasting on what they want.

In 2022, the Punjab Kings went with a clown car or whackhouse team. They were perhaps the first team to be fully strike rate pilled. Everyone had to score fast, every ball. They had Odean Smith, who believed that every delivery should be a six, be it with his batting or bowling.

It was hilarious and unsustainable. Arya missed that year, but Prabhsimran was there. These are the descendants of those clowns, but in terms of impact, they are more like the Joker. Cold-blooded killers who play cricket like it’s a race to the end.

It isn’t that the Joker doesn’t have a plan, he is just hiding it with madness and whimsy. Making it also impossible for Batman to do his job.

PrabhArya works the same way. All you have to do is bowl consistently over 140 KPH for 6 balls at their ribs. Or find a spinner disciplined and brave enough to bowl in the right direction while these juiced-up jesters are coming for them. And yet this year, no one has managed that.

PrabhArya is a lot of fun, but it is no joke.

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T20 batting in 2026 is like Michael Phelps swimming in a pool, with meth in his veins instead of blood.

The Impact Sub in the IPL might have juiced the scoring, but once it showed the way, everyone has jumped on board.

A couple of years back there was one Abhishek Sharma. Today you could count at least five. One of them is a bowler-murdering mid-teen machine.

India might be at the forefront of this batting blitzkrieg, but other nations have made strides as well. Travis Head is one half of Travishek, and Heinrich Klaasen has changed spin bashing forever.

Australia and South Africa are undoubtedly two teams who have made significant efforts to evolve, and have enjoyed a decent amount of success with this intent-pilled modus operandi.

And then you have England, the poster boys of upping the volatility. They might not have the results since winning the T20 World Cup in 2022, but they have known no other way for quite some time now. The White Hot Revolution may well be dead, but that hasn’t stopped the English lads from swinging for the hills.

When we think of international teams who simply haven’t received the space age batting memo, Pakistan is perhaps the first name that comes to mind.

They might not be the worst T20I unit in the world, given how they were runners up in the Asia Cup, but currently it would feel much safer to back New Zealand or the West Indies ahead of them in a World Cup.

Pakistan were one of the most dynamic T20 sides when the shortest format kicked off, and two decades later, their batters are throwing the kitchen towel at everything. The sink is fixed firmly to the floor with the strongest adhesives money can buy. Even when they have tried to up the ante, they have failed miserably, unable to shift gears.

Perhaps the biggest contributing factor here is a skill deficit, but for a team that made the semi-final and final of back-to-back T20 World Cups at the start of the 2020s, this is a catastrophic fall from relevancy. The unpredictables have become painfully predictable, and while their pace bowling stocks have also dipped, batting remains their Achilles heel.

If you are convinced to play Babar Azam as a fail-safe batter at number four in a T20 World Cup in Sri Lanka, then something along the way has gone seriously wrong. But if not Babar, then who?

It is a question that desperately deserves some answering.

***

In this day and age, if you take ten deliveries as a batter just to get your eye in, your value-add in T20s diminishes drastically. The best in the business are attacking the ball from the word go and refuse to slow down in a later phase. If you have scored a sixty-ball ton in twenty overs, more often than not, you have let your team down.

Slow starters are fast running out of fashion, struggling to hold down their spot in top teams. They still exist, but it seems almost inevitable that they will be rendered obsolete at some point by those who start smashing the ball early in their innings.

The top echelon of fast scorers are a new breed altogether. You are a hot T20 batting commodity if you possess the freak gear, and that term is synonymous with Abhishek Sharma.

The 2024 edition of the IPL, in which Sunrisers Hyderabad lost the final, is where all of this madness begins. Since the start of that tournament, Abhishek has averaged 35 with the bat in the IPL and T20Is, striking at 196, and this includes a major slump in form during the 2026 T20 World Cup. His nearest neighbours in this period are Travis Head and Phil Salt. Head averages 31 at strike rate of 173, while Salt is at 35 and 171 respectively.

In these two plus years, Abhishek’s average in his first ten deliveries is 49, and he’s striking at 185. His odds of surviving those first ten balls are quite high, and rather than slowing down after, he takes his ball striking up a notch.

It is worth noting that in the ongoing IPL season, Abhishek doesn’t stand out as an anomaly anymore. He is joined by the likes of Priyansh Arya, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi and Rajat Patidar, who are all striking at north of 180 at an average of 35 plus in their first ten deliveries, for a minimum of 40 balls faced. In fact, Abhishek is not even topping this list of mad maxes.

Unsurprisingly, the 2026 edition of the IPL is already the fastest scoring franchise T20 competition in history, and India’s batting output in the shortest format is hitting unprecedented highs. So perhaps it’s unfair to set their belligerence as a benchmark. Also, the Impact Sub rule definitely does play a role in allowing these batters to go gung ho.

***

But comparisons aside, where do Pakistan’s batters stand in terms of quick run-scoring in T20s?

If we look at the first ten ball data from the recently concluded PSL season, there are 31 batters who faced at least 40 deliveries, who averaged over 20 with the bat with a strike rate of 130 and above.

Out of this cohort of batters, there are 17 who hail from Pakistan. Hassan Khan would have made it 18, had he not pledged his allegiance to the USA.

Both Fakhar Zaman and Salman Ali Agha did not make this list of 17, which means that Pakistan’s most mainstream attacking batter has underwhelmed, and their skipper in T20Is is nowhere near the conversation. It should come as no surprise that Mohammad Rizwan also finds himself on the outside, along with Saim Ayub, who has been a better carrom ball bowler than batter in the T20 format in recent times. He’s currently in his reverse Sunil Narine arc.

Other noteworthy names who failed to make the cut are those of Hasan Nawaz, Khawaja Nafay, Azam Khan, Mohammad Naeem, Khushdil Shah and Irfan Khan Niazi.

Only one Pakistani batter had a first ten ball strike rate in excess of 200 in this PSL season, and his name is Maaz Sadaqat. His average of less than 24 suggests that he has not fulfilled his role consistently enough, but he still stands tall as an outlier, with the freakiest of gears.

In all T20s, Maaz has averaged over 32 striking the ball at 148 plus, which reassures the notion that he is someone Pakistan could place their bets on, especially when it comes to maximising the powerplay. Someone in the mould of Imran Nazir or Shahid Afridi is the need of the hour, and Maaz could be that guy. It helps that he can bowl left arm off spin and is a livewire in the field.

Going back to the 17 Pakistan batters shortlisted, we need to determine how many of them had a successful PSL season in terms of ball striking. If we look at batters who had a minimum strike rate of 140 in this PSL season, that number drops down to 14, with Haider Ali, Saud Shakeel and Abdullah Fazal exiting the race.

And so, we have established the Fast Fourteen, spread across various roles.

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Arafat Minhas and Shadab Khan are spin bowling allrounders, Farhan Yousaf and Shan Masood batted in the middle order in this season of the PSL, Abdul Samad was a finisher, Mohammad Haris and Usman Khan are the only full-time wicketkeeper batters, and everyone else bats in the top three. Even the two keepers prefer a top order spot.

It really should not shock anyone why Pakistan have fielded about a million openers in their T20I team in recent years. They have far too many batters in their ranks who love batting up top.

Six of these fourteen batters have both a positive true average and true strike rate in their first 10 balls - Babar Azam, Sahibzada Farhan, Sameer Minhas, Arafat Minhas, Abdul Samad and Farhan Yousaf.

Babar Azam just makes the group with a true strike rate of 1 and a true average of 105. He was only dismissed once in his first 10 balls.

Sameer Minhas and Sahibzada Farhan both have a true average and true strike rate over 15. Farhan was comfortably Pakistan’s best batter in the T20 World Cup and he has continued that run of form in the PSL. Sameer Minhas seems to have a similar starting profile to Farhan, making him an interesting backup to him. The teenager is a technician, and doesn’t force slogs like Farhan does on occasion, which makes him different as a strokemaker.

Abdul Samad averaged 28 with a strike rate of over 195 in his first ten deliveries. Those numbers are second only to Maaz, although in a different role as a finisher. His true average of 10 and true strike rate of 40 in his first 10 balls is impressive for a batter who’s playing in a highly volatile role, making him a very reliable lower-order hitter. He also doesn’t have any proper competition in this role, which helps his case further.

Arafat Minhas, Sameer’s elder brother, also has a true strike rate above 30, with a true average of 8, making him another formidable death overs hitter. Him being a spin bowling all-rounder means he also adds balance to the side. Depending on the squad composition, you can have one or both of him and Samad.

Yasir Khan and Usman Khan have both a negative true average and true strike rate in their first 10 balls. Though Usman Khan managed to have a great season batting in multiple roles, Yasir Khan had a middling one. Pakistan need someone to keep wicket, which benefits Usman.

Two batters have a positive true average but a negative true strike rate - Abdullah Shafique and Shan Masood. The latter has been starting decently, with a true average of 35 and a true strike rate of -2, whereas the former has not been dismissed in his first 10 balls this season. It seems very intentional, as he has a true strike rate of -10. He’s definitely not someone you want in the first XI, but if you want a Babar Azam backup, he’s about as good as it gets. His issue though, seems to be making big runs. He was almost impossible to dismiss in his first 10 balls but he only went past fifty once.

While Maaz has a true average of -11, which is outside our allowed range, his true strike rate of 77 sets him apart. He’s batting in a different league altogether. The high volatility starts are more than worth the trade off. A good Maaz day ends the game in the powerplay itself. Since he’s only 20, he should get better and better. In an ideal world, Pakistan should pair him with Farhan to open the batting.

Shadab Khan, Shamyl Hussain and Mohammad Haris have positive true strike rates but have a true average below -5. Like Maaz, Haris’ true strike rate of over 50 is worth the trade off. However, if you play both of them in the same team, you could easily be two down for not many runs. The best option is to have Haris as a second attacking opener option, behind Maaz in the depth chart.

***

Not all batters who succeed against pace do well against spin, and vice versa. Some excel versus both bowling types. The Fast Fourteen are no different.

Four of the fourteen have a strike rate over 200 versus pace whilst starting - Arafat Minhas, Maaz Sadaqat, Abdul Samad and Mohammad Haris.

Maaz, Arafat and Haris have a true strike rate over 80. The elder Minhas brother seriously impresses here. A true average of 24 combined with that insane true strike rate means it’s fair to say he’s the best starter versus pace in the PSL. In a similar mould is Abdul Samad, with a true average of 21 and a true strike rate of 60, which works like a charm considering both power hitters mostly bat in the death overs.

In the next tier, we have Shamyl Hussain and Sameer Minhas with true strike rates over 25 at positive true averages against the quick stuff.

On the opposite extreme, we have Babar and Abdullah who are very slow starters versus pace. With true averages in excess of 30 and true strike rates below -15, they like to take their time against seamers.

Sahibzada Farhan impresses again with the second-highest true average of 36 starting off against pace bowling, whilst maintaining a true strike rate of 10, and Shadab Khan has a true average over 20 and a true strike of 16, which is also solid.

Usman Khan is the only batter to have both a negative true average and true strike rate facing pace early on. A lot of that might have to do with how he came into form towards the business end of the recently concluded PSL season.

In a stat that might break space-time continuum as we know it, the two fastest starters versus spin are Babar Azam and Maaz Sadaqat, both going at 10 runs per over.

That said, Maaz’s true strike rate of 51 is nearly double that of Babar’s, which checks out given their style of play. The latter, however, was someone who used to get stuck facing spin bowling, and has clearly unlocked a new gear in the PSL.

The bulk of Babar’s record run tally of 588 in this PSL season was scored against spin bowlers. A grand total of 325 runs, to be exact. He scored them at an average of 81 and strike rate of 156, which quite frankly is unbelievable for Babar.

Farhan Yousaf, Abdullah Shafique, Usman Khan, Sahibzada Farhan and Sameer Minhas all have true strike rates of over 10 versus spin. Only Usman Khan amongst these five batters had a negative true average against spin. Usman’s poor starting versus pace and decent starts versus spin might make him more suitable at four or five rather than at three, which would work like a dream for Pakistan in terms of team composition.

Shan Masood is in a league of his own here, being the only one of the fourteen who has the same method versus both pace and spin. He’s got a true average of 51 at a true strike rate of 3 starting versus spin. His approach is quite simple, where he knocks the ball around for a bit, gets set and then starts hitting spin.

His raw average versus spin was 55 in this PSL season, coupled with a raw strike rate of 158, mostly batting in the middle overs. This combination makes him really fascinating given how Pakistan is in dire need of a batter who can take down spin slotting in the middle order.

The weakest of the fourteen starting off against spin bowling is Shamyl Hussain, who has true numbers in the deep negatives.

One last detail that we need to look up for the Fast Fourteen is phase-wise play. It is easier to set up a batting order after separating batting numbers across the powerplay, middle overs, and slog overs.

Shan Masood is the most unique batter here, who was not dismissed in the powerplay, and struck at 135 in the first six overs. His fastest phase was the middle overs, where his strike rate shot up to 160 plus, with a batting average just under 50, after which he slowed down again at the death. This further reaffirms the notion that his latest version is tailor-made to bat in the middle phase.

This is of course based on the data from the latest PSL season, so there is no guarantee that Shan, who has reinvented himself plenty of times in the past, can make this middle order spin hitting role work long term.

Abdul Samad’s death overs strike rate was almost 242, averaging roughly 25 runs per dismissal in that phase, which makes him a sure shot bet as a finisher. Arafat could bat before or after him, considering how he averaged nearly 20 at a strike rate touching 203 in the last 4 overs for the Multan Sultans in this PSL season.

Usman Khan averaged 40 odd post powerplay with a strike rate north of 190, so he could bat after Shan and before Samad and Arafat. Given how Pakistan have a wicketkeeper problem in T20Is, this seems like a no-brainer.

Shadab Khan averaged just under 30 in the middle overs, striking at just under 145, which shot up to nearly 168 in the death overs. Realistically, he can only cover for Arafat here.

Farhan Yousaf is another solid bench option, given how he struck at just over 145 in the middle overs averaging 93, and at 170 with an average of just under 9 at the death.

That leaves us with eight of the fourteen battling it out for the top three spots.

Lets have Babar Azam as a starting point, who unsurprisingly averaged 109 with the bat in the powerplay at a strike rate of over 146, which went down to 52 at just over 131 in the middle overs. He picked up the pace big time at the death, striking at 200 plus, but by then he had spent a lot of time on the crease. What these numbers suggest is that Babar has to bat in the top order, at all costs, if he plays.

This complicates matters, because Maaz Sadaqat dominated the powerplay with an average of nearly 22 and strike rate of 193, amongst the many other metrics discussed earlier that work in his favour. Plus, you have Sahibzada Farhan averaging north of 40 up until the slog overs, striking at just under 165 in the powerplay, and over 172 in the middle phase.

Mohammad Haris is another top order option who averaged just under 28 in the powerplay at a strike rate of 184, and that drops to 10 and 141 in the middle overs, so he can’t really bat anywhere else.

Sameer Minhas is yet to turn 20, so his game might develop further, but in this PSL his powerplay average of 51 with a strike rate of 165 plus dropped to 20 at just under 127 respectively in the middle overs. He only made it to the slog overs once, where he smashed 20 runs off 8 deliveries, so there is evidence of him having gears. It is up to Pakistan whether or not they would like to take a punt on the teenage batting sensation. They definitely would be tempted.

Yasir Khan averaged in the 20s in both the powerplay and middle overs, and his strike rate dropped from 146 plus to 138 after the powerplay, so he does not have a claim amongst his top order peers.

Abdullah Shafique averaged 107 in the powerplay but at a paltry strike rate of just over 130, and in the middle overs that went up to just under 158, but his average dropped to just over 26. He may or may not be suitable for the number three spot, and could be a decent option to have in the reserves.

Shamyl Hussain is another weird one, who’s average of 61 coupled with a 176 strike rate in the powerplay plummets to just under 11 and just under 126 in the middle phase. Opener or bust, who can’t play spin.

***

So there you have it. Pakistan have depth in the top order, but it would be criminal not to open with Maaz and Sahibzada in the build up to the T20 World Cup in Australia, which is two years away.

Haris and maybe Shamyl could be backups for Maaz, and Babar could slot in if Sahibzada injures himself or loses form. Sameer is another strong shout here, who could transform into something far greater than the rest in years to come.

There really is no correct answer for the first drop position, and realistically Pakistan could experiment with Sameer, Babar or Abdullah here.

Shan and Usman could be tasked with middle overs spin bashing with teenager Farhan Yousaf as a backup. At just 19 years of age, he could very well usurp either of those two senior pros in the future, depending on how he develops. That said, if Usman is benched, Haris has to play, because someone needs to keep wicket.

Samad has to be the finisher, with one of Arafat and Shadab in and around him. Compared to the experienced wrist spinner, the youthful slow left-armer has a stronger claim to that role as far as batting is concerned, if we are to judge them by their PSL performances.

Pakistan are not spoiled for choice when it comes to T20 batsmanship, but their talent pool does not qualify as grim. They have just about enough to work with, but no comfortable amount of depth outside the top order.

Plus, they have tried playing it safe since quite some time now, and that hasn’t particularly worked out for them. There is nothing to lose, really, especially in all the meaningless bilateral T20Is leading up to the big dance. Pakistan would gain absolutely nothing if they steer in a low-risk direction.

Who captains the side is another million dollar question, but leadership is secondary, or perhaps even tertiary, in comparison to skill and approach.

Knowing what we know about Pakistan, however, brace yourselves for an opening pair of Babar Azam and Sahibzada Farhan with Maaz Sadaqat warming the bench. High intent batting can go cry in a corner.

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To make this very brief, a couple of good teams that were winning all the time started losing. A couple of mid-table sides suddenly got really good. And a couple of teams at the very bottom are still there.

And KKR have found form, but it’s probably a little too late.

1. RCB (Previous Ranking: 1)

Last week: RCB played two thrillers against bottom table teams last week, so it certainly didn’t end up being a walk in the park for them. Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Krunal Pandya were the heroes of the Mumbai win, while Rajat Patidar and Tim David tried their absolute best to win it against Lucknow. 1-1 is not what you expect from these games.

Pace bowling: Good

In the powerplay, Bhuvi basically goes for no runs and takes a wicket every two overs. He is having an all-time great season (for anyone), but Josh Hazlewood hasn’t looked like his last year self. Rasikh Salam started off really well but has dropped off a bit since, and Romario Shepherd is conceding nearly two runs a ball.

Spin bowling: Decent

Both the RCB spinners are conceding less than nine runs an over this season. But Suyash Sharma hasn’t really been at his best; often erring on the shorter or fuller lengths. He hasn’t bowled out in the last two matches. Krunal Pandya is one of the most innovative ‘spinners’ in the league, bowling bouncers and slingers and what not to keep the batters guessing.

Next: v KKR (May 13), @ PBKS (May 17, afternoon game), @ SRH (May 22)

Road ahead: Raipur gave us a low-scoring classic, and both teams lost early wickets. They play an on-the-rise Kolkata here, so getting Finn Allen out early could be key on such a surface. Their last two games are against top teams on the road, and Dharamshala can help their quicks in the powerplay. A top two spot is certainly still in their hands, but it feels less certain than last week.

2. SRH (Previous Ranking: 3)

Last week: SRH had a great start with the bat in the first six overs against Punjab, like they did against Kolkata. But this time, Punjab decided to not take any catches. All SRH batters contributed as they posted 235/4. In response, they got the Punjab top three out within the first 20 balls, which had sort of sealed the visitor’s fate.

Pace bowling: Decent

Eshan Malinga is obviously having a great year. With Pat Cummins back and doing well, it gives them a huge boost. Sakib Hussain has been incredible after the powerplay, and Nitish Reddy has also improved his bowling a lot. That’s the four quicks who played versus Punjab, plus they have the option of using Harshal Patel on a wicket that suits him.

Spin bowling: Below par

SRH spinners have taken the joint second-lowest wickets for any spin attack this year. Five of Harsh Dubey’s eight wickets are in the final five overs, and three of them were against Delhi when the game was pretty much over. Dubey has a true economy of -0.85, while Shivang Kumar is at -0.42.

Next: @ GT (May 12), @ CSK (May 18), v RCB (May 22)

Road ahead: Their next three games are pretty challenging. GT have won their last four games, CSK are at four wins in the last five too, and RCB are in the top two. Two wins should get them a playoffs berth, but the table is going to be very fun from here on in, and they are still in with a genuine shout to finish top two.

3. GT (Previous Ranking: 5)

Last week: GT’s openers had a terrific start in the powerplay, but they knocked it around for a bit after that. Sai Sudharsan got out in the 50s, but Shubman Gill went on to make 84(44). Washington Sundar also chipped in with a handy knock. Mohammed Siraj got the big wicket of Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, while Kagiso Rabada also took two more wickets in the powerplay. Rashid Khan also took four wickets to completely destroy the hosts.

Pace bowling: The best

The opening partnership of Kagiso Rabada and Mohammed Siraj has worked superbly for the Titans this season. Rabada has been the wicket-taker, while Siraj has created pressure with dot balls. They had Prasidh Krishna doing incredibly well in the middle overs, but somehow he’s not playing now. But Jason Holder has been excellent too.

Spin bowling: Good

Their spin bowling this year has basically been Rashid Khan on his own. They had Sai Kishore doing really well for them last time, but his first game in 2026 was the most recent one, and he only bowled a single over. Washington Sundar has not even bowled 50 balls in 11 matches. Rashid is at 7/84 in his last 12 overs, which is a great sign for them moving forward.

Next: v SRH (May 12), @ KKR (May 16), v CSK (May 21)

Road ahead: Their next three games are not straightforward either, with KKR improving and CSK in with an actual chance to make the playoffs. They’ll hope to get early wickets to slow SRH and CSK down, and they’re still a stronger all-round team than KKR. Like RCB, top two is still well within their grasp.

4. PBKS (Previous Ranking: 2) (6-4-1)

Last week: Punjab continued their losing streak. SRH away was a game that could have gone better had they held on to their catches. They also lost too many early wickets and got behind the rate. At Dharamshala, they had a strong powerplay on either side of the ball but Delhi outplayed them in the middle and death overs.

Pace bowling: Awful

Arshdeep Singh has been their most economical quick this year, and even he’s going at a fraction under ten an over. Apart from him, nobody has been a wicket-taking threat with the new ball. Their seamers don’t strike too often in the middle overs either, and they leak runs across all phases. At the death, Vyshak Vijaykumar is the only one to concede less than 10 RPO. Marco Jansen and Xavier Bartlett have been less than whelming this year.

Spin bowling: Mixed

No team has used fewer overs of spin than PBKS. Harpreet Brar has only bowled four overs in a game, which means their entire spin bowling department has been carried by Yuzvendra Chahal. He’s been a bit unlucky with the dropped catches, but despite that he’s managed a positive true economy and wickets. All things considered, he’s had a mixed campaign.

Next: v MI (May 14), v RCB (May 17, afternoon game), @ LSG (May 23)

Road ahead: Even now, their fate is in their hands. They have an ‘easier’ schedule than the other contenders, but as we’ve learnt you cannot rule anyone out. Even if they win against MI and LSG, the RCB fixture could potentially end up deciding the top two.

5. RR (Previous Ranking: 4) (6-5)

Last week: Jofra Archer bowled an 11-ball first over to start the proceedings. GT went on to have a strong powerplay, though the spinners did well to stem the flow of runs in the middle overs. The 20th over was also expensive. They were never really in the chase once the openers were out because they kept losing wickets at regular intervals.

Pace bowling: Par

Jofra Archer has had an excellent season - he’s picked up new ball wickets and been frugal in the middle and the death. His new ball partner, Nandre Burger, has dropped off in his last three games. Brijesh Sharma has been good in the middle and decent at the death, but he’s not a solid new ball option yet. Sandeep Sharma hasn’t had a great year. And while Tushar Deshpande nailed his yorkers in the 20th over against GT earlier in the season, he’s conceded more than two runs per ball in his six matches.

Spin bowling: Very good

RR got three new spinners on their roster this season - Ravi Bishnoi, Ravindra Jadeja and Yash Raj Punja. Bishnoi took loads of wickets at the start of the year, but after the first four games he’s not performed at that level. Jadeja has had a solid season for a defensive fingerspinner, while Punja has also impressed in three games he’s played so far. His high release point is something to watch out for.

Next: @ DC (May 17, night game), v LSG (May 19), @ MI (May 24, afternoon game)

Road ahead: Even though they’ve lost an extra game compared to the teams in the top four, they still have a proper chance of making the playoffs. There is a bit of a break for them, which could help. Their road ahead is relatively easier, but as we’ve learnt in recent times (and IPL history), there are no guaranteed wins.

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Years ago, when I was backpacking across Western Europe, I was just outside Barcelona, hiking in the foothills of mount Tibidabo. I was at the end of this path, and I came to a clearing, and there was a lake, very secluded, and there were tall trees all around. It was dead silent. Gorgeous. And across the lake I saw a beautiful woman, bathing herself. but she was crying…

Wait, that’s not it. I was backpacking across the US and England on the way to South Africa for the 2003 Cricket World Cup. There was crying, but it was my own, and separate to this story.

When in grey-skied London, I found myself in Shepherd’s Bush, a place that had no sheep or greenery, but lots of pubs. In one of them, weirdly named after a US comedian, I watched a game between Australia and England.

With the Aussies as World Cup favourites, it was supposed to be an easy win. It started that way when Australia’s backup seamer Andy Bichel took 7/20, and England folded to 204. But incredibly, Australia also fell apart, soon they were 135/8, needing 70 from 74.

That is when Andy Bichel was needed again. He joined Michael Bevan.

And while the calculation didn’t make sense, Australia had their own calculator.

In those days we called him a finisher, but it turns out he was more than that.

***

Earlier this year in the IPL, Chennai Super Kings batted first. Sanju Samson got a century and set Delhi Capitals a target of 213 runs. Delhi started off brilliantly with 61/0 in 4.5 overs, but they quickly fell to 76/4 with the required rate at 11.4. David Miller and Tristan Stubbs were batting together.

Of those batting between five and seven in the IPL, these two gentlemen have the second and third-highest true averages of 27 and 21 respectively. They do not get out in the IPL. Virat Kohli and KL Rahul as openers have a true average of 16 and 20.

Two guys batting in the middle order who are known as big hitters, have higher true averages than two of the best run accumulators in IPL history.

The other batters that pop here are JP Duminy, MS Dhoni and Tilak Varma. Those three, along with Miller and Stubb, have a true average of 20 plus. However, out of the five only Duminy and Miller have a positive true strike rate. Duminy’s true strike rate is 7 points better than Stubbs, which no one who saw them both live would have guessed.

But what it really shows is that South African cricket does have a type. And that never really had a name before. Of recent times, we have started finding a lot of these high-scoring, neutral strike rate guys who bat in the middle order.

We call them finishing anchors.

***

When Delhi were in their chase, Miller was 12, and Stubbs was 11, both had faced 10 deliveries.

Throughout the season, it feels like these two always end up at the same point, hugging a run a ball strike rate after scoring double figures. They do it so consistently that we could simulate that part of their innings.

But this is making their chase harder. In baseball, they call this getting behind the count. By implementing this strategy, they are setting themselves up. Everything they do in the latter half of the game has to be perfect in order to dig themselves out of the hole.

The worst-case scenario is doing this, and then being dismissed shortly after.

That is what happens when Miller is out for 17 off 14.

When Stubbs walked in, he needed to go at a strike rate of 190 for Delhi to chase this, but after the start, Stubbs needed a strike rate of 238 to win the game. The good news is that since 2024, Stubbs strikes at 234 in the death.

This was, as the cricketers say, in his wheelhouse.

However, his middle overs strike rate from 2024 in the IPL was 127. So in the match against Chennai, he had to better his record by a good 65 points to match the rate. At the end of the 16th over Stubbs was 37 off 26. A strike rate of 142. Nearly 20 better than usual.

But even an algorithmic player like Stubbs can’t do it every time, and on that day, he couldn’t take it to his normal fifth gear. Delhi were bowled out for 189.

Stubbs’ 60 off 38 meant his impact for the game was +14. The next best Delhi batter was Ashutosh, with an impact of +3.

This was on the face of it, a great solo effort. It was also a losing one.

***

You can find any explanations regarding our advanced metrics here.

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Sanju Samson is plumb. The ball has yorked him so perfectly that it’s like the bowler was splitting an atom in a lab. Samson moves back in the crease to give himself potential leverage and instead, he’s just more stuffed. A mouse jumping into the trap to see what wood it’s made from. The only way this is missing the stumps is if it burrows under them subterraneously.

The bowler turns to the umpire and raises his own finger. Because this is a free hit, and Jasprit Bumrah has just wasted a perfect LBW on a dot ball.

This moment kind of illustrates the genius of Bumrah. He has made a rare mistake (although his no ball count is high, please see the Oval, 2017) and now he is essentially erasing it from existence. A no ball gives one run, and the free hit is currently going at 2.16 runs per delivery. That means a combined 3.16.

But, even though Bumrah overstepped, his combined two balls cost one run. Meaning even with the free hit, his result was a net positive.

And so I assumed, this is what Bumrah did.

Especially, as when I checked, he had bowled the second most free hits on record. It is only 43. So in some ways, no one is a specialist, but surely he is more than most. On top of that, he is the world’s best death bowler. If anyone is good at free hit bowling, it should be Jasprit Bumrah.

And he is not. He has the fourth-highest economy among the bowlers with 24 free hits. There are few lists in bowling on which he is at the wrong end of. But here he is, with a big runs per ball on what is the one delivery in the game where he should be king.

What does it mean though? Why is the hardest to hit player in the world suddenly not that when wickets are turned off? The reason might be simply that with free hits you are just trying to hit the ball hard. And off Bumrah, without the fear of wickets, you can.

Because he has a really weird pattern, no other free hit bowler gets hit for four more often. It is happening every three balls. People are smashing him, along the ground.

Ofcourse, he still doesn’t get hit for six. Compared to Oshane Thomas, Luke Wood and Sean Abbott who constantly travel over the ropes. Yet, Shaheen Shah Afridi who is often seen as a punchline now, gets hit for six less than Bumrah, and no one ever finds fours from him either.

What this really shows though is how different batting is when you can’t get out, and you have ultimate freedom in hitting. Wild things occur. Bumrah goes from mega GOAT cyborg to just another dude.

But free hit data tells us something far more interesting; it gives us a theoretical limit of scoring.

***

This year in the IPL, things have been wild. For years, the general pattern of scoring has stayed more or less exactly the same. This year, there are so many differences from Pre-Impact Sub era.

For instance, the sixth over has always been almost identical in strike rates to overs four and five. This year, it’s way down. Yet. the eighth over has had a massive spike. The twelfth over is an entire piece I need to make on its own. And then teams are running out of steam at the end all the time.

But what is clear is that this is the fastest scoring season in franchise cricket history. Bowlers are being drowned by runs. Except, at the end.

That’s odd, right? An extra batter in every team, bowlers being destroyed in record fashion until the 15th over, followed by bang ordinary cricket from then on in. Why, when we get to the end, are batters not kicking on?

Isn’t that the point of death batting? Or the slog overs, as they were once called.

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We finally have a top five and a bottom five. How that will shake out, we have no idea. But instead of dwelling on that, we’re assembling the teams in an order that will not be replicated next week.

Welcome to the IPL Power Rankings.

1. RCB (Previous Ranking: 1)

Last week: High-intent Virat Kohli looked like a million bucks against Kagiso Rabada, but went out trying to smash him. Devdutt Padikkal was the top run-scorer, but they had their third major collapse of the season. GT decided to counter attack early and once their top three went out, the hosts knocked it around. Bhuvneshwar Kumar was again the pick of RCB’s bowlers.

Best batting phase: Powerplay

Virat Kohli is solid as ever and can find fours with such ease, while the new Devdutt Padikkal is smashing sixes. Phil Salt had a couple of brisk starts too before he had to sit out after a finger injury. The question has to be, is Jacob Bethell ready to take over his role just yet?

Best bowling phase: Powerplay

Bhuvneshwar Kumar has decided to run it back to his peak years. His combination with Josh Hazlewood - who hasn’t even been at his absolute best yet - up top has been one of the biggest reasons for their recent success. And remember, they also had Jacob Duffy who won them a game against SRH earlier in the year.

Next: @ LSG (May 7), v MI (May 10, night game), v KKR (May 13)

Road ahead: They go to Lucknow next, which should suit their seamers and they have the batting quality to deal with LSG’s spicy pace attack. They play Mumbai and an on-the-rise Kolkata in Raipur, so we’ll observe how this pitch plays out. This is perhaps their best chance to push for top two, because their last two games are challenging.

2. PBKS (Previous Ranking: 2)

Last week: Their seamers went for plenty while defending 222 against RR, and they were 47/5 in the 9th over batting first at Ahmedabad. But they rescued themselves from that collapse, so their depth was tested and it passed with flying colours. Suryansh Shedge scored at nearly two runs a ball in his fifth IPL knock. Remember, Marcus Stoinis also had a late flourish against RR.

Best batting phase: Powerplay

The PBKS opening pair is the fastest in the league, scoring at almost two runs an over quicker than Travishek in second place. Priyansh Arya’s strike rate is over 250, while Prabhsimran Singh is in the high 170s in the first six overs. Cooper Connolly doesn’t really go hard in this phase when he’s in.

Best bowling phase: Middle overs

Even though they haven’t really picked up too many wickets from overs 7 to 16, it’s the one period where they concede less than ten runs per over. Yuzvendra Chahal and Vyshak Vijaykumar have taken a few wickets between them, while Marco Jansen has stemmed the flow of runs.

Next: @ SRH (May 6), v DC (May 11), v MI (May 14)

Road ahead: Punjab have to play SRH on the road, after which they shall move their home base to Dharamshala. Like Raipur, it’s worth keeping an eye on how that wicket behaves too. They play two bottom table teams, two top four and one mid-table as of now to finish their league stage.

3. SRH (Previous Ranking: 3)

Last week: SRH were cruising along against KKR before they collapsed hard. Their bowlers went for plenty at the Wankhede, but they actually pulled it back at the death. And then multiple batters stepped up to chase down 244. Travis Head is back, baby. Never been more back; he smacked Sunil Narine and Jasprit Bumrah.

Best batting phase: Powerplay

We may not be experiencing peak Travishek this year, especially as Head’s form had been patchy before the last couple of fixtures. But Ishan Kishan has helped cover for that. In the first six overs, Abhishek’s striking the ball at 227, Kishan 189 and a ‘not at his best’ Head at 170.

Best bowling phase: Middle overs

There are two specific games they’ve pulled back with the ball in the middle period - KKR away and CSK home. Eshan Malinga has been the main strike bowling option, while Sakib Hussain has really impressed in his first year at the IPL too. Left arm wristspinner Shivang Kumar has bowled the most for them in this period. They also have the option of Pat Cummins now.

Next: v PBKS (May 6), @ GT (May 12), @ CSK (May 18)

Road ahead: The next two games at incredibly important, because both teams are at exactly six wins as we speak. This is the point where teams take points off each other. Also, their final league stage game is against RCB. We said last time that they play two out of form teams, and they went 1-1, which isn’t ideal.

4. RR (Previous Ranking: 4)

Last week: They lost their openers early against Delhi, but Riyan Parag finally had a say. The big question was if they should have sent Donovan Ferreira before Ravindra Jadeja. Delhi pretty much cruised through the chase. Against Punjab, their spinners had a decent game but the quicks didn’t. Crucially for them, they finished incredibly well with Ferreira and Shubham Dubey.

Best batting phase: Powerplay

Of the opening pairs to have faced at least 7 innings this year, JaiSoorya are only behind PrabhArya and Travishek. It’s ridiculous that Jaiswal’s strike rate of 168 in the first six overs feels pedestrian, because it’s compared to Vaibhav’s 245. The 15-year-old prodigy has brought up a half-century thrice in this phase.

Best bowling phase: Powerplay

Jofra Archer has nine wickets in this period at an economy of 8.7, and yet it feels that he’s bowled better than that. Nandre Burger was also performing well, but he’s dropped off in the last three games. Ravi Bishnoi has also snapped a couple when he’s had a go.

Next: v GT (May 9), @ DC (May 17, night game), v LSG (May 19)

Road ahead: Rajasthan have two decisive games coming up, but their last two are Lucknow at home and Mumbai away. If they can win one of the next two and the final two, they can push for a top two spot. But the bottom tables sides might end up playing without the fear of failure, so there are no guaranteed wins even in the ‘easy’ games.

5. GT (Previous Ranking: 5)

Last week: They’ve downed the finalists of last year and table toppers of this one back to back at home. RCB seemed to be going good before they took a load of wickets. Punjab was the other way round - early wickets, followed by a strong rebuild. Both were pretty much comfortable chases, though maybe Punjab got too close for their liking. Employee of the week? Jason Holder, by a mile.

Best batting phase: Powerplay

Last year, Gujarat took their time in the first six overs and then gradually got faster in the middle overs. However, this season it’s the former. While they’re not uber-attacking like some other teams, they’re certainly solid. Shubman Gill has upped his strike rate, going at almost 170. Jos Buttler is also around that mark. Sai Sudharsan is in the 140s.

Best bowling phase: Powerplay

If we are going purely by season performances so far, it’s completely fair to go with their middle overs bowling. But the defensive excellence of Mohammed Siraj combined with Kagiso Rabada’s wicket-taking threat means I would be more worried about them if I am in the opposition camp, especially as Prasidh Krishna has not played the last three matches.

Next: @ RR (May 9), v SRH (May 12), @ KKR (May 16)

Road ahead: They have their tail up now after beating two strong teams, but they play Rajasthan away and then Sunrisers again at home. If they get one win here and they beat both KKR and CSK, that sets them up nicely.

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Mohammed Shami is one of the best new ball bowlers in the world. He can seam the ball and swing it - at pace, with accuracy. He can hit the pad or outside edge. It’s a very good package and it is perfect for a new ball bowler.

What Shami has never been great at is slower balls. It isn’t that he doesn’t have one; he just hasn’t perfected it. And more importantly, he doesn’t really need them. With his speed and accuracy, he can do most of his work with on-pace deliveries.

In IPL 2022, he delivered 3.8% of his deliveries off pace, compared to Dwayne Bravo’s 48%. Fast bowlers deliver slower than ever before, and Shami was one of the last holdouts.

2022 is not a random year, it is PIS. Pre-Impact Sub. A dystopian T20. Now, you cannot just bowl on pace. Even if you are Mohammed Shami.

In 2022, he bowled less than 1% of his deliveries off pace in the powerplay, this year it’s more than 10%. Mohammed Shami is a different bowler now, because the IPL is a different sport.

Welcome to the Bowlpocalpyse.

***

Something was off early in the year. Everyone was talking about the runs being scored, but in the back half of every game, it was clear that wasn’t quite the case. The older the ball got (even when replaced), the harder it was to score.

When you look at the numbers, you can see that this year is unlike any other on record. For the first time ever, the strike rate for the first ten has almost caught the second ten. That is not how T20 cricket goes.

It is supposed to be easier to score the longer the match goes on. But in the IPL right now, there is almost no difference.

Traditionally, teams would attack in the powerplay, but with one eye on wickets. Then after the first six, there would be the agreed-upon lull of scoring, before a slow ramp up until they hit like crazy at the death.

In 2022, the runs per over in the IPL was 8.54. That was the second-highest ever at that stage. Then 2023 was almost half a run more, 2024 was a full run more, this year it is almost a run and a half up. The Impact Sub has supersized scoring.

T20 rates were ramping up worldwide in the major leagues, but not in the IPL. There had been a gully for a couple of years in the premier competition. For only the second time ever in 2021, the scoring rate was quicker around the world than in the IPL.

The 2023 season - the first with the Impact Sub - was a small jump. Like the players didn’t understand it, but then once they did, it took off. And even as other leagues have gotten faster, they are playing T20s (shoutout to the Hundred, of course) and the IPL is playing Impact Sub cricket.

There is no other league in which this has happened. So even though a few competitions have a curve, the IPL sits out on its own.

The only league that is close is the PSL. But what is wild is that before the Impact Sub change, the PSL had outscored the IPL three years in a row. It was the fastest league in the world, the first to have 180 as a par total with their 9.2 runs an over in 2022. They have remained fast, with 2025 being more than nines as well. But the IPL has just launched itself into another stratosphere.

And it starts, at the start.

This season, the average powerplay score is over 60. It is the first league to do this, or even be close to it.

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This week had a day where people scored all the runs and dropped all the catches. Then it ended in a game where a team was almost bowled out for a negative score.

There is no way to make sense of any of this, which is suboptimal, as this is the power list, and that is the idea here.

But let us wade through the muck together, because we are finally seeing some sense through it all.

1. RCB (Previous Ranking: 1)

Last week: There was a genuine chance of RCB breaking their infamous 49 all-out record when Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Josh Hazlewood had Delhi 13/6 at the end of the powerplay. And against GT, they did well to pull the game back from overs 17 to 19 and then chased it fairly comfortably.

Best veteran: Bhuvneshwar Kumar

RCB have four players 35 or older, and all of them have had solid seasons so far. But Bhuvneshwar Kumar now has the joint-most wickets in the league, and no seamer with 100 or more balls has been more frugal. Only Rabada and Archer have more wickets in the first six overs.

Best youngster: Devdutt Padikkal

If we did an Most Improved Player award for players in this mega auction cycle, Padikkal would certainly be very high up that list. The 25-year-old left-hander has now scored 242 runs at an average of 40 and a strike rate of 192, smashing 16 sixes along the way.

Next: @ GT (Apr 30), @ LSG (May 7), v MI (May 10, night game)

Road ahead: RCB would be licking their lips after looking at their schedule for the rest of the tournament. GT will obviously be a challenge, but Lucknow are winless at home. They play their home game versus MI at Raipur.

2. PBKS (Previous Ranking: 2)

Last week: Punjab have now chased over 260 twice in their history; no other T20 team has done it even once. The openers got them so ahead of the chase after that powerplay burst, and then it was business as usual in a run-chase for the captain. Of course, there were key dropped catches on either side.

Best veteran: Shreyas Iyer

Shreyas has been incredible in IPL chases since 2024. The man is an absolute run bank, averaging 100 at 175. This year, he already has four fifty-plus scores while batting second five times, and his season strike rate is at 186 right now.

Best youngster: Priyansh Arya

Priyansh Arya is one of three LHB opening outliers in this year’s IPL along with Vaibhav Sooryavanshi and Abhishek Sharma. The 24-year-old is actually scoring faster than them; almost at two and a half runs per ball, and hitting a six nearly once every four deliveries.

Next: v RR (Apr 28), @ GT (May 3, night game), @ SRH (May 6)

Road ahead: They do play some more solid teams in their next three fixtures. Even two wins here means they’ll have one foot in the playoffs.

3. SRH (Previous Ranking: 6)

Last week: SRH chased down 228 comfortably against RR, though if the hosts held on to their chances we could have had an interesting game. They kind of batted Delhi out of the game at home. Pat Cummins started off really well after a long layoff.

Best veteran: Heinrich Klaasen

Heinrich Klaasen’s strike rate is the talk of the summer, but the consistency of the man has been ridiculous. Only once has he not crossed 30 (he made 29). He’s also had to do the rebuilding job a bit, and he did show his fifth gear vs Delhi when he was batting at the end.

Best youngster: Nitish Kumar Reddy

I thought it was between him and Sakib Hussain, but Nitish has played all games and contributes on both sides of the ball. Fun fact, he’s hit more sixes (14) than fours (9). He can be expensive with the ball at times, but he’s more of a useful sixth option.

Next: @ MI (Apr 29), v KKR (May 3, afternoon game), v PBKS

Road ahead: They now play two out of form teams in their next three. It’s a really good chance for them to get to seven wins and take another step closer to the playoffs.

4. RR (Previous Ranking: 3)

Last week: Vaibhav Sooryavanshi scored a 36-ball hundred against SRH, but once he was out, RR only added 58 runs off the last 37 deliveries of the innings. They then dropped Abhishek Sharma twice in the powerplay. They fought their way from 110/6 to 159/6 versus Lucknow, and then took three powerplay wickets.

Best veteran: Jofra Archer

Jofra Archer is not only the highest wicket-taker for RR this season, but also in their history. He’s also taken a first-ball wicket thrice now, and has bowled some fiery spells at the start of the innings. He’s not going for many runs either.

Best youngster: Vaibhav Sooryavanshi

A 15-ball fifty used to be a rare thing in the sport. But Sooryavanshi has now done it thrice this season, plus both his IPL hundreds have come in 35 and 36 balls. He’s hitting a boundary once every 2.4 deliveries.

Next: @ PBKS (Apr 28), v DC (May 1), v GT (May 9)

Road ahead: They don’t have an easy three games ahead compared to SRH, who are also at 5 in 8. But Delhi and Gujarat aren’t in the absolute top tier, so we’ll potentially see some interesting fixtures with respect to the points table.

5. GT (Previous Ranking: 5)

Last week: Gujarat bowled really well on a tricky surface against Chennai, and chased it down quite comfortably with each of their top three making runs. Sai Sudharsan made a hundred against RCB as they posted over 200, but they weren’t able to slow the hosts down while defending. It didn’t help that they dropped a sitter before Virat Kohli made a run.

Best veteran: Kagiso Rabada

In episode two of the Power Rankings, we said Rabada was their most expensive seamer. But he’s been incredible in three of their last four games, taking seven new ball wickets.

Best youngster: Sai Sudharsan

Just in last week’s power rankings, we talked about how Sai Sudharsan was a player performing badly. But he’s flipped the narrative real quick, scoring 100 off 58 versus RCB and 87 off 46 versus CSK. In fact, he is now Gujarat’s fastest-scoring batter at the moment with a strike rate of 163.

Next: v RCB (Apr 30), v PBKS (May 3, night game), @ RR (May 9)

Road ahead: A bit like Rajasthan, their road ahead isn’t roses and petals either. In fact, they play two of the best teams this IPL, though both at home. And then they go to Jaipur. Remember, they’re four in eight, so they don’t have the luxury that SRH or RR do with the extra win.

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Welcome to the first edition of the Good Areas’ Most Improved IPL Player Award. For those who don’t know, we have already done three editions of this award for Test cricket. But there is a key difference: we’ve used three-year cycles for comparison. So it’s the quality of a player from 2023-25 versus 2020-22.

We also know that the impact sub rule has supercharged run rates. So we can’t judge these players on their raw stats, as that would favour the batriarchy and be unfair on bowlers. That is where true values and the impact metrics come into the picture to help us contextualise the numbers better.

Even though Jasprit Bumrah actually improved miles, it really doesn’t make sense for a superstar like him to be in contention for this award.

And while Virat Kohli might have upped his intent, he is the same man who once nearly made 1000 runs in a single season. So we arbitrarily ruled those two out even before getting into the weeds of this topic.

A quick reminder that rookies can’t be nominated for this award. So unfortunately MS Dhoni isn’t eligible, since we believe he’s too young in his career. Also, if you have improved only in 2025 like Devdutt Padikkal, that wouldn’t cut it because we are looking at three-year cycles.

Here is a token shoutout to players like Heinrich Klaasen and Phil Salt. They weren’t even in the playing XIs from 2020 to 2022. From that, they went on to boss the league.

Another interesting player was Ruturaj Gaikwad. While his numbers certainly got better in the recent cycle, it was only in his second season (and first full one) that he made the most runs at a healthy strike rate in a title-winning run for CSK.

A few more players that just missed out were Nicholas Pooran, Suryakumar Yadav and Marcus Stoinis. Pooran and SKY have a very similar case; they both went from very good to potentially all-time great three-year runs. Stoinis also started scoring quicker at a better true average, but his rise wasn’t as huge. You can only have so many names in the list.

Yashasvi Jaiswal was a name that actually came up a lot of times when we asked for the nominees on Twitter.

And it’s a great shout, as both his raw and true values improve.

But he starts very young. And unlike his RR teammate Riyan Parag, who also began very early and struggled a lot, Jaiswal’s floor was a lot higher. While he didn’t accumulate a lot of runs in 2021, he still had a true strike rate of 27.

We still ended up with ten names, before getting it down to three vying for the title and one winner to rule them all.

Welcome to the second-least prestigious award in the IPL (after the Fairplay award), the Good Areas’ Most Improved Player.

***

Shreyas Iyer

Captain Shreyas Iyer was close to winning an IPL title with KKR and PBKS in back to back years. But his batting came a long way too. After missing out in the 2023 season, he had a good year as a role player in a strong Kolkata batting lineup, followed by his best batting season ever for Punjab.

On raw numbers, he has an exponential rise. He was at plus four true average and minus six true strike rate from 2020-22, and now that is 17 and 14, respectively. He scores quicker and is harder to dismiss now. And while he does have more not outs in this period, he also scores more runs per innings.

The ‘impact per innings’ metric thinks no batter has improved as much as he has.

It actually starts from hitting spin. For years, he had a true strike rate against mine of less than ten against the tweakers. In the last two seasons, he is above that. And he has combined that with an ability not to get dismissed. He is still not quite in the spin basher class of Nicholas Pooran, Heinrich Klaasen and Rajat Patidar. But this is the fastest he’s been in a while.

How about this though, he actually bashes pace in IPL 2025. He has a true strike rate of 36 at a solid true average. That is huge even compared to 2024.

He is far more ruthless versus the full and back of a length deliveries. He even becomes a superior player of the pull. He’s also able to handle the good lengths a lot better.

He has just become a more complete player overall, and his prime unlocked a whole new style as well. And the cult of Shreyas is getting bigger each day.

Shubman Gill

While Gill’s T20I performances were just not enough to make the cut for India’s T20 World Cup team, he has been one of the finest IPL batters in the last three seasons. The talent was there to see since his very first year in 2018, and the following year he won the Emerging Player award. The next two seasons for KKR were quite middling, and so he wasn’t even retained. Gujarat Titans got him, where he had an okay year in a title-winning campaign in 2022.

Gill’s true values go from -1 and -2 on average and strike rate to 19 and 14. Like Shreyas, he improves on both fronts.

His impact per innings also rises from 0.15 to 3.4.

A major reason for this was his 2023, where he ended up making the second-most runs of all time in a season, only behind Kohli’s 973. And he did that at a true strike rate of 20, so it was high impact accumulation in a season where they were a ball away from going back to back. In 2025, he made all the runs along with Sai Sudharsan and Jos Buttler.

He is a better player of spin than seam, but he has improved against both. It’s a bigger deal versus the quicks, because he was actually under par on both average and strike rate in the last cycle.

He is able to score faster from his flicks and cover drives, and is also more dangerous in the V. That means he covers a lot of different parts of the ground.

He gets better at facing good and back of a length seam, but also smashes the fuller deliveries more. However, he does get out more frequently versus full and short balls now.

Versus spin, he improves against all lengths.

Obviously, some of Gill’s improvement has to come down to him maturing with age. But he’s still not in the peak batting ages, so can he get even better?

Shivam Dube

Shivam Dube has such gravitas that teams change their bowling plans when he’s on the crease. In IPL 2024, he faced only 56 balls of spin compared to 188 versus pace. There was a good reason for it - in the season before, he tonked the slower bowlers at a strike rate of 173. And yet, the most incredible stat on him is that for CSK, he actually has a better true strike rate against pace than spin.

In the last three IPL seasons, Dube has had an impact of 3.88 per innings, compared to -0.42 in the three years prior.

On true average and strike rate, he’s 14 and 11 respectively - a jump from -2 and -6.

Interestingly, the three year timelines don’t exactly match for Dube. His absolute best is from 2022 to 2024. But you can’t win the award by gerrymandering years. So from 2023-25 versus 2020-22, he actually had a higher true average versus spin back then, but it came at a below par speed. Now, he’s traded some of that average for faster runs. Against pace, he’s better at both not getting dismissed as well as hitting it.

Interestingly, he struggles to smash good length spin in both the periods. He is just even more ruthless against full and shorter lengths, and he defends the ball less than he used to.

Versus the quicks too, he doesn’t like facing the good length but has certainly improved at it. Also, he can tackle back of a length or shorter deliveries a lot better now.

Shivam Dube went from being a middling squad player to one of the most valuable role players in the competition. That makes him an easy shout for this award.

Abhishek Sharma

‘Air Abhishek’ showed glimpses of his potential way back in 2018 on his IPL debut. Batting at No.6, the 17-year-old made 46 off 19 balls versus RCB. This was before appearing in the SMAT.

He’s part of a trade that sends him from Delhi to SRH, and for the next few years, he’s predominantly a lower-order batter for them. But at the same time, he’s an opener for Punjab domestically.

He gets his first go as an opener at the end of IPL 2021. In his second outing in that role, he scored a 16-ball 33 versus the Mumbai Indians. SRH didn’t retain him ahead of the mega auction, but he was bought back for INR 6.5 crores.

In 2022, he actually has a decent year; more than 400 runs at an above par average and a true strike rate of almost 19. This was before the impact sub era, so on raw numbers his strike rate of 133 doesn’t look amazing.

His evolution actually begins from 2024; his true strike rates are 51 and 41 in the two seasons.

Against spin, it’s 84 and 119. There are actual players who strike at 119 or less versus spin, and that’s his true strike rate.

But let’s compare his output in our two timelines. From 2020 to 2022, he had a true average of -1 and a true strike rate of 12. Since then, his true average actually drops to -5. That makes sense, because for someone batting quite a bit in the lower-middle order, you don’t expect huge averages, while openers are obviously expected to score more runs per dismissal. But the true strike rate goes up to 38.

His impact per innings soars from 0.7 to 2.6, and he gets significantly quicker against both pace and spin.

But he was a spin-hitter even before, just not as insane at it. We have come to a point where he can run away with the game regardless of the kind of bowler.

The 2024 season made the ‘Travishek’ moniker famous, and got us all asking about 300s all the time. That gets him a go in the Indian team, for whom he goes on a ridiculous run till the World Cup. At the big event, he has a quiet time until the final, where he just smokes an 18-ball half-century against New Zealand.

Abhishek Sharma goes from being a talented bloke to a transformative T20 batter. The sky is quite literally the limit on Air Abhishek’s potential.

Riyan Parag

Till 2023, Parag got out for single digits in exactly half of all his IPL innings. Which feels like a cricket version of binary. But it wasn’t like he scored at a ridiculous clip to make up for the inconsistency; he struck at under 125. And yet, he had always shown glimpses of his talent. In 2019, he became the then youngest batter to score an IPL fifty. For Assam, he debuted at only 15. Plus, he was also an U-19 World Cup winner in 2018.

After his debut season, he never averaged 20 or struck at 140 for the next four years. Cut to 2024, and the only two men with more runs that year were Virat Kohli and Ruturaj Gaikwad, as RR made the playoffs.

In 2025, he had the seventh best true strike rate of the 33 batters with 300 or more runs.

So he’s given a solid anchor season and an attacking year, showcasing his range. It helped that he got a consistent run at No.4.

Of all the batters we nominated, he had one of the biggest deltas between the two cycles. He was -8 on true average and -21 on true strike rate, and despite a bad 2023, is 7 and 3 on the respective metrics since then.

He prefers facing pace to spin generally when it comes to strike rate.

But it’s not like he didn’t work on his pace game; it is now really hard to bowl good or short length seam to him.

And it’s not just the batting. He became the fourth-youngest player to ever captain an IPL team last year. It was on the back of him leading Assam to the SMAT semi-final in 2023/24. After Sanju Samson was traded to CSK, Parag took over reigns for the Royals. After winning the first game of 2026, he also gave a very mature statement about the fickle narratives around captaincy. He just comes across as a professional now.

We spoke to our very own Saurabh Somani about his case for this award, and he said, “I think Riyan makes the list easily. Age and maturity is part of improvement. Batting position, you also roughly get the better ones as you yourself get better.” The uptick in his numbers is too stark, and he certainly beats the natural evolution with age argument.

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Axar Patel

As an all-round asset, it’s really hard to look past Axar Patel for this conversation. If we just go by the true values, he has actually improved as a batter and a bowler.

It kind of felt like Axar has always been this good, because he’s been around that long.

With the ball, he has had a true economy of one or more for three consecutive years - which is mind-boggling in the impact sub era.

In terms of wickets, he’s about the same as the previous three years.

Yes, he has had better bowling years, like his debut season in 2014, but it’s his most economical three-year streak. And that’s after he bowled a higher percentage to LHBs.

Interestingly though, impact per innings prefers 2020-22.

His batting actually starts coming along in 2022, and that also tracks with his ODI performances that year. But like for Dube, if we just stick to the set parameters, his true average is about neutral, but his true strike rate improves from -13 to -9.

On impact per innings, he goes from almost -1 to +0.6, and faces five balls per knock more.

But remember, he’s still not a frontline batter, rather someone who you can use as a firefighter in certain situations. And a big part of that is tackling spin.

Till 2022, there were only two seasons where he faced more than 50 balls of it. But now, that’s gone up significantly. In the last two years, his true strike rate was 42 and 23, and in 2023 he had a true average of 45.

He is particularly ruthless if you bowl in the slot.

You can tell how much Axar Patel’s stock has risen by looking at his importance for the Indian team, often on both sides of the ball. Plus, the man can really field. He also gives you leadership - he was India’s vice-captain at the recent T20 World Cup and is the Delhi Capitals skipper.

Kuldeep Yadav

Kuldeep Yadav was benched for seven straight games in IPL 2021. This was the same bowler that three years before was bossing international cricket with partner Yuzvendra Chahal. In the IPL, he actually started regressing in 2019, and he was eventually dropped for the latter end of the 2019 World Cup too. He only plays five games in 2020. A knee injury in the second leg of 2021 meant he eventually played no games that entire year and was subsequently released by KKR.

Delhi Capitals get him for only INR 2 crore in the 2022 mega auction. And he instantly had a solid season for them, picking up 21 wickets. He took 0.67 wickets per spell more than expected, though was slightly expensive.

The main reason for his success was that he bowled faster. But crucially, he did that while maintaining his spin, which most wrist-spinners never do. His median speed till 2021 was around 81 kph, since 2022 it’s gone up to 85 kph. Spinners across the globe were getting quicker, so he had to adapt with the times. Daniel Vettori noted that he had a faster arm action and was imparting more revolutions to the ball.

In the last four years, this is the best he has ever bowled in his IPL career. Even before 2020, he didn’t have this level of impact. He has been more economical against both right-handers and left-handers than ever before.

On our timelines, he has a true economy of 1.3 and -0.12 true wickets now, compared to -0.1 and 0.39 respectively. So in the impact sub era, he hasn’t been as much of a wicket-taker.

In terms of saving runs, he’s gone up from 2.12 to 3.95 runs per innings. And it’s obvious that when he’s out of touch for two years, he barely plays so his numbers don’t look as bad.

Kuldeep Yadav basically goes from KKR’s bench to DC’s lead spinner. In a high-scoring universe, he is one of the few bowlers to have actually improved their raw numbers.

Varun Chakaravarthy

Varun Chakaravarthy’s cricketer arc is perhaps unlike anyone else on this list. The man pursued architecture till his mid-20s before giving it up for pursuing the sport professionally. In fact, he started as a pacer but ended up bowling spin.

Punjab paid him INR 8.4 crore at the 2019 auction but he only played one game. KKR got him at 48% the price the following year.

Chakaravarthy delivered two really good seasons. He even got to play for the national team in the 2021 T20 World Cup (though that stint didn’t end well for him). But KKR put their faith in the mystery spinner by retaining him for INR 8 crore. However, 2022 turned out to be a horrible year for him.

So in the last cycle, he took 41 wickets and conceded 0.76 runs per over less than expected and was about par on wickets - really good numbers. But since 2023, he has become even harder to score any runs off, plus he strikes a lot more often. Yes, it is a case of going from very good to great, but he has improved on both metrics. He is more defensive and attacking at the same time, so he’s putting more pressure on teams.

A big change in his bowling in the last three seasons is that he started getting right-handers out a lot more often.

One reason is that he works on perfecting his leg-break, the away spinning delivery for the righties. It became more of a strike weapon for him. Plus, he became more of a threat if he bowled in the powerplay or death overs.

So it isn’t that he is possibly most improved, he is probably most changed. He himself says that he transitions from a side-spin to an overspin bowler.

In the impact sub era, he is certainly the second best bowler in the league after Jasprit Bumrah. What more needs to be said?

Pat Cummins

In the 2020 IPL auction, Pat Cummins went for INR 15.5 crore. That made him the most expensive foreign player in the league at the time. It seemed like an incredibly high amount for someone who didn’t play the format all that much. Cut to 2024, and now he was the second highest-paid player ever - second to only his Aussie teammate, Mitchell Starc.

But between those two big paycheques, Cummins hadn’t exactly set the stage on fire in the league.

He opted out of 2023, but from 2020 to 2022, he had a true economy of -0.57 and he was exactly par for wickets taken. So he was neither a strike bowling option, nor did he save a lot of runs. His impact per innings was negative too.

He could slog a bit, which certainly helped, but it’s hard to argue he wasn’t overvalued.

We all remember 2024 for the Sunrisers’ groundbreaking approach with the bat. And that was under his watch. But what gets forgotten is that T Natarajan, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Cummins all have solid defensive seasons. Cummins conceded 0.6 runs an over less than expected, even if he didn’t take loads of wickets. 2025 he actually has even better stats, but we did a deeper dive and felt the year before he actually changed more games. Of course, SRH’s batting lineup was not in form when the tournament was live, plus a worse bowling attack made it even harder.

Cummins still gets smashed at the death (though not as much), but he’s a more reliable new ball bowler now. He took wickets more often in the middle overs for KKR, but he is far more economical for SRH.

He also improves his economy versus both RHBs and LHBs, but he also strikes more often against the former.

Compared to his reputation (and pay day), he hasn’t really impressed much.

But from where he was to now, he really has improved as an IPL player.

If you concede only half a run more per over in the impact sub era than in the three years before, it just has to put you in this conversation. The argument against him might be that he had been good before outside of the IPL, because his international numbers have always stood up.

Mohammed Siraj

Mohammed Siraj’s quality in first-class cricket was there to see for everyone, but it hadn’t always translated to T20 cricket early on. The game I always go back to was the one against KKR in Abu Dhabi in 2020, where he took three early wickets and went for just eight runs in four overs. From that point onwards, he played all but two matches (missing one each in 2022 and 2024) during his entire RCB stint. It’s at RCB where the term ‘Miyan Magic’ was coined for him.

That season, he was a plus bowler on wickets but still below par on economy. He then had a terrific season in 2021, conceding 1.07 runs per over less than expected. Nobody could hit the ball off the square, which meant RCB would retain him over Yuzvendra Chahal and Harshal Patel. 2022 was easily the most forgettable year of his IPL career, even as an Indian regular.

That was the story really, that he would have a great or terrible season.

Since then, people don’t score off him. And in 2023, he started adding wickets. If we break it down by each phase of the innings, he improves on almost every metric.

But the most fascinating thing is that he becomes a far better death bowler.

He used to be a menace against left-handers till 2022, but that has flipped against right-handers - which is the better thing to dominate.

RCB didn’t end up retaining him in the most recent mega auction, so there obviously was going to be demand for him in the market. Gujarat Titans won a bidding war against Rajasthan Royals and got him for INR 12.25 crore; a 75% rise from his value at RCB.

Siraj is not a perfect T20 bowler, but he has willed his way into being very effective. And as it often does with him, the effort has paid off.

***

So our long list of nominees is:

They’re all winners, except they really aren’t. There are three clear standouts here.

A Delhi allrounder who ups his game with the bat, Rajasthan’s newest captain and a Hyderabad opener that completely changes his play style.

The short list is:

Axar Patel could chip in with the bat. But he’s gone from that to a solid role player against spin who can often float in the top five. He is often worth more than his runs, and his bowling is better in the impact sub era. The fielding and leadership is a huge bonus; he’s just an all-rounder in a game trying to legislate against his kind.

Abhishek Sharma was always a talented player. But the 2023/24 SMAT was when he first showed that he could be a thrasher. Since then, it almost doesn’t matter if it’s a normal IPL game or a T20 World Cup final - Abhishek will go for the kill. It’s easy to dismiss T20 hitters as ‘blind sloggers’, but in truth, what he’s doing requires immense skill and mastery. He can win games in half a powerplay.

Similarly, Riyan Parag’s rise also begins in the same SMAT season, where he proves himself as a skipper and with the bat. We’ve seen him bat in two different ways and find success. Obviously, Rajasthan Royals deserve a lot of credit for sticking with him during his lean phase. You don’t always get Vaibhav Sooryavanshis; sometimes you just have to back the potential for longer.

So who gets this much-awaited non-prestigious award?

The first winner of the Good Areas’ Most Improved IPL player is…

The face of Assam cricket, Riyan Parag Das.

Role clarity helped big time. But he truly went from being one of the worst top six batters in the league to having statistical neighbours like Kohli and Salt. Despite all the talent, it was the transformation to witness.

Riyan Parag has, in our minds, simply improved the most.

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We are three weeks into the IPL. We’ve had every team win a match, what more you can wish for? So let us make sense of it the only way we know, with our power list.

1. RCB (Previous Ranking: 1)

Last week: RCB beat Lucknow quite comfortably, and took Delhi to the last over before David Miller finished it off. Both the wickets were a bit tricky, so we didn’t see loads of runs.

One player doing well: Bhuvneshwar Kumar

It’s hard to pinpoint an objectively bad game for him. He’s been among the top wicket-takers, and nobody has scored off him either.

One player doing badly: Jitesh Sharma

In both chases, he came in without having much left to do. But he’s gotten stuck a couple of times batting first, most noticeably against Delhi.

Next: v GT (Apr 24), @ DC (Apr 27), @ GT (Apr 30)

Road ahead: RCB were 4-2 in 6 games and 5-3 in 8 last season too. So a 2-1 split in three should work. They’re in a streak of playing LSG, DC and GT home and away for six games, so far it’s 1-1 in two.

2. PBKS (Previous Ranking: 2)

Last week: Mumbai seemed to be on course to set a huge total after the early wickets, but Punjab were able to restrict them before gunning it down comfortably. Lucknow was a mauling.

One player doing well: Cooper Connolly

Cooper Connolly has been really impressive this IPL. He’s now stepped up in three of the five innings. Despite getting stuck in the powerplay versus LSG, he broke free and ended up playing a ridiculous knock.

One player doing badly: Nehal Wadhera

It’s obviously nitpicking when we’re talking about a team like Punjab. But Wadhera has been far from his best. He’s at 41.7% dot balls, compared to 31.3 last season, plus he’s not found many fours either.

Next: @ DC (Apr 25, afternoon game), v RR (Apr 28), @ GT (May 3)

Road ahead: They’re unbeaten so far, but the teams coming up should give them more competition. Even 2-1 sets them up nicely for the playoffs.

3. RR (Previous Ranking: 3)

Last week: If Nandre Burger takes that sitter, we might be having a different conversation. But Ravindra Jadeja was 2/8 in 3 overs, and didn’t bowl out too. Vaibhav Sooryavanshi had another solid game, but their middle order didn’t perform again.

One player doing well: Ravi Bishnoi

Ravi Bishnoi has already taken one wicket more than last season. He’s attacking the stumps more. Yes, in the last couple of games he’s conceded a few, but his bowling has definitely been a difference compared to their spinners from last year.

One player doing badly: Riyan Parag

Riyan Parag had two solid IPL seasons, and now he has the full-time captaincy too. There have been enough chances for him to make an impact, but it has been a terrible year for him so far.

Next: @ LSG (Apr 22), v SRH (Apr 25, night game), @ PBKS (Apr 28)

Road ahead: RR have two games on the road, and SRH at home is sandwiched between those. They should still back themselves to go 2-1, and they could always learn from the mistakes they made against SRH in the away fixture.

4. DC (Previous Ranking: 6)

Last week: Their bowlers pulled the game back in the first innings before the batters took it deep in the run-chase versus RCB. KL Rahul batted with high-intent despite early wickets, and Tristan Stubbs played the finishing anchor.

One player doing well: Lungi Ngidi

Ngidi’s pace-off deliveries have lit up the IPL too. In the final five overs, he is going for only 7.5 econ and even in the Powerplay he’s not conceded too many.

One player doing badly: Error 404

It’s a batting lineup with an incredibly high floor and the bowling attack is solid. Someone like Nitish Rana, who had three bad games, has been dropped now.

Next: @ SRH (Apr 21), v PBKS (Apr 25, afternoon game), v RCB (Apr 27)

Road ahead: They face an on the rise SRH and then two strong teams in three days. So it’s certainly not an easy ride ahead. A 2-1 split here means they’d have done pretty well.

5. GT (Previous Ranking: 4)

Last week: Gujarat did well to restrict KKR to 180 in the first innings, and never really looked out of control during the chase. But against MI, it was the opposite; the hosts scored 96 in the last six and had them 55/5 in the eighth over.

One player doing well: Rashid Khan

Rashid has six wickets in as many games, but crucially he’s going at only 7.7 runs per over. His performances in the middle overs with Prasidh Krishna and Ashok Sharma allow GT to keep the lid on batting teams.

One player doing badly: Sai Sudharsan

In 2025, Sai Sudharsan ended the season with the most runs. He was extremely critical to their top-heavy strategy. He did have a solid game against RR, albeit in a close loss. But he’s only made 62 in the other five innings combined.

Next: @ RCB (Apr 24), v CSK (Apr 26, afternoon game), v RCB (Apr 30)

Road ahead: They are 3-3 currently, and two of their next three games are against RCB. If they can come out of this with 2-1, they shouldn’t be too disappointed. That is certainly possible if their bowling unit clicks at Chinnaswamy.

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