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

11 runs an over were needed when they started. It was more than 15 needed with nine overs still to bowl. This is a tough chase in any era, but this was Rajasthan Royals going after 213 in 2010.

At the crease was a batter who didn’t look the part. His athleticism didn’t match how we saw batting; he looked like a bowler who likes to slog. But this day, he was stuck, 15 from 14, and no timing at all.

Then Ali Murtaza bowls a full toss, his eyes light up, he flexes his lean muscular frame and swings, it goes in the air, a tough chance and the fielder only gets fingertips. It falls. At this point, it doesn’t feel like a big deal, it’s just a drop from a bowling team who are well on top.

In the end, it was one of the biggest mistakes a fielding team could make.

11 straight boundaries. He was 15 off 14, and 23 balls later he crossed a hundred. The then fastest IPL century.

It should have ended in glory. Instead, it was a run out. An impossible chase, ending on the edge of victory.

A week later, former Test player Mike Selvey from The Guardian called Yusuf a ‘mediocre cumbersome batsman’ whose only assets were ‘a good eye, considerable strength, and a decent blade.’ He concluded that ‘Presumably he just got lucky in that freakish way that sometimes happens.’ ‘An IPL natural’, he said. Not as a compliment.

Mike Selvey is describing a monster. Unfortunately, this is also how the public perceived him to be. Just a big strong freak who could hit it far. Nothing more.

And on the other side, Shane Warne called it the greatest innings he had ever seen.

Yusuf Pathan was too early for our meagre 2010 minds to understand. He looked like a slogger, and those had limited value. We knew this was something we didn’t have to take seriously. Warne was wrong that it was the greatest innings he’d seen; Selvey was wrong that this was luck.

Yusuf Pathan was something we couldn’t really understand then. But now looking back, he wasn’t a slogger or a great. He was a genetic mutation of batting. Cricketers had been good against spin before, but he was the first one sent to destroy it.

***

That day, Yusuf Pathan hit 46 off 14 against spin. He did it again in 2014, making 44 off 14 against Sunrisers Hyderabad spinners en route a 72 off 22. Even now, he has two of the fastest knocks ever against spin in an innings.

For a minimum of 1000 runs, Yusuf has the second-highest true strike rate versus spin in the IPL. Only behind Glenn Maxwell with 34, and ahead of Chris Gayle, David Warner and Shane Watson.

The 1000 run mark is important. This is not someone who got lucky, it is a player who is a great specialist. He wasn’t just good at playing spin, but destroying it. A grotesque killing machine.

Yusuf has two seasons where he’s averaging over 60 and striking at over 200 versus spin. Heinrich Klaasen, Rajat Patidar and Nicholas Pooran haven’t done that. But Yusuf also has four seasons with an average of more than 40 with 140 strike rate.

This isn’t Sunil Narine getting on a roll sometimes; Yusuf continually crushed and stayed in against the turning ball.

He has five seasons where his true strike rate is over 35. Two of those are near 80, which we thought was a typo. And if you’re into anchors, he also has five seasons where his true average is over 35.

But, the good times stopped, and when they did, it was as if someone found an antidote to stop him.

Yusuf’s true strike rate versus the turning ball is 36 till 2016 and -24 afterwards. That’s a 60 point swing in true strike rate. He had a small drop in his pace batting. But it was normal.

Yusuf went from the best hitter of spin ever, to a normal human.

It wasn’t just the turning ball though. Before 2017, he didn’t spare any kind of bowling. He had a true strike rate of over 25 versus all types of bowling barring right-arm pace. In fact, this makes him weirder. It is very rare to have your worst record against the thing you face the most.

And as a right-hander, he was best against left-arm finger spin. Which is even more bizarre.

It was like he was a mutant that developed in the wrong way.

Yusuf didn’t need time to get going against spin, a rarity for batters. Only 10 players out of 48 have a positive true strike rate versus it in their first 10 balls. Yusuf with a true strike rate of 23 is only second to Glenn Maxwell’s 28. However, Yusuf’s true average in his first 10 balls is 20, whereas Maxwell’s is -11.

He could go from ball one, and not get out.

And once he’s set, that true strike rate jumps up to 51. Smashing spin from the get-go and crushing their soul when he’s set. However, Yusuf didn’t always like starting versus pace, he had a true strike rate of -7 in the first 10 balls. And that jumps to 37 when he’s set. He was a weapon; dangerous in the right hands, but could blow up in your face if you didn’t use him properly.

The way Shane Warne deployed Yusuf was almost perfect. 45% of his entry points for Rajasthan were in the 7 to 11 phase, when the spinners started to dominate.

Yusuf had a true average of 15 and a true strike rate of 43 when he entered in that phase. He could face the matchup he loved from ball one, and as we’ve established, once set, nothing you bowl matters.

Warne knew exactly what he had. ‘He strikes the ball as cleanly as anyone I’ve ever seen,’ he said. Warne really backed and understood the talent that Yusuf was. Warne stated that ‘He’s not one of those guys who when he does badly, you just give him a size 10. You need to put your arm around him, make him feel good, and he will go out and perform the best for you.’ It’s one thing to understand the utility of a player; it’s another to understand their psychology.

Yusuf himself confirms it. ‘Before coming to the IPL, Warne studied my game and gave me the freedom to play as I wanted. He showed confidence in me right from the first game.’ The irony that one of the greatest spinners ever worked out how to destroy spin with a weapon he helped unleash.

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Changing sides muzzled him. The latest Yusuf ever entered for Rajasthan was the 15th over. For Kolkata, they didn’t see it that way. From 2011 to 2013, he was largely an afterthought, entering in his ideal phase just 23% of the time and frequently sent in at the death, where he was far less effective.

Kolkata bought Yusuf for $2.1 million, but they didn’t really know how and where to fit him in. Thankfully, Gautam Gambhir learned his lesson. From 2014 to 2016, that figure jumped to 46%.

Overall, you have to say Gambhir did a solid job using Yusuf, though he didn’t always understand his utility as well as Warne did.

India, on the other hand, didn’t get the memo.

Yusuf’s median entry point was in the 8th over for Rajasthan, the 10th over for Kolkata and the 13th over for India.

In that era, spinners often didn’t bowl after the 14th over. India had a weapon of mass destruction, and they misplaced their keys.

India used him in his ideal phase half as much as Rajasthan did.

And on the rare occasions India did put him in earlier, the scores were 48/4, 61/5, 37/5 and 105/5. Even in his ideal phase, both arms were tied behind his back and he was set up to fail.

Both India and Kolkata early on miscast Yusuf. He was a big, strong man that hit the ball a long way, so naturally they assumed he’d be good at coming in at the end to finish. They weren’t alone in making this tactical error, Australia did this with Andrew Symonds, Mumbai Indians did this with Kieron Pollard and Chennai Super Kings did this with Albie Morkel. Lance Klusener and South Africa in the 90s, too. If you’re built like a refrigerator, teams will often push you further and further back. But in reality, your best usage might be up the order.

Yusuf wasn’t a finisher that could occasionally hit spin. He was a specialist middle overs spin destroyer that on occasions could finish a game. They are distinctly different roles. Unfortunately for Yusuf, this misreading haunted his international career.

And yet even in the wrong role, the T20I numbers tell you exactly what India were leaving on the table. If we look at Indian batters versus spin till 2016, Yusuf had a strike rate of 175. The next highest was Yuvraj Singh at 129. MS Dhoni had a strike rate of 91. So Yusuf is 45 points ahead of the next-best player, and nearly double his skipper.

Even playing in the wrong role and coming in at the wrong time, he still managed to bash spin whenever he faced them.

Naturally, his best utility would be as a middle order batter in Asia. However, in his entire T20I career, only 3 of his 18 innings came there. Twice he batted at number 8, and once at number 7. All three times, India were already in a crisis.

The first time he walked in, the score was 110/6 needing 53 to win. Hits 22 off 10, including 16 off 4 balls versus legspinner Malinga Bandara, who had taken three wickets and was barely going at a run a ball before Yusuf won the game.

You can tie his hands behind his back, put him in a hessian bag and chuck weights in with him, and he’ll still crack a six from spin.

Yusuf last played a T20I in March 2012, a rain-affected game in which he didn’t even get to bat. That was just before they headed into three T20 World Cups that took place in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and India, respectively. India dropped their best spin-hitter on the back of failing against pace in a role he wasn’t designed for mainly outside Asia. They muted their mutant.

In these tournaments, where both playing and bowling spin would play a central part in determining your fate, India had strike rates of 111, 103 and 101. Barely over a run a ball in 2014 and 2016.

They were the seventh-worst team in terms of strike rate across these T20 World Cups.

Three batters went at less than a run a ball in this timeframe. One would be a liability, three is a systemic issue.

Meanwhile in the IPL in the same period, five of the players in the World Cup teams had a strike rate below 120 versus spin. The best of the lot was Virat Kohli with 137. Yusuf Pathan was 147.

In 2012, they needed a big fast win over South Africa, and they got stuck against spin.

In 2014, for the final the Indian batters got stuck versus the Sri Lankan spinners, who ended with figures of one for 45 in 8 overs.

In 2016, India made the semi-finals, put up 192 and still lost. In that, Samuel Badree bowled four overs, one for 26. The bowler with the next lowest economy was Sulieman Benn, who went for 36 runs with his left-arm spin. Something Yusuf would eat.

India had this incredible beast-man and three tournaments in which to unleash him, and they kept him in mothballs.

***

Yusuf Pathan was flawed, and weird. He didn’t fit in with the batting orthodoxy of his time. He was punk in the 60s. A tech genius from the 1800s. Shane Warne saw it, but few others did.

No one can tell what India might have been with Yusuf Pathan in the middle overs, feasting on the souls of the poor spinners who went up against him. Instead, he was miscast, then outcast. But you watch cricket today, and you see little parts of Yusuf in Shivam Dube, Rajat Patidar, Heinrich Klaasen, Nicholas Pooran and Abhishek Sharma.

And Yusuf Pathan was where that strain of batting first mutated.

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Welcome to the still slightly too early IPL power rankings list.

We have had enough games to make very uneducated guesses on who is doing well and who isn’t. This isn’t a points table, it is a vibes check based on record, strength of opposition, closeness of games and whatever else we make up.

Welcome to the IPL Power Rankings.

1. RCB (Previous Ranking: 1)

Last week: RCB beat MI easy. But went down to RR, though still played well at times. Not much to be concerned about.

Batting: RCB actually have the highest run rate of all teams in the league. They have a lot of guys scoring around two runs a ball, with Rajat Patidar looking awesome. Romario Shepherd hasn’t batted much. Jitesh Sharma’s form is something worth keeping an eye on.

Bowling: Krunal Pandya’s form seems to be back, and that is a huge plus. Josh Hazlewood is actually back, also good. They need Rasikh Salam fit, and the less they bowl Romario Shepherd and Tim David, the better.

Next: v LSG (Apr 15), v DC (Apr 18, afternoon game)

Road ahead: RCB should at least be able to go 1-1 in the coming week, but with Punjab and Rajasthan looking in great form they’d not want to be left behind in the race for the top two. They’re 2-0 at home so far.

2. PBKS (Previous Ranking: 4)

Recent record: W v SRH, N/R @ KKR

Last week: Punjab pulled the game back after conceding 105/0 in the powerplay, thanks to Shashank Singh’s surprise spell. Against KKR, Xavier Bartlett was hooping it around everywhere before rain ruined it.

Batting: They chased down 219 & 163 at home and 210 at Chepauk. It will be fascinating to see PrabhArya’s intent in the first innings when they aren’t limited by a target. Shreyas has two important knocks, as does Cooper Connolly. The lower middle order hasn’t seen much action yet.

Bowling: Arshdeep Singh is at 16 wides and a no one ball from his 14 overs. He’s going at 10.6, which is a bit high even for a fast-scoring league. However, every other bowler seems to have had a moment, even Shashank. The attack is not fully in form yet, so promising signs.

Next: @ MI (Apr 16), v LSG (Apr 19, night game)

Road ahead: Mumbai should be a tough game, but on current form may not be. Punjab can potentially go 2-0 the next week. That sets them up really nicely.

3. RR (Previous Ranking: 5)

Last week: RR crushed Mumbai in a rain-curtailed game, and were pretty convincing for most of the RCB clash. But SRH’s debutants gave them a jolt at 9/5, though they made another 150 runs to not hurt their net run rate as badly.

Batting: The top three have been in sublime touch - all of them are in the top ten run-scorers, plus Vaibhav Sooryavanshi is an outlier on strike rate too. But with Jofra Archer at No.8 and Ravindra Jadeja not being a great death overs hitter, their batting depth can be a worry. And eventually, they’ll need their skipper to stand up with the bat.

Bowling: They have probably been the best performing attack of the season so far statistically. The overseas pace duo is spicy at the top, and Ravi Bishnoi is getting loads of poles.

Next: @ KKR (Apr 19, afternoon game), @ LSG (Apr 22)

Road ahead: They have some time off now, which isn’t a bad time to regroup after a big loss. After that, they go on the road. Getting 2 in 2 is still a realistic outcome looking at their quality.

4. GT (Previous Ranking: 6)

Last week: We were worried about the road games, but Gujarat went 2-0. They beat LSG comfortably, and a big reason for that was that they choked the flow of runs in the middle overs. DC was obviously a coin toss game that could have gone either way.

Batting: Is Jos Buttler back? His last two fifties have looked very sublime; he hit lots of fours in Lucknow and cleared the ropes multiple times in Delhi. Shubman Gill has been amongst the runs too, and Washington Sundar got his first IPL fifty last week. They lack power, but Phillips has barely faced a ball.

Bowling: Pace is pace yaar, say the Gujarat Titans as they use it in every single phase of the innings. Prasidh Krishna looks in superb form with his impact in those middle overs, and we might have to ask if Rashid Khan is back too. Ashok Sharma’s pace is exciting. It’s actually Kagiso Rabada that has been their most expensive seamer so far, and Mohammed Siraj has been hot and cold.

Next: v KKR (Apr 17), v MI (Apr 20)

Road ahead: They play their next two games at home, so you would expect them to at least be 1-1. They did beat MI at this venue the last time on a black soil wicket.

5. MI (Previous Ranking: 3)

Last week: MI bowled first in both games, did not get a single powerplay wicket and got smashed around the park. They lost too many wickets against RR, and could never really keep up with the required run rate versus RCB.

Batting: On paper, this batting lineup looks good, on grass it isn’t working. I am worried about their ceiling. Can Rohit Sharma and Ryan Rickleton get them 70+ run powerplays consistently? Tilak Varma and Suryakumar Yadav get stuck versus spin, and you never know which version of Hardik Pandya turns up on a given day. Sherfane Rutherford is a great hitter at the end, but they have to give him more of a platform as he likes to be set first.

Bowling: Shardul Thakur has 5 wickets, Jasprit Bumrah, Trent Boult and Deepak Chahar have two between them. And Shardul is going at more than 13 an over, while Mayank Markande has zero wickets at an economy rate of 15.2. Yes, nobody can hit Bumrah even now. But for a bowling lineup of big names, they might need to take more than 3.5 wickets a match.

Next: v PBKS (Apr 16), @ GT (Apr 20)

Road ahead: Mumbai have an interesting schedule, a home game against a strong team and an away one versus a side on the rise. But they just have to start winning, so 1-1 is still poor for them.

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Ajinkya Rahane thinks some of you are jealous. That’s because you keep bringing up his recent strike rate and some of his struggles. And he’s thinking to himself, I don’t know, a couple of years ago I did really well.

Against SRH, he scored eight off ten balls. These things happen in the IPL and anyone can get stuck at any stage. And to be fair to him, a couple of days before that he did make 67 off 40. Again, the only issue was that even though the strike rate looks good, it was a little bit slow for that game.

I don’t think I’m one of those people that Rahane would think is jealous of him. In fact, of all the cricketers in the world, I can’t think of anyone who people have accused me of being paid for more than by him. When everyone was doubting him in Test cricket, I was still pointing out a lot of positives.

In T20 cricket, that’s harder to do.

For instance, in 2022, he had a strike rate of 103. It’s actually very hard to have a strike rate that low in T20 cricket. And then the next year, it was over 170. That’s also pretty hard to do in T20 cricket. It’s one of the worst seasons we’ve ever seen, followed by one of the best seasons we’ve ever seen.

And so you can understand why Ajinkya Rahane is sitting there going, guys, I get it. I wasn’t playing well for a while, and now I am. Why are you still getting on about it? That’s because he has made a change to his game. But it is almost entirely when he’s playing pace bowling.

In 2024, Rahane went at less than a run a ball against spin. Again, that is very hard to do, but that’s his limitation as a T20 batter. It’s why on occasion teams will try one, or even two spinners against him when he is opening the batting. Why let him face pace bowling? He really likes that. Chuck him as many spinners as possible.

And because of what Rahane was talking about and some other things I’ve been noticing, I thought it was worth looking at what players are really good against one thing and not very good against the other.

So first, we have to work out exactly how good Rahane is against pace and how bad he is against spin. You can see in the last couple of years, he’s been better than average against pace. That’s very good.

But he is a long way back against spin. In fact, of all the players we looked at, Rahane was the worst player against the turning ball in the IPL in the last couple of years.

Clearly, most players are going to be in the middle ground. But we were looking for outliers. And to be fair, Rahane is an incredible outlier when it comes to playing pace and spin.

But in order to work this out, we really had to come up with one metric that would help us. We talked to former Indian analyst Himanish Ganjoo and looked at his impact method, because this factors in both how many runs you make and how efficient you are at scoring them.

So you could go deeper for each player, but the outliers here really tell an interesting story.

***

For instance, our second outlier is Virat Kohli. He’s exceptional against pace. In fact, he’s one of the best players in the IPL against the faster ball. The problem is that he is a considerable negative against spin.

He’s now got the slog sweep, and so hopefully he will continue to work on that. But essentially what happens is that once the powerplay ends, he goes back into his shell a little bit and takes a lot of agreed upon singles. That really changes his impact quite dramatically.

If you’re just talking about the quicks, he’s not that far off the best player against fast bowling, which is Travis Head, his former RCB teammate.

The difference is the huge gap between the two of them when it comes to spin. Head wasn’t always a good player of spin, but he’s found a way to whack it and make it work for him. Over the last five or six years, and a lot of that was through early IPL exposure and being in the nets, he’s developed a method that works well enough.

Being that he is the best player against pace, he only needs to be marginally better against spin - and he’s nailing that.

Right near him is Suryakumar Yadav. You wouldn’t automatically compare him to Head, but he is absolutely brilliant against pace, and more than good enough against spin. I wouldn’t say he is a specialist against the quicker bowlers, but he is worth more than four runs per innings against them, while still being at two against spin.

So he is a really good player of spin, but he’s just better against the quicks.

This led me to look for the most even and dominant player against both, and that is Heinrich Klaasen. Purely on reputation, the South African is known for absolutely smashing spin everywhere. But he also smashes pace, absolutely everywhere. He’s remarkably even.

That makes sense because if you are from South Africa, you naturally face a lot of seam. We’ve talked before about his peculiar backstory about why he got very good player spin. Essentially, he would roll pitches for his friends, who were all spinners.

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Welcome to the way too early power rankings where we try to make sense of the early games. It’s not a points table, it’s a vibes table. This is where we look at strength of schedule, injuries and form to make up a list of the best and worst teams, in roughly that order.

1. RCB (W v SRH, W v CSK)

Last week: They bowled well against SRH, and then batted even better. They smashed the living daylights out of CSK. Two home games, but they look fantastic so far.

Hot: Runs, so many runs. Five guys currently have a top score of more than 45, and four of them are striking at better than 170. They’re looking lovely right now.

Cool: As they line up, the fifth bowler still worries me a little. But, so does almost every team in the league.

Next: @ RR (Apr 10), @ MI (Apr 12, night game)

Road ahead: On form, they have two tough games coming up, both on the road against RR and MI. We will get a better idea of them then. They’ve had two soft ones so far.

2. DC (W @ LSG, W v MI)

Last week: They are two from two. The LSG win was wild after they lost early wickets. Mumbai they played well on a wicket that suited them. I rated them high coming in, but they’re looking good right now.

Hot: Sameer Rizvi is the king of the catch-up innings so far. Twice he’s been the impact sub who has come in cold, and ended hot. I also like that their home wicket completely suited their bowling.

Cool: They are losing a few too many early wickets. But it’s nitpicking.

Next: v GT (Apr 8), @CSK (Apr 11, night game)

Road ahead: They play two games against teams not firing yet, so they might hit the RCB match with four wins on the trot.

3. MI (W v KKR, L @ DC)

Last week: The strongest team of this tournament on paper played pretty well against KKR, although not sure why it took them until the last over. But DC shook them on a tricky wicket where they made no runs.

Hot: The opening partnership looks fun. High intent Rohit Sharma with a Ryan Rickleton who can bat for ages now. I like the pairing a lot.

Cool: They haven’t quite assembled themselves correctly yet. Hardik’s injury in the last game was an issue, Santner was not available for the first, and Boult was dropped for the next one. It’s all a bit over the shop. Markande has three overs in two games for 36 runs.

Next: @ RR (Apr 7), v RCB (Apr 12, night game)

Road ahead: Some of this may depend on Hardik being fit, because these are two good teams. Maybe winning their first game has jinxed them. But they could end up as 2-2 after four.

4. PBKS (W v GT, W @ CSK)

Last Week: Two from two, baby. I liked them coming in. First game was a weird chase, but they had the game in control. Second match was against CSK, so on present form not that impressive. But it’s a great start.

Hot: Yuzi Chahal’s renaissance? He’s looked really good so far at the very least. Marco Jansen has bowled well too, as has Vyshak. If they can get something out of Arshdeep, this is a fantastic attack.

Cool: Their batting has not quite come together yet. Priyansh Arya and Cooper Connolly have saved them. I’m not sure this looks like a team who can regularly hit 220.

Next: @ KKR (Apr 6), v SRH (Apr 11, afternoon game)

Road ahead: KKR are a mess and SRH are not firing either. So this feels like a good time to play both. 4-0 after two road games is good. But this is the softest part of their schedule.

5. RR (W v CSK, W @ GT)

Last week: RR beat an ordinary CSK at home, and then it was a bit of a weird game against GT. They won and lost that match several times. A bit of a coin toss match.

Hot: Ravi Bishnoi had a down year last season. He took 9 wickets in 11 games, he now has five in two. But even in the first one he looked like he was putting good revs on the ball at a faster speed.

Cool: Their bowling is currently doing better than on paper. Not a negative now, but worth watching.

Next: v MI (Apr 7), v RCB (Apr 10), @ SRH (Apr 13)

Road ahead: If they are really good, we will know a lot more in the next two games. Two of the best teams in the tournament - at home though - should give us a good idea. Even splitting those games with SRH to follow means they should be annoyed if they aren’t 4-1.

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In his first game this year, Arshdeep Singh bowled 32 deliveries. You might be thinking that it’s generally accepted to bowl 24. How did Arshdeep then end up bowling so many more?

The answer is that the ball went soft and so they started to bowl slow, short, and wide bouncers. And when you bowl those, you’re a chance of bowling it too wide and getting it wide, or you’re a chance of bowling it too short and getting it wide.

Arshdeep was doing both of those things in Punjab Kings’ match vs Gujarat Titans. It was kind of a two-paced pitch at New Chandigarh, so that makes sense. He’d actually gone for runs early on, bowling more normally. When he came back on and tried this method, he thought it was going to work. And now was his chance to finish the innings with his final six deliveries - or in his case, 11.

The score was 150/6 coming into that last over. Rahul Tewatia was batting, but he hadn’t faced that many deliveries. The other batter was Rashid Khan, and he hadn’t faced any at that point.

What follows is really a modern piece of T20 art. It’s not going be to everyone’s taste, but let me take you through it.

The pitch was two-paced, as we’ve said. And so what the Punjab bowlers had thought throughout pretty much all of Gujarat’s innings was that if they could hit the pitch quite hard, they’d be able to slow it down so much that it would be impossible to hit through the ball. On top of this, the actual ball itself just went very soft. So even when it hit near the middle of the bat, it just kind of looked like it was being struck by wet cabbage.

But when you are going for short, slow, wide bouncers, chances are you’re going to bowl wides. And that’s exactly how he started his last over.

What would have happened in older cricket is you would’ve thought to yourself, ‘Ooh, he’s bowled a wide there. Might need to change up this next one.’

But that’s not how modern cricket works.

Arshdeep had a plan and he was sticking with it. Luckily for him, the second one managed to be just inside and wasn’t actually given a wide.

But you can see there’s a bit of a theory going on here.

Also, Arshdeep was probably aware that he was a little bit lucky to get away with that second ball. So he changes his plan ever so slightly, and he comes in just a little bit but still bowls one that is short, slow, and wide - but within the guidelines. However, in this case, Tewatia actually realises what’s happening, and moves well across to try and play the ball, but ends up being hit.

So three balls have been delivered, but only two of those are legal. Having said that, this over has only gone for one run. So far, you’d have to say that the plan is working. If that’s the case, as any video-gamer will tell you, you keep spamming.

But of course, as Tewatia has already noticed, all these balls are in the same spot. And he’s already moved over once. In fact, there’s no one in the world who couldn’t have noticed this pattern by this stage.

So for the next ball, Tewatia goes all the way across and he’s standing on the edge of the pitch. It’s absolutely remarkable to see this. And he ends up playing a hook shot to a ball bowled short and wide, well outside offstump. It would’ve been a wide, and it’s probably one of the worst deliveries of all time. And I wonder how many times a ball bowled there has ever been hooked, because the chances of a batter standing so far across to be able to do that, are virtually none.

Even for modern cricket where we sometimes see players end up in very, very weird positions, this had to be one of the weirdest. However, it worked. Tewatia hooked it away for four.

The issue for Arshdeep at this point though, is that this theory is no longer really working, is it? He’s now bowled three legal balls and gone for five runs. It’s quite a low-scoring game, so he thinks, ‘I need to change this up a little bit.’

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Too hot, too cool.

In many ways, this is how the IPL started. With Indian actor Shahrukh Khan alternating from a Matrix parody to full Bollywood epic. Cricket had never been like this before. It was dressed in white, sipping chai, and now we had golden helmets, prisoners taking on wardens with giant spoons, a rock band around some stumps and a posey white woman being bowled by a middle aged Indian mum.

Cricket had tried hot air balloons in the 1850s, pyjamas in the 1970s, and cut out most of the game by the 2000s. But none of this was like sweaty construction workers in a dance off against oiled up muscle boys. Cricket had changed.

If that was surreal, imagine it’s a couple of decades later, and Americans are re-explaining this music video to you.

“It is perfect Pump Up music.”

“How have I not seen this before?”

“Oh man, we’ve got like a construction crew. Yes. Too hot, too cool.”

Until I heard this episode, I’d have said that the best cricket podcasts ever were very different.

“Why science fu****g man, what da science, science is the man.”

That is a near perfect moment, and it happened on a cricket podcast when Usman Khawaja was interviewing Saeed Ajmal. The conversation was about the doosra, and the fact the ICC had banned everyone from bowling it. The Pakistani offspinner was pretty sure it was legal, and that somehow science had ripped him off.

Science is the man is t-shirt design worthy. Usman Khawaja still gets asked about it on podcasts.

Recently we had a new great podcast moment when Australian spinner Stuart MacGill briefly joined the Cricket Unfiltered podcast as a co-host. Then there was a disagreement that stemmed from an agreement that South African fans had gone too far in attacking David Warner’s wife, Candice. MacGill barked, “Well, I think it’s pretty low talking about it, for starters, Menners. You didn’t need to go into details there. I think that’s s***, you’re a f***ing idiot.”

MacGill then screamed ‘move on’, in various ways, and threatened violence. ‘Move on’ isn’t quite ‘science is the man’, but the entire episode is unintentionally hilarious and uncomfortable. It’s like a mash up scene between the US and UK The Office.

There have been many great cricket podcasts episodes over the years. This is a sport built for long conversations. But last year, an episode dropped that was not made by cricket fans; it was made by American finance nerds who tell stories and use SRK’s pop bop to pump themselves up.

Whether it is the best is subjective. The two spinners’ angry moments might be the funniest, but when the Acquired podcast explained the sweaty construction workers, it might actually end up as one of the most important.

Because, while you may not have heard this podcast, you know who did? Almost all the new investors in the IPL.

***

When people talk about the history of America and cricket, they usually start with the first international game being played between Canada and the USA in New York, decades before the Ashes.

But modern USA cricket is even more interesting. Pat Cummins’ manager, and former Fijian seamer, Neil Maxwell tried to make a league in the US in 2012 after his stint in the IPL. It was a partnership between the New Zealand and the US boards.

It didn’t happen. Like most things with US cricket, dealing with the board makes it almost impossible. In a cricket community stacked with terrible governance, the various USA boards have been standouts in mismanagement and worse.

The old board, and the one that replaced it, have both been suspended by the ICC. To be that bad at your job once is remarkable, but they have done it twice. Peter Della Penna, a tireless chronicler of all that is shit and horrific about their governance, reported on things like security guards outside of meetings to stop people voting. And for his trouble, he was called a knife salesman and blogger.

The biggest success for cricket was the All Stars tournament where you could pay to see Curtly Ambrose bowl very slow to great batters. It was an impressive moment, but it also only had the single edition before disappearing again.

League ideas came and went. Even the CPL tried to expand into the US. It was always part of their plan. The West Indies market is so small, and on top of it is the biggest sporting platform on earth. The Canadian league was also interested in the US.

Everyone was. There wasn’t a shortage of people trying to make cricket work there, or even offering up resources, but nothing seemed to stick.

Until Major League Cricket finally broke through. Their first season was 2023. A long time after the T20 franchise bubble started. But they had owners like Satya Nadella, Ross Perot Jr and Anurag Jain (founders of the venture capital firm Perot Jain) as well. These were big money people, and yet, for all that, the first season was almost cancelled a couple of weeks from the start. The days before it began, crews worked overnight just to get the games on.

American cricket seemed almost cursed.

But things were changing culturally in the US as well. Kumail Nanjiani (who is currently fitter than any of the Pakistan players) went from Silicon Valley to making his own movie, the Big Sick. He has been in Marvel movies as well. Yet, he’s also a cricket guy, who mentions it on major chat shows and puts it in his movie.

Hasan Minhaj had a huge Netflix show, and on that he did an entire special on cricket, including a truly wondrous performance from comedic legend Lalit Modi.

The Big Bang theory was the largest show in the US at one stage, and you see an episode where Raj Koothrappali, played by Kunal Nayyar, talks about R Ashwin surrounded by Indian cricket shirts in a bar.

These are huge stars, and they’re talking cricket to people who really know nothing of it.

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Before these three, America’s most famous subcontinental man was actually voiced by a white guy. For a TV show with a regular returning Indian character, taking 21 seasons to get a decent cricket gag in feels like an error.

But perhaps the most important piece of content on cricket was made not by Americans, but by an Australian kids show called Bluey. This episode made Americans google the sport. This was not just knowing that cricket existed, but that it was magical. Cricket has never looked this beautiful, and it sold it better than any board ever has.

Americans won’t be across all of these, but cricket exists more now. It seeps into their culture almost subconsciously.

On top of all this, cricket was making a play for the US again. The game coming to the LA 2028 Olympics was a big deal. And in the middle of that, the USA was co-hosting a World Cup in which their team beat Pakistan. With Major League Cricket existing, the sport was just more prevalent. US betting sites had a tab for it. This was not the great hidden sport it had been through most of the 1900s.

It was everything that cricket had dreamed of, potentially approaching a tipping point in America.

All of these things have been adding up. So whether or not the Acquired podcasters are watching Bluey, saw USA’s super over victory against Pakistan, or follow updates on new sports at the Olympics, the environment of cricket is larger. And so their episode does not come from nowhere, it is the continuation of Americans noticing cricket.

***

Donald Trump trying to say Sachin Tendulkar’s name became a meme. While it is fun to laugh at him, it is part of cricket’s problem that someone as famous as Sachin isn’t known globally. Cricket’s issue has always been that it’s the world’s smallest big sport. It was important enough for Trump to mention, but not enough for his team to make sure they got the name right.

A few years back, I tried to get money for a cricket media startup called 99.94 DM. Most of the original interest came from US VC firms who realised that cricket was a big deal. The issue was, they didn’t really understand what that meant. They would agree to the pitch, but then every minute or so would be a question about cricket. It was like trying to sell blues music to an alien.

There was an added issue. In the West, there is a scepticism of India. Those who knew about it were aware everything worked differently. No one ever doubted you can make money from that size of a market. But can you keep it, people are not as sure. Investors get worried at having relationships with politicians, black money is still used, and the way to make things work in India is a whole culture to itself.

Then you have the IPL, which was set up by a man who is currently in exile from his own country. Lalit Modi was a visionary, but those who have looked into the original biddings suggest that it was a complete mess. We already know the process was a sham. They essentially wanted certain owners, and then guaranteed them amounts.

The thing that made overseas bidders more interested was IMG, who were co-founders of the league in a way, and the ones that kept the lights on. But in 2021, BCCI brought everything in-house.

That has worried people too. The BCCI doesn’t have great social media, or even a strong YouTube presence. They are secretive, and yet quite often leak. And during the IPL’s short run, the Supreme Court of India took over the BCCI in 2017. In 2021, IMG left. These kinds of things spook investors, especially in markets they don’t understand.

There is only a four year gap from the BCCI being taken over and them kicking IMG out. Things like this conspired to mean that the rush to get on board with the IPL from overseas investment was muted.

But the thing is, Americans are obsessed with money and sport. All they needed was a match. Or, a podcast.

***

Acquired started as two finance nerds in Seattle. Unlike most podcasts, they are not a weekly look at what is happening in their industry. They make episodes that are really more like books on their subjects. They find a company, and dissect every part of it.

It is considered by many to be the most important podcast in the finance world.

Their skill is storytelling. You don’t need to care much about customer acquisition costs to enjoy their 7 hour opus on the history of Nintendo. But at the end, you’ll know everything about how the Japanese giant went from Nudie playing cards to Mario Kart.

It’s the kinds of stories people tell their friends about, and so this became an explosive word of mouth show.

So when they did an episode on cricket, it again got a big reaction from their fans. An entire class of Americans suddenly understood cricket, or at least, its worth. Acquired did not build new cricket fans, it built investors.

***

Nestled between an episode on Rolex Watches and Epic Systems, is Acquired’s take on the IPL on their YouTube channel. The episode only has around 50k views, despite their 281K subscribers. But their videos are not where they get hits, because this is not a visual podcast, and neither is it for the normal YouTube audience. It is for people with money.

And it talks about them too, focusing on Lalit Modi, oddly skipping his colourful legal past in America, and instead delving into how he came to power and his war with Rupert Murdoch. So much of the early story is about this tussle between the billionaire and the man who kept getting in his way.

But where the episode is at its best is the breathless way they describe the decisions that were made to set this startup flying. Lalit’s obsession with celebrities opened the door for a whole new audience that sport had never seen before, women. And also the fact they were not really fighting other sports, they went after Bollywood and soap operas.

Their obsession is how differently this works than other major US sports, and they are right. Modi was inspired by America, but liberated by a bigger and different market.

But where this gets interesting is how they talk about where the league could go. They compare it to the NFL, and ask if it could surpass that as the biggest league on earth.

Can you hear that? That’s all the billionaires investing in sport around the world salivating at once.

The story of the IPL is linked to India. People will say, how can they make this much money so fast, but the truth is how has it taken this long, for the league, and nation. And what we are really seeing is that the opportunities, for cricket, and other things, are now opening up at massive rates. The IPL didn’t need overseas investment; the Bajaj family doesn’t own a team yet. And neither do many of their other billionaires.

But what American - and eventually Chinese/Saudi and Europe money - does is supersize a league that is already flying. It was going to move quickly, this adds extra rocket fuel.

The Acquired podcast is something I heard about when it was released, but quickly forgot. Until a couple of weeks back I was chatting to someone who was bidding for an IPL franchise. Instead of trying to sell US investors on cricket, they suddenly realised they were already primed, because almost all of them had listened to the podcast.

A few days later I was talking to another potential owner of a franchise, and he brought the podcast up unprompted as his secret weapon. I messaged others who had been investing or trying to in cricket, and they all said this podcast episode had been a part of their journey.

The sport they didn’t understand in the country that confused them had suddenly been opened up. All by two guys who told the crazy story of how the IPL got this big.

-

There is no way to explain Shahrukh Khan to someone who doesn’t understand India. You often hear Tom Cruise offered up as an example, but it isn’t the same. If anything, SRK is really a combination of Cruise and Michael Jackson, but even that doesn’t quite capture his status.

But people get fame, and they get fun.

Americans get showbiz, sport and money.

They may not understand cricket or India. But SRK’s Kolkata Knight Riders anthem is not entirely in English. It is actually a bunch of different languages, just showing how complex India is as a nation. But at a certain point, you don’t need to understand that much to get it.

The IPL is too hot, and too cool.

And if you get that, you will want to invest.

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What I am about to call MS Dhoni should come with some trigger warnings. It will not be well received by all. It should come with a ‘Not Safe For Work’ label.

But it is also something that should have been done a long time ago.

The term ‘anchor’ first started being used in the 1980s. It was really the first role we had in white-ball cricket, even before all the balls were of that colour. In the 1990s, we added the term ‘finisher’.

Both of these words came from Australian cricket. Geoff Marsh (father of Shaun and Mitch) was the anchor, even if Desmond Haynes also played the same role before. Then came Michael Bevan as the finisher, a player who was made for the final 25 overs of an ODI, to either finish the innings or the match.

The first role is seen as a negative, not least because coaches kept pushing players into it when they had other things they could give. It is holding back your best player, punching full tosses down the field for one, and doing the unsexy work of batting.

But the finisher - who doesn’t want to be that guy? Most of Bevan’s batting was earnest running between wickets, a geometrical understanding of fielding angles, and the odd checked, perfectly timed boundary. There was nothing sexy about it.

But when Bevan’s gym body was thrusting his hands towards the sky while his exceptionally white teeth glistened in the SCG light towers, it was a glorious thing to behold.

If Bevan got some love for this back in the 90s, what happened to Dhoni in his role as the finisher was another universe entirely.

Dhoni hit the 2011 World Cup six.

But even before that, he had hair. Bharat Sundaresan’s book on Dhoni has about 25 pages on it. He was a different character, almost seemingly alien to Indian cricket culture at the time. While the entire conversation about cricket got so loud, he managed to remain quiet. But then he hit sixes, won World Cups and also took over the IPL. He was a one man vibe, bordering on a religion at his peak.

This broad-chested big-hitter really did sex cricket up in many ways.

So the next sentence is about to hit very hard, and some of you might want to sit down or hold on to something, maybe even get AI to reshape it into something more acceptable.

MS Dhoni is a finisher, but he is also an anchor. He is a finishing anchor.

***

The Ranchi keeper has gone into another realm of fame which is beyond cricket. He doesn’t play away games, because every ground in India (and anywhere he would play) are full of his fans. Not of his team, of him. His leadership, charisma and wicketkeeping also form part of the conversation.

As does the talk of him finishing.

Find any blog on cricket online and someone will say great things about the man. And that is fine, but at Good Areas, we’ve never met a player we didn’t want to nerd out on.

We’ve covered his chasing before: what makes him different and why that works. Like how he defers risks in the middle overs, tries to be 10 off 10, and then strike at two runs a ball at the death. It is not unique, but it’s still rare after everyone in the world has seen him.

In our minds though, this pattern is the very definition of a finishing anchor.

A traditional anchor in T20 cricket meets the following criteria: has a really high average, bats at a par or below-par strike rate for most of the innings, and then bashes the death overs when they’re set.

Virat Kohli is clearly one of the best known anchors ever. These two have completely different roles and completely different entry points, yet they both have a lot of similarities.

Even though it’s not evident from the raw numbers, both Kohli and Dhoni have a similar approach to constructing a T20 innings. They take time to get set, defer risks in the middle overs and try to maximise the death overs. The reason you never notice it with Dhoni and do so with Kohli is because Dhoni essentially chops off the initial period. So you see less of the “slow” period with him.

If we take a look at their raw values, Kohli and Dhoni both average around 39 whereas Dhoni strikes faster with a strike rate of 137 compared to Kohli’s 133. But the overs Kohli bats in are slower.

When you compare their true strike rates, things change. Kohli has a true strike rate of 3, while Dhoni has a true strike rate of 0. This accounts for venues too, so Dhoni is worse than Kohli despite playing in a harder home ground. But Dhoni’s true average is 19 compared to Kohli’s 11.

So, Kohli is the faster batter, and Dhoni is better at not getting out. That is the opposite of how people see them. Context in limited overs really changes everything.

On the anchor list - high average, check. Neutral or below par strike rate, check. Bashes the death overs, check. That’s all the criteria met for a batter to be considered an anchor. And since Dhoni is a finisher, the finishing anchor was born.

But there is a cricketing reason for his style. One of the great ironies of Dhoni’s career is that despite playing for a team centered around spin, and being one of the best captains and wicketkeepers of the turning ball, he wasn’t good at striking it.

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Until 2019, for anyone that has faced at least 500 balls of spin in the IPL, Dhoni has the worst true SR.

And this holds for every white-ball format he’s been a part of. His true strike rate was -21 in T20Is and -7 in ODIs.

One thing that former Indian team analyst Himanish Ganjoo told us was, “Dhoni was a good player of classic spin”, not necessarily a great player of the modern faster spinners. So think more Warne and Murali, and less Varun Chakaravarthy or Sunil Narine.

Brian Lara was thought of as a great player of spin, but like Dhoni, he liked it when the ball went up out of the hand. The longer Dhoni’s career has gone, the less those bowlers even exist.

Some of his IPL issues are “old man who doesn’t have knees” Dhoni dragging it down. But the problem existed long before the knees gave out. If we see Dhoni’s true values vs spin by year in the IPL, even before 2016, there’s only two seasons where his true strike rate was positive. Now if it was only slightly negative, we’d understand. However, in three of these years it’s below -25. That is a choice he is making based on how he thinks he can make runs.

Since 2016, it’s only gotten worse; there’s been no positive true strike rate seasons and his best was in 2018, where his true strike rate was -11. He is forfeiting spin overs.

Before 2016, he was -11 against turn. Not healthy.

However, from 2016-2019 it’s -27. Twenty, seven.

His inability to hit spin further emphasises the need to get his entry points right. To maximise his ability, you really don’t want him to come in when there are a lot of spin overs to come. But you also want him to face a few balls. He doesn’t feel as comfortable hitting from the first delivery, because one of his main skills is reading a pitch.

His ideal entry point would be from the 13th over, where he can take 10 to 15 balls to get set and he won’t face more than an over or two of spin. And once set, he can bash pace at the death.

The issue with this approach is, you’re putting a lot of faith in both your ability to not get stuck vs spin and pulling off a good death hitting game. Unfortunately for Dhoni in international cricket, it was the former that caused issues.

Remember, his true strike rate vs spin in the IPL before 2016 was -11. At the same time, that goes down to -32 in T20Is, making him the worst of all batters that have faced 200 balls of spin. That is Babar Azam in the Big Bash League bad. He’s got a lower true strike rate than Ravi Bopara and Collins Obuya. You don’t really expect Dhoni to be compared with a 40-year-old Kenyan legspinner turned batter.

Amongst the three white-ball formats, T20Is are by far Dhoni’s worst.

What makes this even harder to explain is what happens after 2016. His IPL and ODI numbers fall off a cliff to -28 in both. But in T20Is, the format that troubled him the most, where he couldn’t hit a spinner for a six if they bowled a bunch of full tosses with all fielders inside the circle, he gets better. His true strike rate improves to -4.

This might be explained by who he is as a cricketer. He is not normal. When he makes a decision, he is fundamentalist about it. So some of his play against spin is not just that he couldn’t score quickly, but that he decided this was his method in that format or team. Then, in a new situation, he just changes.

But early in his career, his usage is truly bizarre. In T20Is before 2016, he entered before the 13th over in 46% of his innings. And he was terrible in those situations; he had a true strike rate of -24. Even if we give him some leeway for early wickets, -24 is really bad. Match-losing on most days. Once he enters from the 13th over, he’s at a neutral true strike rate with a very good true average. This is ideally where you want him.

A case study of bad usage were the 2009 and 2010 T20 World Cups. The structure of the batting then was Gautam Gambhir, Suresh Raina, Yuvraj Singh, Rohit Sharma and Yusuf Pathan with Dhoni. They largely took part in both tournaments, and they’re all better players of white-ball turn. So what you don’t do is send Dhoni ahead of any of these guys when spin is in play. Especially Yusuf.

Across the two World Cups, Yusuf and Dhoni played ten games together. Yusuf doesn’t bat in two matches, so that’s eight innings. There’s only one time where Yusuf bats ahead of Dhoni: when he came in at the 16th over vs South Africa in 2010. It would have actually made more sense for Dhoni to come in, since that’s close to the death overs.

So that’s eight innings where you have the best hitter of spin bowling in Indian cricket up to that point and you actively try to not use him vs spin.

Across the two tournaments, Dhoni made 81 off 96 balls with 4 dismissals when he entered before the 13th over, compared to 90 off 50 (and got out only once) when he entered after it.

When Dhoni started, T20 cricket was in a steam-powered era. We just didn’t know that much. Even if Dhoni was a steampunk T20 player before it was cool. But India wouldn’t use Yusuf’s 176 strike rate against spin all that much. And he was dropped for three back-to back World Cups in Asia.

From 2012 to 2016 edition, India had the sixth-worst scoring speed versus spin in the middle overs.

It wasn’t just Yusuf, India also misused Raina down the order.

So India missed out on their spin stars, but in terms of Dhoni, they had one of the best pace hitters out of place as well. This means that India had an incredible T20 player, but didn’t quite use him well, until he was almost done.

Which is more bizarre, because he was using himself. And in many other ways, he was a genius and pioneer.

***

But we are looking back at all this like people knew what was happening. This was a period where South Africa were moving AB de Villiers all around the place, because people didn’t know that much.

Also while players were learning more about T20 cricket, international teams were trying to assemble the Avengers, and doing it poorly. Until 2015, Dhoni played 52 T20Is for India; 28 of them were at World Cups.

From 2016-2019, 24.6% of his major games were T20Is. It might not be a complete coincidence that his improvement in this format coincides with him having more time to focus on it and the prestige of it increasing, all at the same time.

For years, Dhoni was keeping, captaining and batting across three formats and the IPL simultaneously. That’s not ideal. And retiring from Tests gave him a bump, but he was passing his best.

So Dhoni has been a great T20 player, and yet, never even got to the best he could be. That is part of the fascinating legacy. He really took over early T20 cricket by using what had worked in ODIs. And then when T20 changed, he assumed this new bizarre role.

Dhoni felt like a player from the future, but during his career, it changed so fast that he ended up chained to the past. But even in that, he is pioneering this new role.

The anchor, that finishes.

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One of the best things about T20 leagues is the fact that most teams have a chance to win at the start of the competition. In IPL 2025, the bottom team won four games, and the top three teams tied with nine. There’s not a big difference . This year, the market thinks Rajasthan Royals are trash, and yet they still think they are better than a one in 20 chance of winning the title.

But the market can be warped. For instance, CSK came bottom last season and they were third favourites when I checked. Of course, there’s been so many injuries happening that the odds are probably changing very rapidly, but that is quite the bump. And Mumbai Indians are favourites or near, almost every single year.

This year, they’re not just on top, but almost double the chances of CSK in third place. Is that right? Is that wrong? There are many ways to find out.

In Good Areas, we use what we call team maps, which is like a secret source algorithm that basically tells you where you are good at cricket.

It is a beautiful way to make sense of the mess.

When we’re making these team apps, you end up with several different shapes. Occasionally, we find a team that has a nearly perfect shape. It doesn’t always mean you are great - unless you’re positive in every single way.

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Nine innings, zero runs.

That was wicketkeeper Seymour Clark in first-class cricket. He played five games in 1930 for Somerset. In an attempt to make him score a run, Essex spinner Peter Smith delivered a ball that bounced twice. And yet, Clark was out bowled. This was with a new bat Clark had bought for the season. All he wanted was one professional run, and sadly, in his first season, he couldn’t get a cracker. His best efforts were the two 0 not outs. For most keepers, not scoring a run would be the end of their career.

But Clark’s keeping skills were rated very highly. Next season, he was offered another contract. In the end, he decided to go back and work his safe and secure job at the Great Western Railway.

When we made the old weird T20 XI video, we had Clark as one of the nearest neighbours for the wicketkeeping slot. Partly as a gag, as specialist T20 keepers almost do not exist.

Well, perhaps except late-career MS Dhoni, who has faced only 7.6 balls per innings in the impact sub era.

Yes, he can still whack the quicks at the death in his short cameos. But like Clark, he’s still an elite wicketkeeper - see the Shubman Gill stumping in the 2023 final - and he was the captain when they won the title that year.

In Test cricket, even the best batting keepers are usually slotted in the lower order as the workload is obviously much higher. But in the shortest format, we see them everywhere in the batting lineup - attacking openers, middle-order spin nappers and gun finishers. Sometimes, they’re not even required to keep wickets as both franchise and international teams can have multiple options.

There are players who love to keep because it gives them their freedom. Others prefer to only have one specialist job. We have seen from first-class keepers that overall, there is almost no impact. But for each player, it can be wildly different.

Who are the players who need the gloves, and who should ditch them for more runs?

***

Luke Ronchi started innings like someone had lit him on fire, and he only had a few minutes to score. His former Islamabad United analyst Hassan Cheema once told me it was almost all nerves. But no one scored as fast as him in the first five balls.

Playing domestic cricket for Western Australia, he was touted to be Adam Gilchrist’s successor. And he ended his career taking over from Brendon McCullum for New Zealand. He qualified for two teams, and somehow found himself understudy for both.

His career didn’t quite match his talent, especially internationally. But in T20s, he was a beast. He is number one on impact, changing the predicted score by 3.79 runs per innings. There are a couple of caveats though - along with his underwhelming T20I career, he did not play much in the IPL after an early failure. The league moved on, but he was better as he got older.

Gilchrist himself wasn’t too bad at T20s either, despite playing the majority of it after his prime. Another player of that prototype is Phil Salt, who doesn’t make a huge amount of runs but does it very, very quickly.

And Ryan Rickelton is fascinating, as in a short time he’s done great work, but also because he’s a much better batter with the gloves on. It’s not even that his roles change drastically, as he’s predominantly a top-order player either way.

Some of that is because he didn’t have a lot of success in the Mzansi Super League back in 2018 and 2019, when he mostly wasn’t keeping wicket. In fact, his first SA20 season in 2023 was also similar. But a lot of his top level T20 cricket around the world has come since 2024, and he’s 29 right now, so that could just be him in peak batting ages. Because when he doesn’t have the gloves now, he’s still smashing them.

One reason looking at keepers by gloves on and off is tough is when you use them: most players keep to get into the side, prove they are good with the bat, and ditch them in their prime. So of course they will make more runs than they would have if still keeping.

There are lots of different types of batting styles. And some players will change. Around the KL Rahul section you have a host of anchors, even including Dhoni, who we are in the middle of rebranding as a finishing anchor. But he was not really that when he started. So roles change, and so does the output.

But one of the more interesting stories might be that Kumar Sangakkara and Rishabh Pant basically have the same true strike rate. One is the finished article, and Pant is still in development as a T20 player. So his output will continue to change.

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Gary Kirsten averaged between 35 and 45 in Test cricket in eight different years. We talk about bowlers being metronomic, but he may have been the most metronomic of any batter we have ever seen.

It is just stunning consistency, year after year, without really much dominance. Clearly, he had some peaks, but Kirsten wasn’t really about the peaks. He was about the fact that he could go out, nudge the ball around, not go out to the new ball, and make a decent amount of runs, time and time again.

For most fans, that is what Gary Kirsten is going to be remembered for.

Of course, despite the fact that he’s a solid Test batter, it might also be his one-day record that some people remember. He made 188 in the 1996 World Cup game that was famous for a bunch of different reasons.

One, it was the second highest score ever, and it wasn’t that far off Viv Richards’ World Record at that stage. At that point, the West Indian legend actually had the two highest scores in ODI cricket at the same time.

But even in that game where Gary Kirsten very nearly breaks the world record, it’s more famous for the fact that Allan Donald sent Sultan Zarawani, who refused to wear a helmet when facing him, to the hospital.

So when it comes to Gary Kirsten’s career, even when he does something good, it’s not always the sexiest thing ever. And so in the end, Gary Kirsten is not actually really remembered as much as a player as he is as a coach.

Most of that comes from his time with India, which is obviously a high-profile role, and he had incredible success. And of course, leading that side is automatically a high-profile position. But then the 2011 World Cup comes along. And I think for most cricket fans around the world, no matter where you’re from, you now think of Gary Kirsten as a coach.

And of course, he’s coached quite a few teams. On top of India, he also looked after his own South Africa. He was in Pakistan for a quick cup of coffee. Now, he is Sri Lanka’s head coach.

So that means that Gary Kirsten has had four pretty prominent head coach positions in international cricket. And when I saw that he got the Sri Lanka job, my first thought was, how is it that in cricket we keep ending up with the same coaches almost on a never-ending loop?

Because there’s almost no doubt about this. When it comes to international cricket, we have this carousel of coaches that just keeps going round, and round, and round again.

***

Dav Whatmore is one of Australia’s first ever Asian players. He also goes on to have a very, very good coaching career.

So while not being an absolute superstar with the bat, he starts pretty well as a coach. He goes on to win the 1996 World Cup with Sri Lanka, when let’s be honest, almost no one thought they were going to.

And because of that, of course, a lot of people want to hire Whatmore. And it seems specifically within Asia. So he coaches Bangladesh and he coaches Pakistan, and he might actually add another Test playing nation if Nepal ever get a gig as well.

But Dav Whatmore is really a coach’s coach, and it doesn’t just stop here. He’s actually got a couple of other gigs as well. He looks after Singapore and Zimbabwe too.

So from our research (remember, there’s not really a database that tells you all this), Dav Whatmore has coached six international cricket teams, five of which have made it to World Cups as well. So these are not just random sides you haven’t heard of. Four of them are Test playing nations, and at least one of the others might eventually become that as well.

That is quite the resumé.

And if you compare that to Mickey Arthur, you’d have to say that he actually hasn’t coached as much as Whatmore. However, in Mickey’s case, they are four pretty major teams he’s been to.

The Australian job was perhaps the most surprising, because he’s an outsider and Australian cricket doesn’t really like outsiders. He’s from South Africa, so that one obviously makes a lot more sense and kind of where he built his reputation.

Pakistan, he was so loved there that he actually did that job twice, although the second one was part-time. We’ll never truly understand that. And of course, he was in Sri Lanka as well.

So that is four different jobs, but they’re also very varied when you think about it. As I said, the South Africa one makes a little bit more sense, but then he has got the two Asian nations and Australia within that. It’s quite a broad palette, all things considered.

As far as we’re aware, he has only coached the four major international teams though. However, we did not do our homework completely, so we might have missed one. (That’s a Mickey Arthur joke, by the way. You might need to Google it.)

Arthur was more of a domestic player and Whatmore only played a bit of international cricket.

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In 2024, India won a World Cup that was hosted by the USA and the West Indies. But the interesting thing about that edition was that some people behind the scenes, namely the people who actually broadcast the cricket, didn’t want it to be played there.

The problem with hosting a tournament in the West Indies and America is that for the Indian market - which is obviously the most important when it comes to revenue and ratings - it doesn’t actually fit very well. Which is why we had the games played at odd hours.

Everyone thought India would do well. They were favourites for the tournament, and they went on to win it. But because it wasn’t in the right time-zone, it wasn’t going to have as much impact as they wanted.

The kind of impact that the broadcasters, and even the ICC to a certain extent, are looking for is for the T20 World Cup to be bigger than the ODI World Cup. But so far, even as T20 cricket has become the predominant format everywhere, somehow the ODI World Cup still has more prestige, legacy and importance in winning it.

So you are left with the situation where the 2023 World Cup – even though India lost in the final – is still thought of as a very big tournament. The length of time that it happened, the slow buildup and how good India were all the way through it contributed to that.

The 2024 T20 World Cup was when India broke their streak of 11 years without an ICC title, but the tournament still didn’t break through in the way you would expect for a major win by India after quite a long while.

India have obviously won the T20 World Cup again in 2026. This time, it was at home. And again, we all kind of predicted it was going to happen. But despite being very widely celebrated, when you look at the overall impact on the cricket world, it hasn’t exploded anywhere near the way the 2023 ODI World Cup did.

The ODI World Cups just feel bigger and more important, and nothing that happens in the T20 one seems to change that.

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For a long time, a yorker on off stump was a lockdown delivery. There was little you could do. It angled in at the stumps, cramped you, and then also landed in a very awkward spot for power.

Joel Garner and Glenn McGrath almost broke ODI cricket with these kinds of balls. But batters like Michael Bevan and then Lance Klusener found ways to score. Asian batters used lower middles on their blades, but scoops and helicopter shots came in as well.

But the yorker, when correctly bowled, on the right line, still works. We saw Bumrah’s over in the semi-final of this tournament. Old players hate that bowlers don’t deliver enough of them, ignoring all the many obvious reasons. LIke the best yorker bowlers only hit them 50% of the time, fields have changed due to modern shots, and batters move in their crease more than ever before.

When Jimmy Neesham, the surprise best bowler for the Kiwis, was coming in to Sanju Samson, the Indian had moved across his stumps. It’s one of his superpowers, the ability to face each ball from a different place on the crease, and bowlers hate it.

But in this situation, Neesham has seen this and decided to go for the surprise yorker. Generally, a ball like this would be kept out or knocked away in the tenth over. It’s a well executed delivery, and the batter hasn’t got down to scoop. So top end would be a stolen two, more likely a dot or single.

Instead, Samson decides to open the blade off the front foot to run it past short third for another boundary.

We need to zoom in for you to see the genius on this. The ball is on the bat, and yet we see almost none of the blade. He has opened it up so much, and still middled the ball. This not an edge, or a mistake. His eyes are right over the stop of the ball, he turned his bat to the side, and middled a perfectly executed yorker to an unprotected boundary for another four.

This shot is filthy, almost illegal. And it wasn’t done by one of their big hitters, but a technician. As close as their top order has to some kind of anchor.

Before this World Cup, I said India was playing a different sport to everyone else. This is what I was talking about. They were still susceptible to form, dew, pitches and collapses. But when they bat, they are doing things we have never seen before.

This was a road for a while, but by the end of the first innings, the balls were gripping. Even India’s batting order struggled before Shivam Dube’s great last over, which was helped by a headbutted boundary. But what India can do with their skill, power and intent is score 20% more than par on any pitch.

Roads? Where they’re going, they don’t need roads.

***

According to Simon Doull, the boffins have ruined our sport, and no cricketer can think for themselves anymore. This was the gist of his mini-rant when Matt Henry bowled slower ball filth that no analyst in the world would have suggested. But the idea was that this was a good pitch for slower ones.

In the fifth over, with one of the best new-ball bowlers around, it didn’t make sense to bowl slower deliveries. But for India, Bumrah came on for the fourth, and bowled a load of them, essentially ending the game.

When it comes to skills, India don’t just have what other teams possess, but they’re so much better.

Mitch Santner is a really good player, and he’s getting better with that bat every year. But you’d still pick Axar Patel ahead of him.

The Kiwis have had a great run of Rachin Ravindra, and even Neesham and Glenn Phillips making up their fifth bowling allocation. It was seen as a weakness coming in, and yet they have done well. But India has Hardik Pandya. An incredible fifth bowling option.

Varun Chakaravarthy has had a terrible tournament and ended up with the most wickets. Sure, they’ve played more games. But not many players have a terrible run with this many wickets. Kuldeep Yadav would be most teams’ best spinner, and he can’t get on the park.

Indian fans have spent most of their time moaning about the batting order, which is like complaining on the Titanic that you don’t like the particular make of lifeboat available because they are uncomfortable. India’s backup top three could be Jaiswal, Gill and Sooryavanshi, which New Zealand would take over theirs (despite how good Seifert and Allen have been).

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I feel the need, the need for speed.

I don’t, but the two teams in the T20 World Cup final are also the two fastest scoring sides in the competition. New Zealand are just shy of 10 runs per over, while India are at 9.84. Interestingly, they’re also the two most high-intent batting lineups.

Coming in, everyone knew this about India. But the Kiwis are set up differently.

We had these two teams we ranked at the top of the Power Rankings earlier in the tournament. But for New Zealand, even though it was a power ranking, it wasn’t about their power.

However, we even mentioned Finn Allen in our World Cup questions piece, because he had the ability to turn this into a different kind of team.

The run rate boom in T20s began a couple of years back, but in cricket, conditions are king. The last World Cup in the Caribbean and USA was the lowest-scoring ever, while this one in India and Sri Lanka is the fastest; up 0.72 runs an over from 2007 in second spot. And if we just take matches in India, the run rate further jumps up.

And the last three team totals in the tournament have just been mind-blowing. On good batting wickets, we’ve seen players continue going for it, even in a knockout clash. No more getting your eye in or knocking it around after the field is spread out, lads.

The ICC keeps putting consolidation overs up on the screen. But even the Kiwis, who have anchors in their middle order, aren’t playing that way

Looking at these teams and the pitch, the expected runs in the first innings of this match is 200.

No team has ever made more than 180 in a World Cup final. If there was every a time to break that, it would appear to be now.

***

New Zealand

Group Stage

The Kiwis were in the proverbial ‘Group of Death’.

They started their campaign against Afghanistan, who had given them a mauling at Guyana in 2024. At Chepauk, New Zealand conceded 182, and that was after Matt Henry and Mitch Santner conceded only 50 in their 8. They also lost Finn Allen and Rachin Ravindra in the second over, but Tim Seifert and Glenn Phillips added 74 runs in under eight overs. All the batters to follow chipped in with useful cameos as they chased it down with 13 balls to spare.

Their bowling was under the pump against the UAE too, who managed 173. But the Kiwi opening pair made a mockery of the target - Seifert smashed plenty of fours, while Allen was more about the sixes.

When South Africa beat Afghanistan (eventually), it meant that New Zealand’s path opened up and they no longer had to beat the Proteas.

Maybe that took some steam out of that contest, but after being 64/4 they still kept hitting. However, they lost too many wickets, and South Africa destroyed them in the powerplay.

New Zealand’s bowling continued to be an issue. Jacob Duffy had come to India in great form, but it wasn’t working on these surfaces. Canada scored 173 against them, too.

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On a tough Premadasa wicket, India are 88/2 in the ninth over in cricket’s golden goose game. Their left-handed opener has just been dismissed after scoring 77 of those runs. Yes, he’s been on strike for an unusually high number of balls, but they could only add another 87 runs after that blitz.

It’s truly one of the greatest knocks for his country in T20 World Cups. It was brutality.

If you were told this two months ago, you wouldn’t think twice before assuming that the batter is Abhishek Sharma. In 2025, Abhishek whacked the ball at an average of 43 and a strike rate of 193 for India. Plus, he had scores of 31(13) & 74(39) against Pakistan in Dubai in the Asia Cup. This innings at Premadasa is the kind of knock Abhishek Sharma plays.

Except this time, he didn’t.

Instead, it was someone who only passed 50 twice in his last IPL season, and once the year prior. One of those was a hundred, but in the harsh world of Indian batting, he was miles behind to even get in the squad, let alone be a starter. It was even less likely that he would be outbatting Air Abhishek.

Ishan Kishan came into this side in record time, and when here, scored just as quick.

He last played a T20I in November 2023. Since then, he had seen India win a T20 World Cup, an Asia Cup and go undefeated in bilateral series with a win-loss record that is honestly stupid for such a volatile format.

Kishan’s advanced numbers in the last two seasons of the IPL aren’t great either. In 2024, he had a true strike rate of 6 but at a -10 true average. He would swing hard, but miss often.

Mumbai Indians did not retain him, though they did bid for him till 3.2 crore. SRH eventually snapped him up for 11.25 crore, with reasonable interest from Punjab and Delhi. It meant teams still valued what he could bring to the table. But part of that had to be his wicketkeeping as well.

We said at the time it was a good buy, and the reason wasn’t form, it was age. The question for Kishan has never been talent, it has been maturity, professionalism and repeatability. SRH made a gamble that he was ready.

Unfortunately for them, more than 56% of his runs came in just two innings - against RR in their first match, and RCB in their penultimate game of the season. Based on this, there is no way Kishan plays in the World Cup.

But the thing everyone had been waiting for finally occurred. For Jharkhand, Kishan went nuts. It was a lower level, and they could have ignored it for one of their many other talented players. India, however, did something very clever. They decided this wasn’t just a few good games, but signs that the real Kishan had finally arrived.

In the last 22 innings for India and Jharkhand, Ishan Kishan has smoked nearly a thousand runs at an average of over 47, while striking at more than two runs a ball.

This is the Ishan Kishan everyone has been waiting for.

***

Ishan Kishan made his T20 debut for Jharkhand almost 12 years ago. He played the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy in April 2014, which meant he was only 15 at the time.

Two other well-known players that debuted in the competition at a similar age or younger were Riyan Parag and, wait for it, Vaibhav Sooryavanshi.

Jos Buttler is already talking about Vaibhav as the greatest player he’s ever seen in the sport. And while Parag might not be the same level of prodigy, he debuted in the IPL at just 17. Until Vaibhav’s arrival, he was the youngest to score a fifty in the league.

So clearly, we’re talking about wunderkids here. And Kishan makes that conversation too; he made his first-class debut later that year, and he also led India to the final of the 2016 U-19 World Cup. Like Parag, he also played in the IPL before he could legally drive a car in India.

But Kishan’s first two seasons in the SMAT were pretty ordinary. He struggled to average 20, or score at a run a ball. Even in under-19 ODIs, he only made 186 runs in 12 innings at a strike rate of just over 80.

And his first IPL - right after the U-19 World Cup - yielded only 42 runs in five knocks, though he batted in the lower order.

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Jasprit Bumrah took the wicket of Harry Brook with his first delivery.

He held the ball like it would seam up, right until the last moment.

And then suddenly, he moved his fingers down the side of it.

It was right at the end, with no prompts.

It also says a lot that he would start his spell with a cutter. Sometimes bowlers do this on a wicket that is made for those balls, but this wasn’t that. In the previous innings, plenty of slower balls had gone the distance, and this was also a fairly new nut.

But he realised that Brook would expect pace on, and so at the very last moment, he took it off.

Harry Brook has seen cutters all over the world, but this one completely stuffs him. His hands fly through the ball, and he spoons it straight up in the air.

England players don’t need much help to play with hard hands, but it’s still unusual for a player to make an error this big. The fact that it finishes with a great outfield catch from Axar Patel just makes it even better.

For most players, this is what they would be remembered for on a day like this - completely embarrassing one of the best batters in the world with your very first delivery.

But Jasprit Bumrah’s best moment was simply an over that denied England a T20 World Cup final.

Bumrah just said no.

***

With 45 needed from 18 balls, Sam Curran went deep into his crease to find leverage to hit big. In fact, he almost stood on his stumps.

Because of that, Bumrah actually misses his length slightly, but not really enough for Curran to smash the ball down the ground. So he digs it out; his second option is to get Bethell back on strike.

He makes decent contact and thinks there is a single down to long-on, but Bumrah poaches the ball himself and stops the run. An entire delivery from England’s chase has just been erased by two Bumrah moments.

This tournament he hasn’t actually been in his best form. But when you look at true economy, he was still three runs an over better than expected - even before this match. Maybe he’s not quite fully fit. He doesn’t always look in great rhythm.

So imagine what he would look like if he was in form.

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Finn Allen’s foot is not on the ground. He probably hasn’t read the length well, and it’s fuller than he wanted. His back foot is almost on the stumps, because that’s how far back he wants to play spinners. He’s got himself into a bit of a weird shape, and then he flicks the ball rather than a full strike.

So there is no real follow-through. Of course, the ball goes for six anyway.

This is an imperfect shot. It’s impatience, not brilliantly balanced, and not fully committed. But it still goes for six, because it feels like all of them do.

Finn Allen played a one-footed, backfoot, out-of-shape on drive with no follow-through for six off a spinner.

He didn’t face a ball until the ninth delivery of the second innings. After that, he faced only 32 more, and yet made a hundred. This was video game batting on easy mode. And when he was done it was game over, man. Game over.

Allen finished South Africa.

***

Don’t let the beard fool you. Finn Allen is still really young. If you take that thing off, he looks like he’s maybe 20 or 21. But he is actually 26 years old now.

And like Ishan Kishan, these guys feel like they’ve been frustrating fans for a long time. That’s because they obviously have huge amounts of talent. But now, they’re reaching the age that most batters make runs.

Last year, when I saw Finn Allen almost destroy the Coliseum in Oakland with a knock for Major League Cricket, I wondered if we were ever going to see him do this kind of thing at the top level.

Because the talent has never been the problem. It’s the consistency, and standing up against the best bowlers in the world.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve been told a lot of things about Finn Allen. That he can’t play in Asia. That he probably never will make runs against great bowlers. That he can’t play if there is anything at all in the wicket. And that he’s not a big-game player.

Some of these actually made sense when he was younger, because he was a little bit looser than he is now. But in the last year, year and a half, Finn Allen has been smashing the ball everywhere against everyone.

Perhaps all he needed was that final bit of maturation. Because when you look at the raw product of what Finn Allen is, it’s remarkable.

He’s essentially like New Zealand’s Martin Guptill - but with more power. A bigger body. His height means he can get to normal length balls and smash them straight back down the ground over and over again. It’s a really good combination of tall and strong.

A little bit like Daryl Mitchell, he has the ability to reach these balls and then just swing his bat through them and they disappear. So you cannot bowl length to him, unless you’re swinging the ball early.

But the other thing is that because he is so big and powerful, he can mishit boundaries. A bit like Daryl Mitchell, Corey Anderson, and a lot of the West Indian players.

This ball he was late on and didn’t quite middle it - and it just flew away anyway. It didn’t matter.

A bit like the shot we started the episode on. That wasn’t him at his absolute best. There were a bunch of errors there. But he still chipped a boundary wide of long-on.

But generally, when he decides to hit a boundary, he throws pretty much everything at it. Anytime he sees a loose ball, it’s very likely he’s just going to absolutely spam the power button and try to hit it as hard as possible.

Now, of course, he’s not going to middle everything. But because of that - and the strength that he has - a lot of those balls will just fly off anywhere. There were a bunch of edges today that he also got boundaries from.

I think this is one of the big issues with him, and this new breed of thrashers. There actually just aren’t enough fielders that you can put outside the powerplay. In a way, he feels like a death hitter who can open the batting.

If you think of Abhishek Sharma or Mitch Owen, it’s a similar kind of player. They’re batting like they’re at the death, but with all the fielders in. That’s always been the dream.

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Anchor is a dirty word in cricket. But the actual term really comes back from Australian ODI cricket in the 1980s, with a guy called Geoff Marsh.

He wasn’t actually the first anchor; Desmond Haynes was probably that. But the Australians really said to Geoff Marsh, bat as long as you can and we will attack around you. They won the 1987 World Cup and kind of started what is modern ODI batting.

Outside of the finisher/closer role, we don’t really have that many terms for white-ball batting. And actually there are many different styles that you can start to see when you analyse the data a bit more closely.

So what we really wanted to do was come up with something that would show us different kinds of batters. The anchors are around here, but if you have a look at this entire graphic, you’ll see there are lots of different styles, methods, and outliers and people that we need to talk about.

At the moment, it’s not that anchors are dying. It’s just that they’re a much rarer breed than they used to be a few years ago. And now we’ve got a whole new crop of players coming through, and they’re going to need new names as well.

***

This graphic is rating players on true dots versus true boundaries, which are metrics that we have come up with so that we can better explain exactly how a player is scoring.

Because in the past, when I was doing work like this, I would look at dot ball percentage. But the problem with that is that in the Powerplay, everyone’s dot ball percentage is a lot higher because you’ve got a bunch of fielders around you. And at the end, you have to try and hit fours and sixes, but you might not actually be an outlier on that. It’s just that you are batting at the end, while someone else is batting in the middle.

So that is why we’ve been using these metrics. And I thought that if we put these all together, we’d also be able to understand different kinds of players and the roles that they have.

As we talked about at the top, Kane Williamson is sort of in the middle of this anchor cluster. Traditionally, this would be one of the biggest clusters, because most T20 players probably played in this style.

So this section in here is definitely the anchors. And this is only over the last couple of years, of course. So there are some players who might be here that you’d be a little bit shocked at. But generally these are the sorts of guys who don’t hit a lot of boundaries, and also are not particularly great at eradicating all their dot balls.

The next group up here, which I think needs to be talked about a little bit more, are the guys who are absolutely brilliant at strike rotating. And these are all different kinds of players.

If you have a look at this, you’ve got Tristan Stubbs here, who’s probably thought of as more of a power player, but actually his best skill is almost never facing a dot ball. You’ve also got guys like Dan Lawrence and Ashton Turner. These three players all play very different roles, but all three of them are brilliant when it comes to not facing a lot of dot balls in a row. So they’re making up for the fact that they’re not hitting boundaries.

I wouldn’t say that they’re quite anchors, but you can see in Tristan Stubbs’ case that he’s actually 25% less likely to hit a boundary. But his strike rate is often absolutely fine, because he is also 25% more likely not to face dot balls, and he’s brilliant at stealing twos.

So while there is probably a little bit of overlap between anchors and strike rotators, because they’re very similar kinds of roles, I believe they’re two different player types. And perhaps in the future we’ll see even more of these kinds of players who just don’t face any dot balls at all and make up for their strike rate because of that.

This big section down here is where you see the vast majority of players. I don’t have a great name for this, but let’s just call this the normie section.

You can see Andries Gous from the USA and Sam Curran. Those are very different kinds of players, but most players around this section have a pretty normal attacking pattern. They don’t take up a lot of dot balls, and they also score a lot of runs from boundaries.

So there’s really not a lot of time we need to stick around in this area.

But the most interesting new style is this sort of Abhishek Sharma, Finn Allen, Mitch Owen, and Karanbir Singh in associate cricket. These are your thrashers.

The big difference is that before we saw a lot of players who would chase boundaries a lot, but these guys also have incredible dot ball percentages.

You can see here that Abhishek Sharma is facing 17% fewer dot balls than you would expect. Finn Allen is even higher again, and even Mitch Owen is better than that.

So it’s not just that these guys are hitting boundaries. They’re also not letting you bowl dot balls to them. There’s no pause against these guys. They are absolutely thrashing the ball all the time.

This section down here is much more of your power hitters. Right at the bottom of this, Andre Russell is the most power of all the power hitters. Even in the last couple of years, as T20 cricket has completely changed, he’s still on his own.

A true freak of nature in the way that he thinks about cricket and how he’s just willing to play his way, no matter what.

This is definitely your power hitter zone. These are the guys who are unafraid to have more dot balls than anyone else, because they know they can catch up with all the sixes.

This section down here I’ve called the strugglers, but it probably should be people who have a second skill. You’ve got someone like Moeen Ali and Sam Billings. You’ve got some wicketkeeping there, you might have some bowling as well. But generally the players who end up here are either in terrible form or are not always specialist batters.

What’s fascinating is about eight years ago, I was looking at the data in a slightly different way, and there were a lot more players who really struggled at that point. Now, there aren’t that many. They’re basically being weeded out of the game.

And then there’s one section here that doesn’t really have a player at all. In fact, Brian Bennett, who’s played a completely different role for Zimbabwe at this World Cup, is the closest to it. But traditionally, this is where AB de Villiers was. His ability not to face dot balls or hit them for boundaries was absolutely remarkable. We don’t really have players like that now. But we might see some of them into the future.

What we’ve really done here is set up different zones so you understand these things. Once we had all this information and we’d come up with these names, the next thing is: we’re at a World Cup, so is there a way of looking at this to see if certain nations produce more of one type of player?

So let me take away some of these countries so we can have a better look at individual nations and see if there are trends occurring.

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