TNN
Cape Town, May 2: Who’s the most valuable player of IPL’s second season so far? Our vote goes to Adam Gilchrist and frankly we think it is a no-contest as of now.
Not only is he among the best batsmen of the tournament, his glovework too has snared many a victim and his leadership has turned things around for a team that finished the first season at the bottom of the table.
Following Gilly at the top of the charts by our reckoning are Suresh Raina, ‘Slinger’ Malinga, Matthew Hayden and R P Singh. Sachin Tendulkar, A B de Villiers, Pragyan Ojha, Irfan Pathan and Brad Hodge make up the rest of the top 10.
The top batsmen after 23 matches (up till the Mumbai Indians vs Knight Riders match) are Hayden, Gilchrist, Raina, de Villiers and Tendulkar, in that order.
Bowling honours go to Malinga, RP, Ojha, Balaji and Kumble. It’s a measure of how evenly the load has been spread among Team Delhi that they have managed to stay close to the top of the table without having a single player in either the five top batsmen or five best bowlers.
If you’re wondering what the basis for these rankings is, read on. We assigned batting, bowling and fielding points to each player based on performance. We also assigned captaincy points based on team performances to those who have led their side. We then totalled up all of these points.
The batting points were worked out on the principle that T20 cricket is not only about how much you score, but how fast you get the runs.
We, therefore, worked out the average strike rate for all batsmen in the IPL so far, which turned out to be very nearly 120 - interestingly, the figure was 130 at this stage in the last season.
The number of batting points each player got was the runs scored by him multiplied by his strike rate and divided by the average strike rate of 120.
Thus, a batsman scoring at the average strike rate of 120 gets as many points as the runs he has scored.
What is the basis for our Most Valuable Player rankings? Faster scorers will get more points than they have runs, while relatively slow scorers will have fewer points than runs. The bowling points were based on the principle that economy and wicket taking are both important. Again, the average economy rate of all bowlers so far, roughly 7.4 runs per over, was taken as par. The corresponding figure at this stage last year was 8, reaffirming the fact that this has been more of a bowlers’ tournament.
In our calculations, any bowler going at 7.4 got no economy points. Those conceding fewer runs per over got as many points as the runs they notionally saved. For instance, if a bowler had bowled 20 overs in the tournament at 5.4 runs per over, he would have saved 40 runs in all - 20 multiplied by 7.4 minus 5.4. Of course, those with a higher economy rate were treated as having conceded additional runs and hence earned as many negative points.
As for the wicket-taking points, we just multiplied the number of wickets taken by 25. The total of a player’s bowling points then was the sum of his economy and wicket-taking points. Happily for us, this gave us results in which the top bowlers had points of about the same level as the top batsmen.
We then added on fielding points. The principle here was that wicket-keepers should be treated differently since their primary role in the side is a fielding role. Thus, they were assigned 25 points for every dismissal, caught or stumped. Other fielders got 10 points for every catch and 15 for every run-out.
Finally, we gave captains 25 points for each win and deducted 25 for every loss. Thus, Gilchrist with four wins and one loss gets 75 captaincy points, whereas KP gets minus 50. Then, it was a simple matter of adding up batting, bowling, fielding and captaincy points to arrive at the index.