With IPL 13 - or IPL 2020 - set to finally get underway in little over a month's time, it felt like the perfect opportunity to reflect on the history of the tournament. We know that Mumbai Indians have been the most successful team, and Chennai Super Kings the most consistent. Rajasthan Royals have struggled to relive their former glories, and Royal Challengers Bangalore are the perennial 'nearly-men'.
However, there's definitely more room to debate when it comes to the players. Virat Kohli has the most runs, but a relatively low strike rate. Kagiso Rabada has the best bowling average, but has only played 18 matches.
Total wickets and run counts are interesting, but tend to reflect raw longevity just as much as actual quality. Averages, strike rates and economies are better, but differences in opposition strength can skew the figures over time. Our approach aims to account for these issues, as we take on a statistical analysis to attempt to answer...
Who were the best IPL players of the 2010s?
For this analysis we have taken ball by ball data on all IPL matches from 2010 and 2019 - provided by the excellent cricsheet.org - and run it through our player rating system. In total, this comprised 151,963 deliveries bowled across 641 games, spanning the last 10 editions of the competition.
For the uninitiated, our system looks at every single delivery bowled in the games we're looking at and applies multiple regression models in order to generate estimated player abilities. Each player is given two 'abilities', one relating to wickets, and another relating to runs, and these are then combined to give an overall rating. This overall rating can be weighted depending on which ability we want to place more emphasis on.
For example, we may want to place more emphasis on a batsman's ability to score runs rather than their ability to preserve their wicket, or vice versa. Typically we provide three versions of our top ten - with a versions weighted towards each of the individual abilities respectively as well as a balance version - and we'll take the same approach here.
Whilst these ability ratings can be considered analogous to traditional cricket metrics - such as averages, economies and strike rates - they differ in that, due to the nature of regression models, they take into account the strength of opposition. In practice this means that, for example, the wicket of David Warner counts for more than that of Muttiah Muralitharan, and runs scored off Lasith Malinga are valued higher than poor old Basil Thampi.
This article focuses on the batsmen. We'll follow up shortly with an equivalent analysis on the bowlers before rounding it all off by declaring our IPL Team of the Decade, which we'll be comparing and contrasting to Wisden's version published at the end of last year.
The raw output of our model gives two ratings for batsmen - these can be considered as:
a) Their ability to score runs and
b) Their ability to preserve their wicket
Before we combine these into a single player rating, the chart below displays each batsman on a scatter plot to get an initial understanding of who our key players are (please click to enlarge):
Please note that we have imposed a minimum qualification criteria of 1200 runs scored.
A glance at the chart above gives us an early indicator as to whom we can expect to see towards the top of our batting rankings. Pushing out towards the top right are the truly elite batsmen - the likes of AB de Villiers, David Warner and MS Dhoni - who have both high run-scoring and wicket-preservation abilities. This makes them especially dangerous given their ability to score big runs at a game-changing rate.
In the bottom right we have more big run scorers, albeit those who scored at a more measured pace. There are a lot of big names form the early days of the IPL in here - the classic exploits of Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Mike Hussey and Jacques Kallis are sure to ignite nostalgia in some of you.
Their presence here perhaps reflects the evolution of the IPL, as well as T20 cricket in general. The rising scoring rates and the emergence of the T20 specialist mean that the top performers are increasingly less likely to already be big names outside the T20 game - and the IPL in general gaining a more distinctive identity than its early years, where it felt more like an extended version of NBA's end of season 'All-Star' game.
Speaking of T20 specialists - that's certainly how you might describe the few outliers dotted around towards the top of the chart. Andre Russell stands out here with his monstrous scoring rate, with Rishabh Pant and Glenn Maxwell following behind, albeit each on different ends of the wicket-preservation scale. This area of the chart is relatively sparse, owing to the fact that very few batsmen with such aggressive styles have managed to score enough runs to meet the qualification criteria. This is largely a testament to the batsmen who are there, but if were to ease the qualifying criteria we'd also see batsmen such as Moeen Ali, Hardik Pandya and Sunil Narine hovering somewhere just below Russell.
Now it's time to combine the two ratings, and have a look at our top IPL batsmen of the decade:
It makes sense to focus our discussion around the middle column, where run-scoring and wicket-preservation are rated equally.
It should be no surprise to see the legendary AB de Villiers take top spot. His raw figures alone should be convincing enough - a strike rate of 157 make him the fastest scoring batsman averaging over 40.
Just below de Villiers are four batsmen of relatively similar profile in terms of figures. Warner, Dhoni, Rahul and Kohli all average between 41 and 44, with strike rates ranging from 133 to 143. Remarkably, their ranking against each other in terms of average matches exactly that of their strike rate, which is reflected in the table above.
The top 5 have somewhat contrasting fortunes when we weight the table towards the different abilities, although they are all mainstays across the board. MS Dhoni takes top spot when focus on wicket preservation, highlighting his value in taking his team right through to the end of an innings. Rahul, Warner and Kohli all retain their spots in the top 5 here, but AB de Villiers' greater focus on pure aggression sees him slip down the list into 8th.
When we look at run scoring, we once again see all five appear, although they are a little more spread out this time. Kohli's more modest strike rate sees him drop to 10th, and it's a similar story for compatriots Rahul and Dhoni who fall to 6th and 7th respectively. AB de Villiers manages to stay in the top two this time, and David Warner underlines his brilliant all-round game by being the only batsman to reach the top four in all three of our columns.
The remainder of the 'balanced' list is made up by strong batsmen who tend to particularly excel in one ability or the other. Sixth placed JP Duminy's excellent wicket-preservation ability was enough to rate him amongst the best in the left-hand column, and it's a similar story for Steve Smith and Kane Williamson, albeit to a lesser extent.
On the other side, you have Chris Gayle and Rishabh Pant, whose devastating aggression see them into the top ten, and their rating only improves when we place more emphasis on run-scoring in the right-hand column.
It might actually surprise a few that Chris Gayle isn't a little higher on this list, especially given that he's the only player in the top five for both batting average and strike rate in our sample. So how come he doesn't rank among the top five in our rankings?
Well, to answer that, we have to dig a little deeper into his stats. Chris Gayle predominantly deals in boundaries. He has well over 100 more sixes than second-placed AB de Villiers and has more runs from boundaries than anyone in the last decade. Most tellingly, however, is that his percentage of runs in boundaries is an incredible 77%, bettered only by compatriot Andre Russell.
What this means is that Chris Gayle rarely ran between the wickets. For just 23% of his runs did he actually run. He has the fewest singles of any of the top 13 run scorers, and the fewest twos and threes of anyone in the top 20. Why is this significant? Well, if you don't run, you don't get run out.
Chris Gayle's 40+ average is a little less impressive when you realise he rarely risked getting run out. The other members of the 40+ club - AB de Villiers (9), MS Dhoni (8) David Warner (6), Virat Kohli (6) and Lokesh Rahul (1) were run out 30 times between them over the last decade, dragging their averages down.
Obviously, it's not the lack of run outs that are an issue for Gayle here - that's clearly a positive, even if it is reflective of a somewhat languid playing style. Rather, the issue is simply that he is more likely to be dismissed directly by a bowler than the likes of de Villiers, Warner and Kohli - and that is what is reflected in our rankings.
There are also a handful of names who only appear when we weight towards one of the abilities. In the wicket-preservation column we see two new names - Mike Hussey and Ajinkya Rahane. This pair both have good IPL averages in the mid-30s, but at relatively modest strike rates of around 120.
Most striking of these, however is Andre Russell. His astonishing strike rate of 186 - more than 20 higher than anyone else averaging over 30 - catapults him to the number one spot when we're focusing on run-scoring. Further down this list we also see Jos Buttler and Chris Lynn make their way into the top 10.
And there you have it, a run through of a statistically generated list of the best IPL batsmen of the decade. Be sure to check out our follow-up articles - the next of which looks at the bowlers, with the third and final of which declaring Heavy Bail's IPL Team of the Decade.
Thanks for reading!
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