T20 cricket, which is perhaps the most unpredictable format in the world, has constantly changing requirements. However, data science and analysis are gradually emerging in the field, assisting teams and players in adapting to the ever-changing environment. Understanding and illustrating the main forces underlying success is one of the main ways that analytical work may support decision-making.
What, therefore, sets the most successful IPL hitters apart from their contemporaries? We can begin to identify some of the traits that have made some batters stand out from the crowd and what abilities might help them stand out in the future by examining the three stages of a T20 innings independently and analysing the statistics on each one.
The PowerPlay is a lengthy and purposeful story.
According to statistics, the powerplay is the most crucial stage of T20 cricket. Since 2015, 68% of the time, the side with the greater effect in the first six overs (as determined by the DLS method) has won. A team has a 70% chance of losing if they lose three wickets during the powerplay, according to historical data. An essential component of T20 strategy is making the most of the powerplay, which combines frequent boundary hitting with wicket preservation.
Over the years, the shortest format has undergone significant modification, although some general patterns have remained constant. For instance, about 71% of deliveries made by fast bowlers in the powerplay fall into the good (6–8 m from the stumps) and hard (8–10 m) lengths, which has stayed quite consistent throughout time.
Because it is relatively easy to strike lengths on either side of 6-10m in the powerplay, bowlers have continued to operate in this area. Setting a field for both full and short deliveries is difficult, and it also contributes to the majority of batters’ preferred attacking shots. Batters typically hit at about 120 inside the 6–10 m length and 160 outside.
In a T20 innings, swing lasts fewer than three overs.
One of the most important aspects in influencing the difficulty of striking a ball, after length, is lateral movement. Following that, it falls below one degree, a value that doesn’t change until the sixteenth over, when a hint of reversal begins to appear. It’s also interesting to note that the ball stops swinging sooner if there are more boundaries in the first two overs. Even in the game’s shortest format, “hitting the shine off the ball” is a true phenomenon.
The ability to convert 6-10m deliveries into run-scoring opportunities and high intent, which prevents bowlers from working their way into the game and maximises the most crucial batting period, are the two primary components of good powerplay batting.
The latter skill can be applied in two primary ways. The first, used by hitters such as Abhishek Sharma and Virat Kohli, is to go closer to the ball’s pitch as you go down the track, creating space over the infield and down the ground. The second, which is employed by players like Travis Head and Sunil Narine, involves moving around in the crease to create space before playing the pick-up shot over the leg-side. Meanwhile, batters like Faf du Plessis and Phil Salt blend these two strategies.
In the IPL 2024 powerplay, these seven openers were among the top 10 in terms of both total runs scored and impact per ball. Impact, which is determined using the DLS approach, is a great way to determine the correlation between runs scored and wickets lost. It is perfect for figuring out the risk-reward ratio of a specific strategy and measures the net runs that a batter adds to the anticipated score.
Although the methods differ, the outcomes exhibit a clear pattern, as was previously indicated. The IPL’s top powerplay hitters aren’t always good all-around players; for instance, outside of the 6–10 m range, Kohli, Du Plessis, and Narine had strike rates below the league average. However, when they faced the length bracket they encountered the most, all seven of them performed noticeably better than average.
Unavoidably, an outstanding T20 opener must possess exceptional length-conversion skills, particularly during the early half of the powerplay when swing is a factor.
And there’s intent, of course.
Only Narine had a strike rate under 150 in his first 10 balls out of the seven openers mentioned above in the 2024 Indian Premier League. In their first ten balls, Fraser-McGurk, Head, Salt, and Abhishek all sped along at incredible strike rates above 175—much higher than the league average of 135.24. Naturally, their starting boundary percentages were far higher than the league average of 18.97%, with Fraser-McGurk’s 42.86% being the highest and Narine’s 24.32% being the lowest.
There is no time to “get set” in contemporary T20. The powerplay is a very useful tool, and a batter who takes his time to “get set” just cannot begin the batting. Additionally, Ruturaj Gaikwad and KL Rahul, two batters whose natural impulse is to defend good and hard lengths, aren’t doing enough to put their team ahead of the game early on.
The Middle Overs is dominated by short balls, height, and dip.
Compared to the other two phases, the middle overs are somewhat more condition-dependent. While the amount of balls left determines the death overs, the field constraints determine the powerplay. However, because of the versatility of the intermediate phase, the pitch typically has the biggest impact on a team’s style of play.
Pitch conditions in the 2024 Indian Premier League were generally much flatter than in previous years. It was simple for batters to trust the trajectory and hit through the line because the average turn and average pace lost after pitching touched all-time lows during the previous auction cycle. For the first time in years, spinners were given less than two degrees of turn in the middle overs, and they took the brunt of this.
Nevertheless, like they have done throughout the IPL’s history, wrist-spinners were able to make an impression. They had to rely on tricking batters through the air without the pitch’s help, and dip helped them achieve it. Even with the level tracks, high intent, deep batting lineups, and short boundaries, dip and length precision made hitting nearly difficult.
With strike rates falling below 110, the 5-6m length is statistically the best for a spinner to bowl, much below the 4-5m (132.2) and 2-4m (163.6) lengths. In the 2024 Indian Premier League, spinners who threw the ball between 5 and 6 meters in the middle overs had a bowling average of 16.1 and an economy rate of 6.21 when the ball had dip on it. These numbers soared to 37.56 and 6.85, respectively, when it didn’t.
Relatively speaking, wrist-spinners were able to stay afloat in the bat-ball combat because they impart overspin, which gives them a lot more dip than finger-spinners. Only four finger-spinners, three fewer than in 2023, took more than seven wickets during the season, compared to nine wrist-spinners. Varun Chakaravarthy, for instance, has acknowledged that concentrating on overspin helped him change the course of his career.
In what way, then, can a batter counterdip? Height could be an important consideration. With the added advantage of having long levers to rock back and draw pitches that others might not be able to power, batters are safeguarded by the assurance that their reach will allow them to respond to balls that dip and pitch shorter than they initially expect.
The non-elite spin-hitters who aren’t among the best in the world off primary attacking shots like the slog-sweep and coming down the track need every edge they can get because countering dip is difficult. Only six of the 26 batters who faced over thirty dipping spin deliveries in the 2024 Indian Premier League averaged over thirty-five while hitting at or above 150.
Faf du Plessis is not a top spin hitter, as evidenced by his average of 46.33 and his 146.3 against spin last season. But he hit at 179.41 and averaged 61 against dipped balls. When the ball had dip, Axar Patel‘s strike rate went up from 147.9 to 182.9. No dipping delivery was used to dismiss Cameron Green, Sai Sudharsan, or Shashank Singh. Each of the five is reported as being taller than six feet.
In comparison, it wasn’t simple for the shorter batters. Head averaged just 10.6 against deliveries with dip, and his strike rate also fell by 10 points, despite not being dismissed by a single non-dipping delivery. When dip was included, Rishabh Pant’s average fell from 42 to 20, and Prabhsimran Singh’s average fell even more sharply, from 42 to 11. Sam Curran and Ishan Kishan also saw declines in their averages.
Of course, there are exceptions. Despite being taller than the typical batter and skilled against spin, Heinrich Klaasen, KL Rahul, and Shubman Gill all averaged less than 20 against dip. Despite being under six feet tall, the top spin hitters, such as Nicholas Pooran, Rajat Patidar, and Abhishek Sharma, have been completely at ease.
Given the small sample sizes and lack of access to the pertinent data, it is not feasible to link these values with the heights of all participating hitters, and it is not a given that a taller batter will be better at playing dip and wrist-spin. However, from the standpoints of bowling strategy and roster creation, it’s definitely something worth considering.
However, spin is not the only strategy used in the middle overs. It is now common for teams to use their hit-the-deck pacers during that period, so it makes sense to divide the phase into overs 7-11 and 12-16. In the IPL 2024 12-16 phase, Pacers bowled about 60% of the overs, up from 48% in 2023. The percentage of pace overs increased from 27% to 36% even during the 7-11 phase.
Fast bowlers now depend on bounce since they have little seam and no swing. In the IPL 2024, nearly half of the pace deliveries bowled in the middle overs were less than eight meters. Despite controlling their frontline matches, some of the league’s top spin hitters were caught off guard by the rise in hit-the-deck bowling.
Known to be lethal against spin, Rajat Patidar, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Jitesh Sharma, Sunil Narine, and Nicholas Pooran all averaged less than 20 runs against middle-overs deliveries shorter than 8 meters, which is significantly less than the league average of 26.77. Jaiswal and Jitesh were found wanting on that front by significant margins, while Pooran and Narine were slightly above the league’s total strike rate of 141.8 and Patidar was just below. Hardik Pandya and Rinku Singh, India’s two top T20 finishers, struck at less than 110 and averaged less than 10.
Only two hitters, Ruturaj Gaikwad and Rilee Rossouw, struck at more than 180 out of the 36 who faced more than 20 balls of this kind. This is in spite of the fact that the four primary shots used against short balls—the pull, hook, upper cut, and ramp—all average nearly two runs per ball.
Using the previously described key attacking shots against short balls in the middle overs is just not sustainable. Effective cut play is crucial, and players who attempt the shot with a strike rate higher than the average of 125.3 have an advantage. The secret, however, is to take advantage of the other run-scoring possibilities and navigate the short balls encountered without sacrificing a lot of wickets.
In the IPL 2024, Shreyas Iyer, who has often been criticised for his alleged lack of skill with the short ball, performed admirably. In the middle overs, the champion captain amassed 67 runs off 55 balls at a strike rate of 121.8 and was not removed by a single delivery shorter than 8m. If they have a teammate at the other end who is more capable of handling rapid bowling, other batters who aren’t the best pullers can afford to use a similar tactic.
The addition of Gaikwad to the middle order is an illustration of a data-driven modification. Given his skill against hard lengths and spin in the middle overs, the CSK captain might be the perfect foil for Shivam Dube even though he lacks the aim and length-conversion ability to be a top T20 opener.
The Death Overs: fighting spin and even pace-off?
It becomes sense to start by examining the tactics bowlers use in order to comprehend what a death-overs hitter must accomplish. The yorker has been extensively researched in relation to death-bowling strategies, and the majority of teams still employ tactics that centre on the blockhole hitting ability of their fast bowlers.
However, teams will inevitably come to the realisation that variance, or unpredictability, may be more significant than execution, even of a yorker, as they grow more data-conscious. Furthermore, a bowler’s characteristics, like as pace, release height, the amount of backspin they impart on fuller balls, the amount of dip they generate on slower balls, and so forth, may be more significant than their execution. It should be a thing of the past to “back your yorker at the death” without considering the bowler’s qualities.
Here is a straightforward example to demonstrate that. Jasprit Bumrah isn’t the world’s most accurate yorker bowler, despite what many people think. Over the past three IPL seasons, Dwayne Bravo (43.2%), Bhuvneshwar Kumar (42.5%), and T Natarajan (37.3%) have all had greater yorker success rates than Bumrah (36.7%). However, on yorker attempts (whether successful or not), Bumrah and Bravo have economy rates of 7.02 and 7.54, respectively, while Bhuvneshwar and Natarajan have economy rates of 8.57 and 10.36.
Bravo and Bumrah’s revolutions on the ball are what make the difference. Bravo’s slower balls, which make up the great majority of his death-bowling strategies, produce a lot of dip due to overspin, while Bumrah has the twin advantage of having both lift from strong backspin on his on-pace deliveries and dip on his slower balls.
Picking and hitting slower balls becomes an especially crucial ability for a hitter in the death overs since a good death bowler uses pace variations. 36.7% of the balls that pacers have hit at the end of overs 17–20 in the last three IPL seasons have been slower than 128 kph, which is the approximate threshold for a slower ball. If approximately one out of every three balls is slower, then the same aggressive intent must be applied to it regardless of whether it is an off-cutter, leg-cutter, knuckle-ball, or back-of-the-hand slower ball.
Two of the four batters having the biggest impact per ball at the end of the 2024 Indian Premier League were Tristan Stubbs and Dinesh Karthik. They had respective strike rates of 285.7 and 227.17 versus slower balls. Strike rates for MS Dhoni and Heinrich Klaasen, the other two players in the top four, were significantly lower than 200. Even the league’s top death hitters now have obvious flaws that can be taken advantage of by opponents with the correct staff and data-driven strategies.
Rahul Tewatia is one of the league’s better finishers and ranks seventh in impact per ball at the end, but when pace is removed, his strike rate falls by over 25 points. Similarly, Ravindra Jadeja hits at 140 kph under 128 kph and 184 kph over 128 kph.
It’s not just fast bowling that lower speeds result in a significant difference in offensive output. It should come as no surprise that up to four of the six hitters listed above are not considered to be exceptional spin players. Similar to how then-PBKS captain Sam Curran deployed Rahul Chahar to restrict the CSK icon in a critical 19th over last year, there is a compelling argument for opposition teams to backload spin against hitters like Dhoni and Tewatia.
Future death-overs hitters will have to fight different types of spin at the end, possibly even in the 2025 Indian Premier League. In the SA20 league, the Paarl Royals elevated this to a new level, occasionally using well over 15 overs of spin thanks to a slow wicket at Boland Park. Teams with three good spin options and a good home field, like CSK, will definitely take this strategy into account. It is supported by the data, which shows that spin at the end has a higher average, strike rate, and boundary percentage than pace.
Therefore, in order to keep up with the pace at which current T20s are developing, a good death-overs hitter—or bowler, for that matter—will need to become much more well-rounded. A batter must be able to manage all of the variances to a reasonable level. Any significant vulnerability they may have, like Dhoni against spin or Jadeja against slower balls, will be mercilessly taken advantage of by teams that focus on the numbers.
India
