Big innings in the IPL

The IPL is a fair way through now, and it's a good time to look back at some of the highlights.

The highest scorers are widely recognised, but often the highest score is not the one that makes the biggest contribution. Take for example the match between Chennai Super Kings and the Deccan Chargers at Vizag. Jadeja hit 48 off 29, a good knock, and one that really set his team up well. When he got out his team looked set for about 175-180, with 2 and a half overs left. Then up steppe Dwayne Bravo. He got to 43 off 18, and carried the team through to 193. It's not that Jadeja did not contribute to the team's total, but despite scoring 5 runs less, Bravo's made a bigger contribution.

I think Cricinfo's S Rajesh came up with the batting index before me (although I developed it independently) as a better way to measure a batsman's performance over a career/season of limited overs cricket than their average. I use that idea (runs squared divided by dismissals and deliveries faced) to look at individual innings. I don't give any bonus for not outs, because I haven't found a way that does that that I feel is fair for individual innings and because the team is effectively all out after 20 overs anyway, so a not out is not as valuable in T20's as it is in the longer forms. So I simply square the runs scored and divide it by the balls faced to find the innings index.

Here is the table of the 25 biggest contributions so far:

Name	Runs	Balls	Index	vs	Location	Date
AM Rahane	103*	60	176.8	v RCB	Bangalore	15-4
G Gambhir	93	51	169.6	v RCB	Kolkata	28-4
KP Pietersen	103*	64	165.8	v Chargers	Delhi	19-4
V Sehwag	87*	48	157.7	v Warriors	Pune	24-4
AB de Villiers	59*	23	151.3	v Royals	Jaipur	23-4
AM Rahane	98	66	145.5	v Kings XI	Jaipur	6-4
V Sehwag	73	38	140.2	v Royals	Jaipur	1-5
OA Shah	60	26	138.5	v RCB	Bangalore	15-4
OA Shah	76	42	137.5	v Mum Indians	Mumbai	11-4
CH Gayle	81	48	136.7	v Warriors	Bangalore	17-4
V Sehwag	73	39	136.6	v Mum Indians	Delhi	27-4
CH Gayle	87	56	135.2	v Kings XI	Mohali	20-4
CL White	78	46	132.3	v Warriors	Pune	26-4
CH Gayle	68	35	132.1	v Super Kings	Chennai	12-4
JP Duminy	58*	26	129.4	v Royals	Jaipur	17-4
KC Sangakkara	82	52	129.3	v Warriors	Cuttack	1-5
JD Ryder	86	58	127.5	v Daredevils	Delhi	21-4
CH Gayle	86	58	127.5	v KKR	Kolkata	28-4
KA Pollard	64	33	124.1	v Royals	Mumbai	11-4
JEC Franklin	79	51	122.4	v Kings XI	Mumbai	22-4
CL White	74	45	121.7	v Warriors	Cuttack	1-5
CH Gayle	71	42	120	v Kings XI	Bangalore	2-5
SE Marsh	68*	40	115.6	v Mum Indians	Mumbai	22-4
DJ Hussey	68*	40	115.6	v Mum Indians	Mohali	25-4
MK Pandey	80*	56	114.3	v Daredevils	Pune	24-4

Some interesting points here:

Chris Gayle makes up 20% of this list. Half of the times he has gone out to bat he has made a big contribution. He is easily the most consistent batsman in the tournament.

Sehwag makes it into the list 3 times and has 2 more innings with an index score of over 100.

There are a few teams that are good at stopping batsmen making big contributions. The best at it is KKR. Only 2 of the top 80 innings were scored against KKR. This is possibly why they have conceded a lot less runs than anyone else.

There are no sub-50 scores on the list, but number 26 on the list is a quite extraordinary innings from Albie Morkel. There are a few interesting innings that didn't make the top 25, here are some of them, including the Bravo and Jadeja innings above:

Name	Runs	Balls	Index	vs	Location	Date
JA Morkel	28	7	112	v RCB	Chennai	12-4
BJ Hodge	48*	21	109.7	v Chargers	Jaipur	17-4
DJ Bravo	43*	18	102.7	v Chargers	Visakhapatnam	7-4
SPD Smith	34*	13	88.9	v Daredevils	Delhi	21-4
RA Jadeja	48	29	79.4	v Chargers	Visakhapatnam	7-4

I like this method of rating innings, as it gives players at the top and the bottom of the innings an equal chance of producing an innings that count.

Over the next week or so, I'm going to bring out a few different stats from the IPL - let me know if there is anything that you want to know about, and I'll see what I can do.