Match 2 preview: Close contest predicted between RCB (59%) vs MI (41%)

By Amar Dani On April 03, 2013

IPL 6 started off with a bang and the to maintain that momentum the very next match is what every cricket fan has been waiting for: Royal challengers Bangalore versus Mumbai Indians at the Chinnaswamy stadium ( RCB's Home ground). We predict a close contest between Royal Challengers Bangalore and Mumbai Indians in the second match of the sixth edition on Thursday at the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore. Both the teams have performed well on and off in the previous versions of IPL but have failed to deliver at critical junctions of the tournament. With the viewers getting to see less of Sachin, our hearts are surely with the little master but it looks like RCB have a slight edge with match winners like Gayle and Kohli in the line-up.

Our quantitative analysis predicts RCB's win probability to be 59% vs MI's win probability of 41%. Compare this with KKR which had a win probability of 68% vs DD which had only 32% chances of winning which did prove to be very accurate especially in the absence of Sehwag who could have destroyed all the predictions through a random event!

Mumbai Indians look a very balanced team this year with the former Australian Skipper Ricky Ponting leading the side. Mumbai Indians have been runners up once and semi finalists twice in the previous versions of IPL. Based on previous performances, we predict the expected line up to include Dwayne Smith, Ambati Rayudu, Kieron Pollard, Dhawal Kulkarni and Pragyan Ojha over Harbhajan Singh. You can see the relative performance scores of each of the players in the chart above (a greater area size indicates a higher performance score).

RCB will have Viral Kohli leading the team and Chris Gayle would be expected to play a major role alongside him. Bangalore would miss AB de Villiers ( who will miss the first match having got married last week) and Cheteshwar Pujara who was injured in the right index finger during the Delhi Test match against Australia. He might be missing the first four RCB matches. In spite of these players missing out, RCB has a slight edge over MI in the first match. RCB would also depend heavily on spin veterans Muttiah Muralitharan and Daniel Vettori who would play a big role in the spin department.

The graph above shows the relative performance index of each player that we calculated. Clearly RCB has an aggregate index slightly more than MI and looks like a close contest. If you hover over the players name, you can see the scores of each player. A higher score implies a higher importance for the player (as you might already have inferred)

We shall be coming up with predictions for each of the 72 matches through the IPL 6 championship and you can also follow the real time win probability on Cricmetric. (We are currently in the process of incorporating innovative visualizations into our scorecard, so please bear with us on that front)

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