IPL 2015: Pre-tournament ranking of teams

By Shashi Mittal On April 02, 2015

The 8th season of Indian Premier League will start in less than a week for now. Just like last year, we have come up with a pre-tournament rankings of the teams for this season as well. The methodology used for generating pre-tournament ranking of the teams is the same that we used for ranking the IPl teams last year, and for the World Cup this year. We compute a score for each player in the current roster of the teams, based on their performance in the previous IPL season. The team score is the total score of the top eleven players in the team.

The team rosters have changed significantly after the IPL auction that was held on February 15. However, our methodology allows for a straightforward calculation of the team strengths based on their respective rosters. So here is our pre-tournament ranking of the teams for the 8th season of IPL.

Rank	Team	Team score
1	Kings XI Punjab	1.329
2	Chennai Super Kings	1.308
3	Kolkata Knight Riders	1.127
4	Mumbai Indians	1.016
5	Rajasthan Royals	0.903
6	Sunrisers Hyderabad	0.876
7	Royal Challengers Bangalore	0.843
8	Delhi Daredevils	0.777

The runners-up of the last season, Kings XI Punjab, come out on top in our rankings, following by the other three teams that reached the knock-out stage in the last season. The main reason for this status quo is that the top four teams did not see a significant roster overturn, and therefore their team scores reflect their standing from the previous season. The Delhi Daredevils spent the largest amount of money in this year's IPL auction after releasing several of their players, however this may not help them from getting out of the cellar.

In the coming days, we will post the preview for each team that will analyze the strength and weakness of each team. In the meantime, check out the pre-tournament predictions of this season's IPL matches. For the fantasy league players who are contemplating on what team to choose, check out our ranking of the IPL players.

Correction: April 8, 2015
Due to a calculation error, an earlier version of the article incorrectly ranked Rajasthan Royals at 7th instead of 5th. We have updated the table to reflect the correct team rankings.