Now that the league phase 2011 has ended (and the playoffs have just started), it is the right time to have a look at the best players in this year’s IPL so far. We use the Win Probability Added as the metric for ranking the players. The WPA score can change between now and the end of the tournament (and WPA is indeed a finicky score), but nevertheless it is an interesting exercise to analyze where the players stand after the end of the league phase.
Batsmen: No surprises here. Chris Gayle tops the list with a 2.590 WPA, followed by Sehwag at 2.292. There is a huge gap between Sehwag and the third ranked player Rayudu (who has a 0.958, thanks mostly to his last-ball six in the final game of the league phase).
Gayle’s performance is also remarkable because he started playing for the Royal Challengers only halfway through the tournament, and he almost single-handedly carried his team to the top of the points table in the IPL. There is no doubt that he has been the biggest star of this year’s IPL.
Bowlers: This is where things start getting interesting. So you thought that Malinga would be the obvious number 1 bowler, right? Wrong! Malinga actually ends up fourth in terms of WPA on the bowling list, with a score of 1.288. Ashwin with a WPA of 1.670 tops the list, followed by Steyn (1.575) and Iqbal Abdulla (1.350).
Even though Ashwin has considerably fewer wickets as compared to Malinga, his topping the list shows that his ability to choke the scoring rate has been as valuable as Malinga’s ability to take wickets with his unique slinging delivery. And Dhoni has always used Ashwin in high-leverage situations, brining him on whenever the opponents were about to break loose with the bat. Same for Steyn and Abdulla, who have the knack of taking wickets at the crucial moments of the match.
Total WPA: Gayle’s negative WPA with the ball means that he actually ends up second to Sehwag on the total WPA list, though there is no doubt that Gayle has done a reasonably good job with the ball as well. A special mention should be made of the newcomer Paul Valthaty, who excelled with both bat and ball: he has 0.842 WPA with the bat and 0.205 WPA with the ball, making him arguably the best all-rounder in the tournament.