Win toss, lose match

Seventeen games into the IPL, and trends have already begun to emerge. The Numbers Game looks at some of the interesting ones:

Mahendra Singh Dhoni is the only captain to win an IPL game after choosing to bat © AFP Enlarge

Win toss, lose match
Much has been written about teams needing to adapt their batting and bowling strategies to the demands of the new format, but obviously another area that needs urgent attention is captaincy, and especially the decision-making at the toss. In 17 games till April 30, a mere five have been won by the team winning the toss. The only teams who have won more than once after calling it correctly at the toss have been Rajasthan Royals and Chennai Super Kings. Rajasthan batted second and won against Deccan Chargers and Bangalore Royal Challengers, while Chennai have won on both occasions when they have batted first. Their methods have been different, but is it only a sheer coincidence that the captains of those teams, Shane Warne and Mahendra Singh Dhoni, have been the two most impressive leaders in the tournament so far?

Chase it down
Conventional wisdom suggests putting the runs on the board is the best way to go about a Twenty20 game, but the matches so far have defied that logic - 11 out of 17 games have been won by the team chasing. That, though, seems to have been lost on the captains so far: ten times the captains winning the toss have batted, and only twice in those instances have they won; both of those wins were achieved by Chennai. Of the seven times when they have chosen to chase, teams have won three times. The stats for first and second innings aren't so different - the run-rates are especially close - but that's primarily due to the first game, when Bangalore collapsed dismally after the Brendon McCullum blitz. Despite that collapse, teams batting second have a much better average.

Powerplays? What Powerplays?
In ODIs the Powerplays mean a lot - they give the batting team the opportunity to utilise the fielding restrictions and get some quick runs early in their innings - but in the IPL they haven't counted for much. In the first six overs, teams have averaged eight per over, which is exactly as many as they've managed in the middle overs, between Nos 6 and 14. In fact, teams generally haven't lost too many wickets during this period - the average runs per wicket is 34.71 - which has allowed them to launch an onslaught in the last six. The average run rate of 10.17 in the last six clearly makes that the most prolific passage of play in the tournament so far.

Fast or slow, it's all the same
When Twenty20 was first introduced, there were fears that spinners would get hit out of the ground, and eventually out of the format. Those apprehensions were put to rest during the World Twenty20, and the slow bowlers haven't done a bad job in the IPL either. Daniel Vettori, one of the stars of the World Twenty20, showed against Bangalore just how vital a quality spinner can be, and overall, the numbers for the fast bowlers and spinners have been remarkably similar in the tournament so far.

Left is perfect
The presence of Matthew Hayden, Michael Hussey, Gautam Gambhir, Kumar Sangakkara and Adam Gilchrist has ensured that the left-handers have been very well represented in the IPL. Brendon McCullum, Shane Watson and Andrew Symonds have done their bit to redress the balance, but overall, left-handers have done much better. The higher average can be partially explained by the greater number of right-hand tailenders, but the lefties have also scored at a faster rate.

The story is similar for the bowlers, with Irfan Pathan and Zaheer Khan heading the wicket-takers' list. Left-armers have taken less than a third of the wickets that the right-hand bowlers have managed, but the more important numbers - the average and the economy-rate - are both in their favour.

All stats till April 30