The McCullum mystery in the IPL

Brendon McCullum's batting style and his attitude is ideally suited to the limited-overs format: he isn't afraid to go after the bowling from the first ball, his range of attacking shots matches his attitude, and he hardly takes a backward step during a contest. All of those skills were on display in the 2015 World Cup, when McCullum's aggressive batsmanship at the top of the order combined with his flair and aggression as leader to take New Zealand all the way to the final. His strike rate in the World Cup was 188.50 (328 runs from 174 balls), the best among 87 batsmen who faced at least 100 balls in the tournament. If you reduced the cut-off to 50 balls, his strike rate was still the best.

McCullum seems to have carried that form into the IPL, for in his second innings of this tournament he carted the bowlers from Sunrisers Hyderabad all over Chepauk in scoring an unbeaten 100 off 56 balls. That's his second IPL century, following on his unbeaten 158 off 73 balls in the very game of the very edition, in 2008. That knock had announced to the world the limitless possibilities for batsmen in this format, and McCullum remains one of only six batsmen to score multiple centuries in the IPL.

Despite these skills which seem ideally suited to limited-overs cricket - and even more so to the 20-over format - McCullum's record in the IPL is underwhelming: before the start of the eighth season, he had scored 1644 runs in 62 IPL innings at an average of 28.34, and a strike rate marginally under 123. The strike rate is the surprising number, for out of 27 batsmen who've scored 1500 or more runs in the IPL, McCullum is ranked 21st in terms of strike rate. That's hardly consistent with his reputation or his skill.

Apart from the two hundreds he has scored, McCullum has only one other IPL innings where he has faced 20 or more deliveries and scored at a strike rate of 150 or more. Chris Gayle, on the other hand, has 20 such innings over the first seven seasons of the IPL; Suresh Raina has 22, while Virender Sehwag has 21 innings of 20 or more balls where he scored at a 150-plus strike rate, in the first seven editions of the IPL. McCullum had exactly two such innings before the start of IPL 2015, which indicates the extent to which he has underperformed in previous editions of the tournament. Exclude that unbeaten 158, and his strike rate drops to 117 in 61 innings, which is in the Ajinkya Rahane and Rahul Dravid territory.

McCullum's strike rate rank in the IPL - 21st among 27 batsmen - is at odds with his ODI rank along the same parameter during this period: among the 29 batsmen who've scored 3000 or more ODI runs since the beginning of 2008 (which is the period of the IPL), only two batsmen, Virender Sehwag and AB de Villiers, have higher strike rates than McCullum. As a factor of his ODI strike rate, McCullum's IPL scoring rate is only 23% better, compared to 34% for de Villiers, 31% for Sehwag, 46% for Suresh Raina and 53% for Shane Watson.

Through most of his IPL career McCullum has played with Kolkata Knight Riders, whose home venue, the Eden Gardens, has often produced slow pitches which have helped spinners and hindered strokeplay. McCullum has struggled there, striking at a rate of 109 in the 11 IPL games he has played in Kolkata, but surprisingly, he hasn't done that much better at other grounds either. Overall in the first seven seasons, the aggregate strike rate in the 62 IPL games he has played is 121.22, which means McCullum is about 1% faster than the average strike rate in the matches he has played; in ODIs, he is about 20% faster than the average scoring rate.

Some of the other players have played at venues more conducive to strokeplay, but even so their strike rates are much higher than the match average: Raina is about 12% better than average, de Villiers around 9%, and Watson 16% better than the average strike rate. McCullum's attacking skills aren't any worse than those players, and yet he hasn't consistently risen above the average in seven seasons of IPL cricket.

A look at the dot ball and boundary numbers indicate that McCullum has an unusually high dot factor, of 44%. Among the 27 batsmen with 1500-plus runs, only Adam Gilchrist has a higher dot-ball factor, of 45%, but he scored 73% of his runs in boundaries, which partially offset his high dot percentage and increased his strike rate to 139.

Highest strike rates in ODIs since Jan 2008 (Min 3000 runs)

Batsman	Matches	Runs	Average	Strike rate	Bound %	Dot %
Virender Sehwag	73	3042	43.45	120.23	67	47
AB de Villiers	128	6045	62.96	103.84	45	40
Brendon McCullum	126	3789	34.13	100.05	61	53
Suresh Raina	179	4776	37.9	97.37	48	46
Shane Watson	122	4685	42.2	92.95	56	54
Hashim Amla	115	5692	55.26	89.92	43	47
Virat Kohli	158	6537	51.47	89.73	44	48
Tillakaratne Dilshan	183	7216	45.1	88.85	50	52

Lowest strike rates in the first 7 seasons of the IPL (Min 1500 runs)

Player	Mat	Runs	Ave	SR	Bound %	Dot %
Jacques Kallis	98	2427	28.55	109.22	53	41.09
Rahul Dravid	89	2174	28.23	115.51	57	41.6
Ajinkya Rahane	67	1655	30.64	116.54	54	38.59
Sachin Tendulkar	78	2334	34.83	119.81	58	39.94
Kumar Sangakkara	71	1687	25.95	121.19	56	37.36
Shikhar Dhawan	82	2228	31.82	121.68	58	39.32
Brendon McCullum	62	1644	28.34	122.77	63	43.54
Michael Hussey	55	1900	40.42	123.21	56	37.61

McCullum has also had more than his share of problems against spinners, and his lack of success against them has been the main reason for his poor overall strike rate in the IPL. Against spin, McCullum has a scoring rate which barely exceeds a run a ball, while he tends to get out more often to them as well; against pace, he has a healthy strike rate of 134, while his average touches 35 as well. On the other hand, most of the other top batsmen, including overseas ones, have handled spin much better than McCullum: Watson averages 32 at a strike rate of 141, Gayle averages 44 at a strike rate of 148, while de Villiers strikes at only 118, but averages 40 against spin. Among Indian batsmen, Raina averages 36 and has a strike rate of 132 against spin, while Sehwag averages 33 but strikes at 162.

The bowler who has troubled McCullum more than any other in the IPL is R Ashwin: in 31 balls from Ashwin, McCullum has managed 12 singles and played out 19 dots. Three of those dots have also been dismissals, which means McCullum has an average of 4.00 against Ashwin, and a strike rate of 39 - hardly what you'd expect of such a fearsome batsman. (Compare these numbers with the stats for Glenn Maxwell against Ashwin: 71 from 27 balls, including five sixes and seven fours.) Luckily for McCullum, though, he doesn't have to face Ashwin this season as they're both playing for the same team.

McCullum v pace and spin in the first 7 iPL seasons

Bowling Style	Dismissals	Average	Strike Rate
Pace	32	35.37	134.28
Spin	22	23.04	103.25

Bowlers with the best Econ rates against McCullum (Min 20 balls)

Bowler	Runs	Balls	Econ Rate	Dismissals	Average
R Ashwin	12	31	2.32	3	4.00
Anil Kumble	11	21	3.14	1	11.00
Dwayne Bravo	11	20	3.30	0	-
Ali Murtaza	13	22	3.54	0	-
Piyush Chawla	17	23	4.43	2	8.50
Shakib Al Hasan	15	20	4.50	1	15.00

So far in the two innings in IPL 2015, McCullum has scored 32 runs from three overs of spin, without being dismissed. That's a fine start to the tournament, and he looked in ruthless form against Sunrisers, but in a long tournament played on different pitches, he'll need to continue in this vein. Given his undoubted class and attacking ability, none will bet against a smashing season which will finally do justice to his talent.