Smart Stats: Shadab the MVP of PSL 2022, Shaheen the most impactful bowler

Shadab Khan was the MVP of PSL 2022, according to ESPNcricinfo's Smart Stats. Shadab had a stellar PSL taking 19 wickets and scoring 268 runs at a strike rate of 162.42. No one in the PSL previously has scored 250 runs and taken more than 15 wickets in a season. If you also consider a strike rate of at least 160, only five players in the leagues across the world have achieved this feat. And he did all this while also leading Islamabad United.

Shadab's best performance, though, came in a losing cause when he picked up 4 for 20 and scored 52 off 32 balls against the eventual champions, Lahore Qalandars.

His best batting performance in the tournament was when he scored 91 off 42 balls against Multan Sultans. Chasing a mammoth 218, he walked in during the powerplay when the score was 57 for 2. While wickets fell regularly at the other end, Shadab single-handedly kept United in the chase. He smashed nine sixes and was the ninth batter dismissed in the 19th over. Here, too, United lost the game.

Smart Stats, which looks at every performance through the prism of match context and consider the pressure on the batter/bowler before every delivery, tell us that Shadab's 268 runs were worth 309, while his 19 wickets were worth 17.

Shadab's Match Impact of 80 is way ahead of the second-placed Jason Roy, who had a Match Impact score of 65. Roy was the leading run scorer for Quetta Gladiators with 303 runs, at an average of 50 and a strike rate of 170, despite playing only six matches.

In a tournament where the conditions were not favourable for the bowlers, Liam Dawson finished the tournament with an economy rate of 6.76 from seven games and had the third-best Match Impact. After that, there's little to separate Rashid Khan, Fakhar Zaman and Mohammad Haris.

Most impactful bowlers
The list of bowlers with the highest Smart Wickets is slightly different from the list of top wicket-takers as Smart Wickets take into account the quality of batter dismissed, their score at the time of dismissal and the match situation at that point. Taking all those factors into account, Qalandars' captain Shaheen Shah Afridi topped the Smart Wickets tally. His 20 wickets were worth 25 since 12 of the 20 wickets he took were of the top three batters, which opened up many games for his team. Interestingly, he dismissed 19 different batters in the tournament for his 20 wickets.

While the second-highest wicket-taker of the tournament was Shadab with 19 scalps, it's Salman Irshad who is second on the Smart Wickets list. His 15 wickets were valued at 18.5; 9 of his 15 wickets were of the top three batters. Irshad dismissed Babar Azam, Mohammad Rizwan, Alex Hales, Shadab and Asif Ali (twice) in the tournament. His wickets also came when the match was well poised.

Both Zaman Khan and Shahnawaz Dahani's Smart Wickets tally was slightly lower than their actual tally since some of their wickets were of lower-order batters or when the wickets did not impact the result.

Best performances in a match
Shadab's earlier-mentioned all-round show against Qalandars was the most impactful performance of the whole tournament, while his batting heroics against Sultans find a place at fifth spot.

Roy's 116 off 57 balls against Qalandars had the second-best match impact of the tournament. Roy smashed 11 fours and eight sixes to help Gladiators chase down 205 in 19.3 overs.

Mohammad Hafeez's all-round show in the final was the fourth-best performance of PSL 2022. Coming into bat at 25 for 3, Hafeez scored 69 off 46 balls to set the platform for the finishers. With ball, he took the key wicket of Mohammad Rizwan that set up the game for Qalandars.

Harry Brook's scintillating hundred round up the top five. Coming in at 12 for 3, Brook scored 102 from just 49 deliveries helping his team to a winning total of 197 against United.