Worth the price?

With the on-field IPL action finally over, it's time to look back at the players selected by the franchises, and check out which ones justified their paycheck. While the performance of some players were worth their cost, certain others failed to live up to the expectations. The tables below look at the cost-performance analysis of major batsmen and bowlers in this season. The last column in the tables is the value index which looks at runs scored or wickets taken per US$10,000. This gives an idea of the value provided to the franchises by the major stars and lesser known players.

Chennai Super Kings made one of the most valuable investments in M Vijay. He was extremely consistent, and scored 458 runs which included one century and two fifties. Suresh Raina vindicated his price as well by scoring more than 500 runs and also winning the Man-of-the-Match award in the final against Mumbai. On the bowling front, R Ashwin performed quite exceptionally for Chennai and the inclusion of Doug Bollinger, who replaced injured New Zealand all-rounder Jacob Oram in the latter half of the tournament, proved to be a masterstroke. T Suman and Pragyan Ojha were the two best investments for Deccan Chargers while their decision to buy Kemar Roach proved to be a huge failure.

Daniel Vettori was unused for a large part of the tournament by Delhi while Punjab's woes were compounded by the poor showing of Yuvraj Singh and Sreesanth. Rajasthan Royals did not have a great tournament but their batting was boosted by the performances of Naman Ojha and Shane Watson. For Kolkata, Murali Kartik was easily their best bowler but Ishant Sharma did not live up to the hype and cost. Kieron Pollard was a great all-round success for Mumbai with his explosive hitting and useful bowling performances throughout. Saurabh Tiwary was an unknown quantity for most viewers, but he was one of the success stories of the tournament for Mumbai Indians. For Royal Challengers Bangalore, Jacques Kallis and Robin Uthappa produced top batting performances and the bowling of Vinay Kumar was also a major factor in the team finishing third.