Who are IPL's most valuable players? (IPL MVPs)

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http://ipl.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/ Who is the most valuable player of the IPL so far? The answer might be a surprise: Shane - not Warne, but Watson. But before you get ready to shoot off an outraged mail, consider our logic. After some serious number crunching, we arrived at an index of IPL performance for all those who have played till the 30th match of the tournament - Friday's clash between Team Jaipur and Team Hyderabad. Not surprisingly, a few of the icons figure way down on the list with Ganguly at No. 51 and Dravid ranked 88th. Sehwag at No.2 is the top-ranked icon, followed by Yuvraj at No. 7 and Dhoni at No. 14. After much number crunching, we arrived at a performance index for all those who have played till the 30th match of the tournament — Friday’s clash between Team Jaipur and Team Hyderabad. Jaipur, not surprisingly, has the most players in the top 10 with Warne and Yusuf Pathan joining Watson. Mohali have Yusuf’s more famous brother, Irfan, in the club. Delhi has only Sehwag, though Gambhir is almost there, at No. 11. But where are these ranks coming from? We assigned batting, bowling and fielding points to each player. We also assigned captaincy points based on team performance, then totalled up the points. The batting points were worked out on the principle that T20 is not only about how much, but how fast you score. We worked out the average strike rate for all batsmen in the IPL so far—nearly 130. The number of batting points each player got was the runs scored by him, multiplied by his strike rate, and divided by the average strike rate of 130. IN EFFECT, what this means is that a batsman scoring at the average strike rate of 130 gets as many points as the runs he has scored. Those scoring at a faster rate get more points than they have runs, while relatively slow scorers will have fewer points than runs. The bowling points were based on the principle that containment and wicket taking are both important. So bowlers get points allocated for economy as well as for getting batsmen out. Again, the average economy rate of all bowlers so far roughly 8 runs per over was taken as par. Any bowler going at this rate got no economy points. Those conceding fewer runs per over got as many points as the runs they notionally saved. For instance, if a bowler had bowled 20 overs in the tournament at six runs per over, he would have saved 40 runs in all 20 multiplied by eight minus six. Those with a higher economy rate were treated as having conceded additional runs and hence earned as many negative points. As for the wicket-taking points, this was a simple matter of multiplying the number of wickets taken by 25 - the number of points assigned per wicket. The total of a player’s bowling points then was the sum of his economy and wicket-taking points. Happily for us, this gave us results in which the top bowlers had points of about the same level as the top batsmen. We then added on fielding points. The principle here was that wicketkeepers should be treated differently since their primary role in the side is a fielding role. Thus, they were assigned 25 points for every dismissal, caught or stumped, much like the bowlers were. Other fielders got 10 points for every catch and 15 for every run-out. Finally, we gave captains 25 points for each win and deducted 25 for every loss. Thus, Warne with six wins and two losses gets 100 captaincy points, whereas Dravid with the opposite result gets minus 100. All this done, it was a simple matter of adding up batting, bowling, fielding and captaincy points to arrive at the index. The results are for you to judge. There are bound to be some rankings you disagree with, but then it is impossible to come up with an index that can be quantitatively rigorous and yet satisfy everybody’s subjective evaluation. Shane Watson isn't just having a terrific run, he's also proving a superb bargain. At $125,000, Watson was bought by Jaipur for less than a tenth of what Chennai paid for Dhoni, and that's now proving an inspired bid. Jaipur's other two players in the list of 10 most valuable players overall are also better value-for-money than most others, Shane Warne having come for $450,000 and Yusuf Pathan for $ 475,000. Other teams have paid much more for their top performers. Mohali, for instance, has two players in the top 10 but at $1.06 million and $925,000, Yuvraj and Irfan haven't exactly come cheap. Similarly, Delhi's $833,750 for Sehwag is a higher price tag than any of the Jaipur high-fliers. The only non-Jaipur topnotch performer who sold for less than $500,000 was Bangalore's Zaheer Khan ($450,000). At $750,000 and $700,000 for Rohit Sharma and Adam Gilchrist, Hyderabad has bought performers, but nowhere near as cheap as Jaipur. Mumbai, though, has at least one reason to be satisfied: at $550,000, Shaun Pollock is proving good value for money.