How Do International Cricketers Do At The IPL?
How Do International Cricketers Do At The IPL?
And how do players who have not played international cricket do?
I’ve been curious about this for a while now, so I did the calculation. How do non-internationals fare in the IPL compared to internationals? For the purposes of this calculation, a non-international in a particular IPL edition is a player who has not earned a Test, ODI or T20I cap before the start of that IPL edition.
In the 2024 IPL so far, the average international cricketer has scored at 29.6/148.7 (batting average/scoring rate), while the average non-international cricket has scored at 24.6/154.8 (batting average/scoring rate). This is the first edition of the IPL in which non-internationals are scoring quicker than international players. Non-international bowlers have had superior economy rates to international bowlers in 2013, 2014, 2019 (marginally) and 2021. But non-international batters have never scored quicker than international batters in an IPL so far.
This record may yet change. If the pitches tire in the second half of the tournament, one would expect scoring to slow down overall. But for now, this seems to be worth noting.
What do readers make of this? Is this is a significant shift? Or do you expect matters to correct themselves by the end of the tournament? If its a significant shift, what do you think is causing it? Is it a new generation of domestic players who are better trained to hit? Is it just unusually flat pitches? Is it the impact player rule?
I think this is the 1st IPL where I've felt there's a couple of teams that would be better off not playing 4 overseas players.
In strategy, does it perhaps make sense for a team to take more risks with the less capable and so more expendable non-international batters (by asking them to score more quickly and get out more frequently) than it takes with the more capable and so more valuable international batters who are tasked with scoring more runs in the more crucial phases of the innings?