Who are IPL's most valuable players?

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.

Jaipur, not surprisingly, has the most players in the top 10 with Shane Warne and Yusuf Pathan joining Watson.

Mohali have Yusuf's more famous brother Irfan, in that elite club. Delhi, interestingly, has nobody apart from Sehwag, though it does have Gambhir at No. 11.

But where are these ranks coming from? We assigned batting, bowling and fielding points to each player based on his performance. We also assigned captaincy points based on team performance. We then totalled up all these points.

The batting points were worked out on the principle that T20 is not only about how much you score, but how fast you get the runs. We, therefore, worked out the average strike rate for all batsmen in the IPL so far, which turned out to be very 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.

Not pricey, but proving priceless


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.

Courtesy: www.timesofindia.com