Updated Rankings

Shaun Marsh is sitting with a comfortable lead over the new number 2 batsman, Sanath Jayasuriya.
NK Patel with his match winning performance against Mumbai, and a swashbuckling fifty against Kings XI has managed to reach the 17th rank.

Yuvraj Singh has managed to reach the 19th rank with his 16 ball 49 against Rajasthan Royals.


Bowling:

In the bowling as well, there is a considerable gap between the Rank 1 and Rank2 players. Sohail Tanveer has managed to increase his lead in wickets while reducing his economy rate even further.
Irfan Pathan moves up to the 2nd spot thanks largely to his improved economy.

Morkel and Ganguly are the only 2 players to have made it to both the bowling and batting top 25.

Best Batsman Ranking - 25/5

Ganguly has moved up 12 place to the 20th spot after his match winning 86* against Kings XI Punjab.

Marsh maintained his place at the top of the table after a 31 ball 40.

Best Bowlers in IPL!

After the stupendous success (rolling eyes) of the Best Batsman rankings, here are the best bowler rankings. These rankings take into consideration the number of wickets taken, the economy rate and the average of the bowlers.

Sohail Tanveer's not only the top wicket taker in the tournament, he also has the best economy rate. It is no surprise thus, that he has a comfortable lead at the top of the table.

An interesting observation is that 9 of the top 10 bowlers come 3 teams (Rajasthan Royals, Delhi and Kings XI).

Disclaimer:
It goes without saying, that judging a bowler by taking into consideration only the above mentioned 3 parameters is not sufficient, especially considering the different roles and conditions under which the bowlers have to bowl.
However, because of the lack of better alternatives, this ranking does a fair job in illustrating how well (or badly) the bowlers have performed considering these widely accepted parameters.

Best Batsman Ranking - 25/5

Major changes in the ranking after two high scoring games today. Jayasuriya moves up to the 3rd spot, while Smith moves into the top 10.

Chennai Super Kings have the most number of batsmen in the top 25 - five, followed by Deccan Chargers - 4.

Only one of the four teams playing tomorrow (now today) will be in semi-finals, but the other 3 teams still have a lot to play for.

Best batsman in IPL - Updated 24/5/2008

SE Marsh after his 'Man of the Match' performance against the Deccan Chargers has moved up to the top slot in the best batsman rankings.

Rohit Sharma, Adam Gilchrist and Kumar Sangakkara have also moved up in their ranking following there performances.

Interesting Statistics - IPL

Highest Percentage Of Runs Through SIXES!
All of us are well aware of who has hit the maximum number of sixes in IPL so far, but who has scored most percentage of runs through sixes, here is a ranking. (minimum eligibility criteria: 50 runs)



Highest Percentage Of Runs Through boundaries!
Here is a ranking of the maximum percentage of runs scored in the form of boundaries. (minimum eligibility criteria: 50 runs).


Interestingly Mohammad Hafeez despite of scoring 62.50% of his runs in the form of boundaries still only has an overall Strike Rate of 77.10.

Best Icon Player
While most of the icon players have failed to make an impression in the IPL so far, how exactly do they fair against each other .. Here is a comparison:

Best Batsman in IPL!

In the recent past there have been way too many parameters of judging the best batsman in IPL so far. Newspapers and magazines have used the number of runs scored and the strike rate as the major factors indicating the success of a batsman (and rightly so).

Here is a consolidated Ranking of the top batsmen in IPL so far.


Surprises
To me the 2 major surprises are Ross Taylor at Rank 16 and Venugopal Rao at Rank 20.
However a look at their performances shows that Ross Taylor has an average of 37.25 along with the 3rd highest Strike Rate of 183.95, while Venugopal Rao has an average of 42.8 with a SR of 145.57. Bottom of the Table
Of the 50 batsmen who have scored 100/more runs so far, the last 5 are


Process of Arriving at the ranking:

The basic criterion for arriving at the consolidated ranking are total runs scored, average and strike rate. Here are the individual rankings in each of these.

Total Runs Scored

Average

Strike Rate

By taking into consideration the all the 3 parameters, the overall ranking emerges. The major challenge in arriving at a consolidated ranking of this sort is that, the players who have played only 3-4 matches may have a very high strike rate/average which would be extremely hard to maintain in the long run (like Luke Pomersbach's average of infinity).

Thus all the 3 parameters are taken into consideration with a lower weightage to Strike Rate as compared to Total Runs Scored and Average.

Ranking - Runs, Average & SR

If the average is calculated by not considering the not outs, i.e. the average score a batsman scores when he comes out to bat. However, the ranking tends to favour the opening batsmen even more.

Ranking - Runs, Average per Inning & SR

And finally, combined ranking by factoring in both the parameters (along with Total Runs scored and SR) is the best means to arrive at a fair ranking of the batsmen.

Overall Ranking

Challenges
It is a tricky thing to arrive at a best batsmen ranking because each batsman has a different role to play in the team. The openers usually have time to play themselves in and have the luxury of the field restrictions to them in addition to the fact that they have the full quota of over to play (if they can that is). Its hardly a surprise then to see that the top 4 run getters as of now, are openers.

The middle order batsmen on the other hand, usually don't have all the time in the world, but they can end up 'not out' at the end of the innings which helps their average considerably.

Another factor is the fact that some teams are playing on grounds which are low scoring than the others. KKR for instance plays half its matches in Eden Gardens which has proved to be a low scoring venue and thus the batsmen may stand to lose out on high scores and thus a high rank.