Digging Out Some Drama from IPL

I am not a big fan of cricket but a huge fan of IPL. This might look like a self-contradicting statement, but it is how it is. I am all in for the drama it provides and the story it narrates summer after summer, season after season. I am a little sad that we will miss all the circus this year. This downtime at home has given a lot of time to reflect on the past. Let’s take some time of it out to look back at some dramas that unfolded in the yesteryears of IPL.

Talking about Drama in IPL one could think of so many, starting with Ashwin’s Mankading, Virat Aggressive comments, Dohni’s tiff with umpires and many more. But these are dramatic moments unfolding at a very minute scale for example during a ball, during an over, at the end of the match etc. This blog is not about cherry-picking these moments. This blog is a birds-eye view of how the two innings of the match unfolded. It could be analogous to watching a cat chasing a mouse from the terrace of your building. The only thing that will be considered here is how the two teams fared in a similar state (The same number of balls faced), how the match progressed and how it ended. That is all.

The data used for this blog is the ball by ball delivery data of all IPL matches starting from the year 2008 till the year 2019. There were 756 matches in total. This data is similar to that of the one was used for my old blog, Gully cricket and Silly stats but this is the latest one and has updated data covering all season till 2019. Along with the given metrics in the data set, I curated a list of metrics and plots to cherry-pick the matches that were dramatic from a data point of view. And it is very easy to get biased when you beforehand know the teams that are competing. So while picking these matches I made sure I wasn’t aware of which match it was, I was just computing based on the ID. Later when I found out what were those matches I had a few Aha moments! I will try to recreate it for the readers. So here It comes.

Match #368 A match as tight as a gym Boy’s Tshirt

Have you seen movies which have a lot of Gym boys in it? Gym boys are a kind of bouncers who stand around the villain during most of his screen time. Without them, the villain would look funny. With them around, he would look funnier. These guys are tall and well build. If you had seen closely you would have noticed the production manager’s cost optimization skills for procuring t-shirts for these guys. The t-shirt these guys wear would be so tight. Forget about air, even coronavirus can’t enter. There is just no space for breathing. This is one such match. Both the competing team’s total score was very similar at any point in time throughout the game. This match had the lowest sum of absolute differences between the score of two competing teams at similar points in the game out of all other matches.

This was the game between CSK and KKR at Eden Gardens during the 2012 season. CSK were the team chasing a target of 159. With 6 runs to win and 4 runs for a super over on the last ball, Bravo hit a six!! Bravo! Bravo!

Match #345 Wherever you go I’ll follow

This match is analogous to the hilarious encounter between Vadivelu and Sundar C.

Vadivelu challenges Sundar C at several encounters to come to his colony or area or house for a fight and manages to escape without giving his whereabouts. Somehow Sundar C manages to find him every single time. Similarly in this match, the chasing team reached the exact same position where the defending team were in while batting 1st. They did it around 20 times during the course of the match.

Each blinking star represents one such point. This was a match between Delhi and Rajasthan in the 2012 season. In spite of their antics of chasing Delhi wherever they went, Rajasthan went on to lose the match by a run. Vadivelu won here not Sundar C!

Match #415 Life is a Circle

Life is a circle and ups and downs are an integral part of it. The match which we are discussing here is no stranger to this nature. In any match, there will be a point in time where one team will be on top and another point where they won’t be on top. This is a common thing. But in this match which we are discussing, these shifts kept happening multiple times throughout the match. There were 23 such shifts and the team which was on top kept switching throughout the game.

This was the encounter between Kolkatta vs Punjab in the 2013 season. In spite of so many switches in the position, Kolkatta went on to win the match by 6 wickets with an over and 3 balls to spare. Not so dramatic!

Match #4 The Atlee Match

This match is a classic example of the meme template, “you can copy my homework but don’t make it obvious. Okay.”

This was the match between Rising Pune Supergiants vs Punjab in the 2017 season. By chasing a target of 164 Punjab went on to win the match. The team which let the other team copy them went on to lose this match!

Match #412 Opening and all is Good only, But Pinishing..

This match is a classic example of a good start gone wrong. This was a low scoring match and the team chasing was ahead of their counterparts every point in time but still went on to lose the match.

This is was the encounter between Sunrisers Hyderabad vs Pune Warriors in the 2013 season. Sunrisers put up a total of 126 onboard, which is far below an average T20 score. It needs a heroic effort to manage to defend this total and an exceptional performance to manage to lose this match by chasing. This match had both (It has to). Sunrisers went on to win the match by 12 runs. A good start is only half done.

Match #599 The Telugu Movie Match

Oh! How did we miss to pick the most dramatic types of all matches? The Telugu movie type. The rags to riches story. Making the impossible, possible. The story of hero playing a low key role throughout the movie and suddenly sprouting out as a richest, most intelligent, strongest and courageous man ever born. The fairy tale finish, the stuff we daydream about all day. Here is it.

This was the match between Gujarat Lions and Delhi DareDevils in the 2016 season. Gujarat Lions batting first put up a total of 172. Delhi Daredevils were behind their opponents for most of the match and somehow managed to close down the gap towards the end of the match, partially thankful to Gujarat lions regressing towards their last overs of batting. With four runs required off the last ball to win Delhi managed to hit only 2 runs and lost by a run 1. No fairy tale stuff for Delhi. After all, this isn’t a Telugu movie.