Cricket
Bharath Seervi, Stats sub-editor, ESPNcricinfo 6y

Rayudu, Watson's most prolific IPL seasons

IPL, Cricket

3- Chennai Super Kings batsmen who scored over 400 runs at strike rate of more than 145: Ambati Rayudu (602 runs at 149.75), Shane Watson (555 at 154.59) and MS Dhoni (455 at 150.66). This is the first time a team has had three batsmen hitting more than 400 runs at a strike rate of over 145 in an IPL season. Rayudu and Watson were also among the top-five scorers in the tournament. This was the most prolific IPL season for both Rayudu and Watson, while Dhoni had only once scored more runs than his tally this season. None of the other teams in IPL 2018 had more than one player scoring 500-plus runs.

145- Sixes hit by CSK - the most by any team in a season. They went past Royal Challengers Bangalore's tally of 142 sixes in 2016. Watson (35 sixes), Rayudu (34) and Dhoni (30) alone accounted for 99 of those sixes. No other team had more than one batsman hitting 30 or more sixes.

8- Number of different CSK players to win Man-of-the-Match awards, the most among all teams. Watson and Rayudu got multiple awards, three and two each, while Dwayne Bravo, Sam Billings, Dhoni, Ravindra Jadeja, Lungi Ngidi and Faf du Plessis got one each. No other team had more than five different Man-of-the-match award winners.

1- Super Kings were the only side to defeat each of the other seven teams at least once in this season. They defeated Sunrisers Hyderabad all four times they met, which is the first instance of a team beating an opposition four times in a season.

11.64- Super Kings' run rate in the death overs - the second best among all teams. Only Delhi Daredevils fared marginally better (11.65). CSK's batsmen averaged 44.84 in the death overs, the best among all teams and hit the most sixes (54). Incidentally, their run rate ranked seventh in Powerplay (8.12) and fourth in the middle overs (8.17).

7.91- Economy rate of CSK's bowlers in the Powerplay - the second best among all sides, behind only Sunrisers' 7.71. However, their economy rate was the second worst in the end overs (11.03) and fourth in the middle overs (8.04)

3.77- Ngidi's Smart Economy Rate, ESPNcricinfo's new metric to make sense of numbers in the shortest format, the best among all bowlers in the tournament; next best was Ish Sodhi's 4.75. In the seven games Ngidi played, he took 11 wickets and saved 58 runs for his side. His traditional economy rate was 6.00, which was the second best among all bowlers who bowled 20 or more overs. He bowled mostly in the Powerplay and death overs and his economy rates in those phases were 5.60 and 6.80 respectively.

9 Wickets for Jadeja in the second half of the tournament. Jadeja bowled in each of the eight games he played in May and went wicketless only once. In eight matches in April, however, he bowled only 14 overs, and only twice did he complete his quota of four overs. He had economy of 8.21 in the first eight matches and then 6.96 in the last eight games.

^ Back to Top ^