Who are the paisa vasool players in IPL-4?

Purnendu Maji and Srinivas Bhogle attempt to find out who's offering good value for money in the IPL and who's not.

The intensity and tension of ODI World Cup cricket has been quickly replaced by the glitz and glamour of T20 IPL cricket.

The challenge of winning the World Cup for your country has been replaced by the drama of winning matches for your IPL team (to be sure, there is also an IPL cup to be won, but this cup is so hideously ugly that holding its original, or replica, is unlikely to send the spirits soaring).

- IPL-4 2011 coverage

Plainly put, it's all about money. It's about confirming what Mehmood sang back in 1976: The whole thing is that ke bhaiya, subse bada rupaiya.

We have players like Gautam Gambhir being paid $2,400,000 at the top end; and players like Paul Valthaty being probably paid a mere $44,000.

With so much money floating around, questions will inevitably be asked: who's offering good value for money or who's not? Who is paisa vasool, and who appears to be namak haraam?

To be fair, it is not easy to answer such questions. How do you compare bowlers and batsmen? How do you account for the lack of opportunity? What can the poor player do if he is condemned to warm the bench?

One way to provide reasonable answers to such questions is to look at the most valuable player index (MVPI). MVPI expresses every cricketer's batting, bowling and fielding performance in terms of a 'run equivalent'.

The key step is to agree on an average par score. For IPL4 we are assuming that this average score is 160. This assumption leads to the following spin-offs: (a) each wicket is worth 16 runs; (b) a batsman is expected to score 8 runs in every 6 balls he faces, i.e. bat at a par strike rate of 133; and (c) a bowler is expected to concede an average of 8 runs per over, i.e. concede an average of 32 runs if he bowls his full 4 overs.

We further assume (somewhat arbitrarily) that each catch earns the fielder 4 'runs'. If the fielder effects a direct hit run-out he gets 16 'runs'; if more than one fielder participates in the run out, the 16 'runs' are equitably shared.

The rest is easy. If Virender Sehwag scores 40 in 24 balls, his contribution is considered equivalent to 40 + 8 (bonus) = 48 'runs'; because he actually scored 40 runs, but scored them in only 24 balls instead of the average of 32 balls … thus obtaining a bonus of 32-24=8 'runs'. And if Dale Steyn has figures of 4-0-40-3, it is as if he has scored 48 – 8 (penalty) = 40 'runs', because his 3 wickets equal 16*3=48 'runs' but he has conceded 40 runs instead of the expected 32 runs … thus ending up with a penalty of 8 'runs'.

The beauty of the MVPI formulation is that it collapses a player's all-round performance into a single statistic: 'runs'. So a player is essentially paid to score 'runs'. If we divide the total money paid to a player by the total number of 'runs' he scores, we obtain an estimate of how much the franchise owner pays the player for every 'run' scored. We can this paisa vasool (or player value) index, or simply PVI.

It is clear that the lower the PVI, the more value the player is contributing. After all the franchise owner would rather pay $50 for every 'run' scored instead of $5000!

Now that we are done with the hard explaining, let's look at some real calculations based on IPL4 performance.

The table below shows the 50 most valuable players so far together with estimates of their PVI. It is often hard to list the exact amount of money paid to players who did not come in via the public auction, and some of our estimates may be off the mark. At the moment we aren't even sure what is Ryan McLaren's price!

We also know that the estimates of the money offered to players 'retained' by the franchise, and so kept out of the auction, are almost surely wrong. For instance, Sachin Tendulkar and M S Dhoni are surely paid more than $1.8 million; Suresh Raina too is certainly being paid more than $1.3 million. But we will use the 'official' figures.

Table: MVPI and PVI rankings as on 18.4.2011 (after 17 matches).

The table contains a few pointers and many surprises. Paul Valthaty has been a big steal for Kings XI Punjab costing just $30 per run. In comparison Ross Taylor costs over 100 times more at $3297 per run.

Among the big money buys Jacques Kallis (1485), Brendon McCullum (771), Lasith Malinga (694), Brad Hodge (887) and Shakib al Hasan (723) are providing good value. Ravindra Jadeja (1234) too is providing value, although he seems to be unpopular for some curious reason.

Jesse Ryder (152) is wonderful value given that he bats explosively and bowls reasonably well.

The disappointments so far have been Yusuf Pathan (5217) , Virender Sehwag (5260) and M Jayawardene (4018). Gautam Gambhir (4633) has done very well but still has a high PVI because he is so highly priced.

And while it is still early days, the following players (not listed in the table above) currently have unbelievably high PVI values: Irfan Pathan (12723), R P Singh (12363), Dinesh Karthik (9040), Saurabh Tiwary (7882) and Harbhajan Singh (6056) … in most cases because they haven't got enough playing opportunities.