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IPL 2024 MVP: Sunil Narine Races Away

May 07, 2024 06:08 IST

Srinivas Bhogle and Purnendu Maji present Rediff.com's Most Valuable Player Index of IPL 2024 after Match 54.

IMAGE: Kolkata Knight Riders star Sunil Narine on the attack during the IPL 2024 game against the Lucknow Super Giants, May 5, 2024. All photographs: BCCI
 

After 11 matches, Sunil Narine's MVPI is an unbelievable 942. With at least 4 matches to go, Narine seems certain to breach Virat Kohli's 2016 MVPI record of 1128.

In Kohli's magical 2016 season he scored 973 runs at a strike rate of 152. Narine has scored only 461 runs so far at a strike rate of 185, but also has 14 wickets at an economy rate of 6.6.

Recall that MVPI collapses a player's batting, bowling and fielding performance into a simple 'runs equivalent', and rewards batters who score a lot of runs at a high strike rate and bowlers who take a lot of wickets at a low economy rate.

The MVPI table is very data-rich, if one has the patience to spend some time looking at it.

Let's look at strike rates that everyone's talking about these days.

It would appear that the new normal for post-2020 batters is 170-180.

Look at Phil Salt (166), Travis Head (194), Heinrich Klaasen (189), Abhishek Sharma (209), Tristan Stubbs (186), Shivam Dube (170), Shashank Singh (166), Jake Fraser-McGurk (233), and Suryakumar Yadav (168).

Looking at our old records we find only three seniors in that 170 ballpark: Chris Gayle, A B de Villiers and the peerless Virender Sehwag!

IMAGE: Sunil Narine during his 39-ball 81 runs in the IPL match against Lucknow Super Giants.

Let us now look at the most Paisa Vasool players: The Paisa Vasool (or player value) index (PVI) calculates how many US$ the franchise pays for every MVPI point (or 'run equivalent') contributed by the player. The lower the PVI, the greater the player value.

The best returns in the 2024 IPL season have been offered by Sunil Narine (PVI: 603), Phil Salt (260), Riyan Parag (737), Tristan Stubbs (115), Tilak Varma (405), Shashank Singh (50), Jake Fraser-McGurk (126), B Sai Sudharsan (51), Nithish Reddy (58), Matheesha Pathirana (70) and Rajat Patidar (73).

The biggest takeaway from these numbers is that franchises should strengthen their scouting programme even more.

A truly promising young player could deliver a PVI of $100 at a mere Rs 50 lakh (Rs 5 million).

IMAGE: Royal Challengers Bengaluru opener Virat Kohli during his 27-ball 42 runs in the IPL match against the Gujarat Titans, May 4, 2024.

Best Performing Players in IPL 2024 (after Match 54 ending 05.05.2024)

RankPlayerTeamFromRunsTop Score4s6sStrike RateWicketsEconomy RateGAMESMVPIPVI(US$)
1 Sunil Narine KKR WI 461 109 46 32 185.1 14 6.6 11 942 603
2 Virat Kohli RCB IND 542 113 48 24 148.1 0 - 11 595 2386
3 Ruturaj Gaikwad CSK IND 541 108 57 16 147 0 - 11 548 1036
4 Philip Salt KKR ENG 429 89 50 23 166.3 0 - 11 546 260
5 Rishabh Pant DC IND 398 88 31 24 158.6 0 - 11 513 2952
6 KL Rahul LSG IND 431 82 40 15 141.3 0 - 11 501 3212
7 Travis Head SRH AUS 396 102 46 22 194.1 0 - 9 486 1204
8 Marcus Stoinis LSG AUS 352 124 33 16 153.7 4 9 11 466 2235
9 Sanju Samson RR IND 385 82 36 17 159.1 0 - 10 458 2631
10 Andre Russell KKR WI 198 64 18 14 186.8 13 10.2 11 457 2900
11 Heinrich Klaasen SRH SA 337 80 12 31 189.3 0 - 10 449 1006
12 Riyan Parag RR IND 409 84 30 25 159.1 0 10 10 444 737
13 Jasprit Bumrah MI IND 12 8 1 0 100 17 6.3 11 439 2588
14 Abhishek Sharma SRH IND 315 63 22 28 208.6 0 9 10 434 1289
15 Ravindra Jadeja CSK AUS 202 57 17 4 135.6 8 7.3 11 421 3598
16 Faf du Plessis RCB SA 352 64 39 17 172.5 0 - 11 416 1593
17 Tristan Stubbs DC SA 277 71 18 19 185.9 2 11 11 410 115
18 Shivam Dube CSK IND 350 66 24 26 170.7 1 14 11 406 933
19 Axar Patel DC IND 149 66 11 6 124.2 9 7.2 11 399 2847
20 Tilak Varma MI IND 347 65 24 18 151.5 0 12 11 397 405
21 Nicholas Pooran LSG WI 315 64 18 23 159.1 0 - 11 381 3975
22 Shashank Singh PBKS IND 315 68 24 19 165.8 0 - 11 378 50
23 Jake Fraser-McGurk DC AUS 259 84 23 23 233.3 0 - 6 376 126
24 B Sai Sudharsan GT IND 424 84 43 9 131.7 0 - 11 374 51
25 Dinesh Karthik RCB IND 283 83 24 19 193.8 0 - 11 374 1392
26 Sam Curran PBKS ENG 185 63 17 3 114.2 13 9.8 11 364 4811
27 Rohit Sharma MI IND 326 105 33 19 154.5 0 - 11 354 4279
28 Harshal Patel PBKS IND 13 12 1 1 72.2 17 9.8 11 354 3142
29 Jos Buttler RR ENG 319 107 32 11 149.8 0 - 9 346 2487
30 Yashasvi Jaiswal RR IND 316 104 37 12 157.2 0 - 10 343 1004
31 Ishan Kishan MI IND 257 69 27 14 150.3 0 - 11 327 4415
32 Varun Chakravarthy KKR IND 0 0 0 0 - 16 8.8 11 322 3528
33 Jonny Bairstow PBKS ENG 257 108 28 13 163.7 0 - 9 321 1991
34 Hardik Pandya MI IND 198 46 16 10 147.8 8 11 11 318 4465
35 Shreyas Iyer KKR IND 280 50 27 10 138.6 0 - 11 314 3693
36 Rashid Khan GT AFG 103 32 11 3 145.1 8 8.3 11 302 4702
37 Shubman Gill GT IND 322 89 28 9 137.6 0 - 11 299 2216
38 Nithish Reddy SRH IND 219 76 10 17 154.2 3 9.8 7 298 58
39 Tim David MI AUS 241 45 14 14 161.7 0 - 11 295 2647
40 Pat Cummins SRH AUS 42 31 2 3 140 12 9.1 10 295 5980
41 T Natarajan SRH IND 0 0 0 0 - 15 9 8 277 1243
42 Matheesha Pathirana CSK SL 0 0 0 0 - 13 7.7 6 269 70
43 Kuldeep Yadav DC IND 36 35 1 0 124.1 12 8.5 8 268 706
44 Prabhsimran Singh PBKS IND 251 54 25 16 156.9 0 - 11 268 254
45 Daryl Mitchell CSK NZ 229 52 16 7 134.7 1 9 10 263 5039
46 Suryakumar Yadav MI IND 232 78 23 12 168.1 0 - 8 263 2880
47 Harpreet Brar PBKS IND 75 29 8 2 138.9 6 7.6 11 262 1373
48 Rajat Patidar RCB IND 213 52 11 18 173.2 0 - 11 260 73
49 Harshit Rana KKR IND 0 0 0 0 - 14 9.6 9 259 731
50 Mustafizur Rahman CSK BAN 0 0 0 0 - 14 9.3 9 249 760

Feature Presentation: Rajesh Alva/Rediff.com

SRINIVAS BHOGLE, PURNENDU MAJI