IPL 2010 Final Analysis: Where it went wrong for Mumbai, and why Pollard’s effort was too late
The Mumbai Indians failed to chase down 169 runs to win the DLF IPL trophy. If you’re wondering where it all went wrong, you can find out here — in excruciating detail.
Fans were screaming for Pollard to come in when Nayar fell in the 12th over, as the required run rate approached two runs per ball. But instead, a promotion for Harbhajan Singh baffled pundits and fans alike. Mumbai continued to slip, losing Harbhajan, Tendulkar, and Tiwary in the next 3 overs. Just five overs left, only 5 wickets in hand, and nearly 14 runs an over required — surely it’s the time to send in your most destructive batsman? Nope, instead, we saw JP Duminy come out of the Mumbai dugout. Kieron Pollard finally came in at No. 8, with just 3 overs left, and the game all but lost.
With some help from our friends Messers Duckworth and Lewis, we can see where exactly Mumbai slipped up. I’ve defined a measure called “Winnability”, to measure the strength of a team’s position in the 2nd innings of a run chase. It’s pretty simple — if the chasing team has a winnability of 100, it is at a par score, with exactly enough resources in hand to hit the target in the remaining overs. If the winnability gets above 100, the team bowling in the second innings has the advantage. Basically, if the game was stopped at that point, the bowling team would win by D-L. The situation is exactly reversed with winnability below 100. For reference, no chasing team has ever overcome a winnability of over 150 in the IPL or World Twenty20; even a winnability above 130 is quite a tough ask for the chasing team.
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As you can see from the figure above, the Mumbai Indians were on the back foot from the first ball. A slow run rate meant that the Chennai Super Kings had the advantage during the Powerplay overs. Indeed, by the halfway point, Mumbai were facing an uphill battle, which led to desperate shots, and a desperate promotion for the Turbanator. Wickets tumbled at a regular rate, thanks to some great fielding by Raina and Vijay. By the end of the 16th over, winnability had crept above 150, which meant Mumbai were all but out of it.
Pollard came in at the start of the 18th over, with winnability over 190. The game had already been decided at that point, for all practical purposes. Even KP’s lusty blows off Doug Bollinger, 22 runs off the over in all, only brought winnability down to 167.
Here’s the bottom line: Mumbai’s slow run rate in the first ten overs put them at a serious disadvantage, and the flurry of wickets in overs 11 to 15 sealed their fate. After that, not even the might of Kieron Pollard could save them. The match had already been lost before the big man strode to the crease.
If you want more details on the analysis, feel free to email me at aneesh (at) againstthespin.com. If you want to subscribe to future posts on Against the Spin, enter your email address below.
Tomorrow’s Game:
The round-robin stage of the IPL is drawing to a tense conclusion. While Mumbai are almost certainly in, and Punjab are almost certainly out, the fate of the other six teams is very much up in the air. There are 13 games left to play, and a number of possible outcomes. So, I ran a simulation that calculates all 8192 ways the last 13 games could finish up (assuming no ties), and assessed each team’s position in each of those 8192 cases, breaking ties on the current net run rate. Without further ado, here are the results: