With this year’s Dream11 IPL tournament half-way through, we definitely have seen some of the most terrific performances from our cricketers regardless of their time away from the game. With this being the 13th edition of the League and the 2nd time, it being played in the United Arab Emirates, IPL has yet once again proven how much its loved by its loyal fans. This article is a humble attempt at analysing the most consistent players across all fields of the game, namely Batting, Bowling and Wicketkeeping/Fielding so you can make an informed decision in creating your own fantasy IPL team.

Starting with the batsmen that have proven to be most destructive this season, these batsmen have not failed to have us on the edge of our seats and entertaining us at every stage of the match. To name the highest scorers of this year’s tournament; 1. KL Rahul, 2. Mayank Agarwal, 3. Faf Du Plessis, 4. David Warner, 5. Jonny Bairstow. Although almost all of these batsmen have played well and scored runs for their side, though when it comes to consistency, only one can top the list. In cricket although metrics such as average runs and strike rate are widely used to measure the potential of a good batsman, I would like to shed some light on the statistical measure of Coefficient of Variation. The coefficient of variation represents the ratio of the standard deviation to the mean, and it is a useful statistic for comparing the degree of variation from the runs of one batsman to another, even if the means are drastically different from one another. According to this measure, from the top 3 highest scoring batsmen in the IPL although the average number of runs scored by KL Rahul, Mayank Agarwal and Faf du Plessis are easily differentiable( 55.43, 48.14, 43.86 ) when we compare the CV(coefficient of variation) Faf du Plessis seems to be the clear winner in having the lowest CV(68.0155) as compared to that of Rahul and Agarwal’s (77.6 and 76.45). Since a lower CV indicates a lesser variance (from the average) in the runs scored each match, which ultimately indicated more consistency.

Talking about the bowlers, making use of metrics like average economy, strike rate and average runs per wicket there another statistical measure that assesses the consistency in the bowling performance of a bowler. The Combined Bowling Rate(CBR) is defined as the harmonic mean of Average, Strike rate and Economy rate. Lower the CBR, better the performance of a bowler. When we compare the CBRs of the 3 bowlers in the contest for the purple cap this year, namely; 1. Kagiso Rabada, 2. Jasprit Bumrah, 3. Trent Boult, all three bowlers seem to have a satisfactory Economy ranging from 7.72-7.98 and terrific average runs per wicket (1.82, 2.88, 2.90) but Kagiso Rabada has the lowest CBR of 2.33 as compared to Bumrah and Boult (3.46, 3.48).

Among the fielders, AB De Villers, Rohit Sharma, Keiron Pollard and Dwayne Bravo are some IPL favourites. With the highest number of catches and run outs accomplished. Among the wicketkeepers, MS Dhoni is a clear favourite being the most successful wicket-keeper in the history of the IPL. To name a few others; Dinesh Karthik, Rishab Pant, Quinton de Kock also rank in the top 10 most successful wicketkeepers in the tournament.