The 2021 Pakistan Super League has started with six action-packed games. CricViz’s Srinivas Vijaykumar lists out the key numbers in the first week.
-17.9 – Babar Azam’s 54-ball 62 against Islamabad United on 24th February was the 223rd fifty-plus score in the history of the Pakistan Super League. He’s currently the highest run scorer in PSL history, but that knock was a typical match-losing innings. Babar ended the match with a batting impact of -17.9, the lowest impact of the 223 half-centuries in the PSL. The innings lacked tempo, impetus in an opening wicket partnership of 176 runs along with Sharjeel Khan who scored 105 (59) with a match impact of +14.0.
Karachi Kings ended up scoring 196/3 in the first innings with Colin Ingram not facing a single delivery. Interestingly of the 223 PSL fifties, Ingram has the top two most impactful knocks. Wickets in hand is overrated at the death when one of the top finishers in the competition doesn’t play an innings.
PredictViz in the 16th Over reckoned Karachi would’ve ended up with 213 after their brilliant start. Falling short by 17 runs, this was far from ideal from Babar Azam. An average fifty in the PSL has a batting impact of +8.43. Babar has 15 fifties in the PSL with an average impact of +3.86. An indicator that he scores a ton of runs, but not a lot of impactful runs.
22/22 – Islamabad United are a predictable chasing juggernaut in T20s. They’ve won the toss in both games this season and have opted to chase on both occasions. In the history of the PSL, they’ve won the toss on 22 occasions and have opted to chase all 22 times. In T20 history 149 teams have won the toss in 20 or more matches – but none have chosen to chase or bat first in 100% of these matches compared to Islamabad United.
4.8 – Chris Gayle (the batsman) versus Mohammad Hafeez (the bowler) is one of the best match-ups in T20 history in favour of the bowler. Hafeez has dismissed Gayle five times in T20s conceding 24 runs off 53 balls at an average of 4.8 and economy rate of 2.71 rpo. Of the 55 times a bowler has dismissed a batsman five times in T20s, only four other match-ups have a lower average. None of the other 54 match-ups have a lower economy rate than Hafeez v Gayle’s 2.71 rpo.
66% – Each of the six matches in this edition’s PSL has been won by the chasing team. The domination of team chasing is a recurring theme in the PSL. In the history of the competition 66% of the matches has been won by the chasing team – the highest of all major T20 competitions since the format’s inception.
339 – 46, 98*, 95, 16, 84 – James Vince has scored 339 runs in his last five T20 innings at an average of 84.8 and striking at 156.2, scoring a boundary once in every five balls. A key cog for Multan this season, Vince has carried good consistent form this year with 521 runs in total. In T20 history in the months of January & February, only other players have scored more runs than Vince without scoring a T20 century in the two months.
Srinivas Vijaykumar is an analyst at CricViz. Follow him on Twitter @srini_vk
