IPL 4: Gayle, Dhoni, Sanga are at the top of MVP pile

It doesn't take any
number crunching
to figure out that
Chris Gayle has
been the most
valuable player
(MVP) of the
league stage of IPL
4, but would you
have guessed that
the next most
valuable are MS
Dhoni and Kumar
Sangakkara or
that Paul Valthaty
is the only one in
the top 10 on the
list who is not an
international
player?
Gayle's fireworks may have lit up
the second half of the league
stage, but Valthaty remains the
most value for money (VFM)
player, ahead of S Aravind and
Rahul Sharma. Interestingly, the
bulk of the top 10 in the VFM list
are not out of the tournament
yet.
Behind Gayle, Dhoni and Sanga in
the MVP list are Lasith Malinga,
the tournament's top wicket-
taker by some distance, Virender
Sehwag, Yusuf Pathan, Shane
Watson, Valthaty, Johan Botha
and Shaun Marsh.
With the obvious exception of
Valthaty, none of these names
comes close to making it to the
top of the VFM list. Considering
that most of them rake in annual
fees in excess of a million dollars
while uncapped Indian players
have to make do with $50,000,
that should caused no surprise.
As before, therefore, the rest of
the top 10 on the VFM list are
also local players who have more
than pulled their weight for their
squads. After the top three come
Ambatti Rayudu, Iqbal Abdullah,
Manish Pandey, Amit Singh,
Sunny Sohal, Rajat Bhatia and B A
Bhatt, the King XI bowler, in that
order.
We aren't just pulling these
names out of a hat. Some serious
number crunching is behind
these assertions. Here's what we
did. Batting points were
calculated on the principle that
both the quantity of runs scored
and how fast they are scored
should count. So we took a strike
rate of 130 as a par value. The
total runs scored by each
batsman was multiplied by his
actual strike rate and divided by
this par figure. Thus, a batsman
who has scored, say, 300 runs in
the tournament so far would get
batting points equal to 300 if he
has scored at a strike rate of 130,
fewer points if he has
accumulated them slower and
more if he has got them at a
better clip.
For bowlers, we used the
principle that both economy and
wicket-taking should count. An
economy rate of 7.5 runs per
over was used as the benchmark.
Bowlers with a better economy
rate than this were regarded as
having saved runs for their team.
For instance, if a bowler has
been going at 6 runs per over
and has bowled 40 overs, he
would actually have conceded
240 runs. At the average rate he
would have conceded 300. So he
is given 60 points for saving
those many runs. Every wicket
gets him 25 points.
Fielding points are given for
catches, run outs and stumpings.
Catches count for 10 points, run
outs for 15. In the case of
wicket-keepers, however,
catches and stumpings fetch 25
points each, since they are in the
side mainly for fielding.
Finally, captains are given points
for the performance of their
teams, 25 points for each win
and minus 25 for each loss.
Adding all of these points
together gives us the total points
accumulated by each player.
Since it would be unfair to
compare someone who has
played, say, ten matches with
another who has played all 14,
we then divided the total points
by the number of matches played
by each player to get the points
per match. This was the basis for
the MVP rankings. The VFM
rankings were obtained by
dividing the points per match by
the fees payable to each player
per match to get a figure for the
number of points per $100,000.
To ensure that a couple of
outstanding performances don't
unduly skew the results, we took
only those who had played at
least nine matches. What is
interesting is that the MVP list is
dominated by multi-skilled
players with the exception of
Malinga who has accumulated
points almost entirely from his
bowling alone.
In contrast, the VFM list has a
preponderance of those who
have got points mainly from their
bowling, like Aravind, Rahul
Sharma and Iqbal Abdullah, and a
couple who have contributed
mainly with the bat like Sunny
Sohal and Manish Pandey. This is
a departure from the past when
both indices tended to yield
predominantly all-rounders at the
top.*@Player Team M Batting
Pts Bowling
Pts Fielding
Pts Captaincy
Pts Total
Pts Pts/
Match
CH Gayle RCB 9 797 158 20 975 108
MS Dhoni CSK 14 451 0 285 100 836 60
KSangakkara DC 13 365 0 475 -75 765 59
SL Malinga MI 14 0 756 60 816 58
V Sehwag DD 11 624 0 90 -75 639 58
YK Pathan KKR 14 311 383 65 758 54
SR Watson RR 11 359 179 40 578 53
PC Valthaty KXIP 14 529 167 20 716 51
J Botha RR 10 223 206 75 504 50
SE Marsh KXIP 14 615 0 60 675 48
Minimum qualification: 9
matches

16-year-old from Hyderabad youngest IIT-JEE topper

MUMBAI: Like the
past six years, IIT-
Bombay zone,
home to Kota, will
send the largest
pool of students
to the Indian
Institutes of
Technology. Top
honours, however,
went to the
southern zone
that produced
possibly the
youngest-ever rank 1 – 16-year-
old Prudhvitej Immadi of
Hyderabad – and bagged four
other slots in the top 10.
Of the seven zones (sliced on the
basis of the old IITs), the western
region saw the highest number
of students qualify – 3,336. IIT-
Madras zone will send 3,126
candidates to the 15 tech
schools. Delhi zone took third
place with 2,138 successful
candidates, with Dravyansh
Sharma of DPS Ghaziabad
ranking seventh overall.
Among the top-100 students, 32
come from the western zone
while 30 are from the south. The
IIT-Bombay zone has the highest
number of candidates in the top
1,000 ranks — 290. The best
ratio of number of students who
appeared to those who qualified
in the JEE went to IIT-Madras
zone. In all, 13,602 students
cleared the exam.
"Only 481 students of the 8,325
students who took the JEE from
Mumbai city qualified. Another
1,508 candidates out of 39,483
from Rajasthan, many of whom
prepared from coaching centres
in Kota, made the cut," said Jaya
Joshi, IIT-Bombay's public
relation officer.
In all, of the 4.68 lakh students
who took the JEE in April, 13,602
qualified; another 400-odd
candidates have been shortlisted
to join the year-long preparatory
course.
Rajasthan boy Shubham Mehta
topped the IIT-Bombay zone at
AIR2 (All India Rank); Dravyansh
Sharma (rank 7) from the IIT-
Delhi region; Archit Gupta (rank
14) was on top in the IIT-Kanpur
area; Ankit Jalan (rank 45) from
the IIT-Kharagpur zone; Kunal
Chawla (rank 6) from the IIT-
Roorkee region and Amol (rank
41) from the IIT-Guwahati zone
were the region-wise toppers.
Overall scores and subject-wise
cut-offs went up a bit. Faculty
attributed the rise to the errors
in the question paper, for which
the IITs had no option but to
give marks to everyone.
IIT-Kanpur director said across
India, the performance of
reserved category students
improved. Of the 2,545 OBC
candidates who qualified, 1,540
made it to the common merit list.
In case of SC students, of the
1,950 who qualified, 122 made it
without the handicap of score
relaxation and of the 645 ST
candidates shortlisted to join the
IITs, 33 made it to the common
rank list.
In all, the 15 IITs, IT-BHU and ISM
Dhanbad, have 9,618 seats. Of
these, 4,858 are for the general
category, 2,597 for OBCs, 1442
for SCs and 721 for STs.