Purnendu Maji and Srinivas Bhogle list IPL 2021’s 50 Most Valuable Players.
IPL 14 is over; it seemed to go on and on, but it’s finally done with.
The last ten matches before the play-offs were slightly dreary, but, as always, IPL ended on a high.
Who were the top 50 performers of this IPL? The table below lists these 50 names, using the Rediff.com‘s Most Valuable Player Index (MVPI) criterion.
MVPI collapses a player’s batting, bowling and fielding performance into a single ‘run equivalent’.
IPL viewers these days are introduced to a large variety of player performance indices, each named after a big sponsor.
Almost every such index is a variant, or a near replica, of MVPI that Rediff.com has been publishing right from the time IPL began in 2008.
MVPI naturally leads to PVI, the Player Value Index (that sounds a little better when we call it the paisa vasool index).
PVI essentially measures how many US$ the franchise pays a player for every ‘run equivalent’ that the player contributes.
PVI values span an incredible range — for example, for every ‘run equivalent’ contributed, RCB paid Harshal Patel $42, CSK paid Faf du Plessis $405, and KKR paid Sunil Narine $4,276!
This variation is mind-boggling, but the irony is that du Plessis is quite happy to accept a tenth of the price that Narine gets even though he was the better performer at this IPL.
The numbers are simply too big, especially for cricketers who’ve never seen that sort of money.
We must, in passing, note that PVI only monetises the player’s contribution on the playing field, and not via endorsements, brand value or popular appeal.
There are 16 (32%) overseas players in the top 50, which is expected with every team able to play only 4 out of 11 (36%) overseas players.
However, 4 of the top 5 players are Indian. The Indian influence on the IPL is growing.
On the other hand, Australian contributions in IPL have declined significantly. The West Indian, English and even Kiwi players have been more impactful.
Best Performing Players in IPL 2021 (based on all 60 matches)
- Complete coverage: T20 World Cup 2021
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Feature Presentation: Rajesh Alva/Rediff.com
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