Lording over the Powerplay

Who are the best Powerplay batsmen? A look at all 32 to face 100+ balls in IPL over the last three seasons

LONDON: In the Indian Premier League, where matches can turn on their head in an over, and a player can be successful facing or delivering only a handful of balls, establishing what teams are trying to get out of their players is crucial.

Powerplay batting is a classic example of this. Some teams are dependent on their top order making big runs, starting slowly, and then cashing in. Others are more inclined to have their openers fly out of the blocks, taking advantage of the field restrictions, and then letting the middle order stabilise with men on the fence. Different strokes for different folks— it’s important not to judge a player trying to perform one role, by the criteria of another.

With all of that in mind, who are the best Powerplay batsmen in the IPL? We looked at all 32 batsmen to face 100+ balls in IPL Powerplays over the last three seasons to try and find out.

Staying power

The more traditional T20 strategy—if that doesn’t sound too odd for a format created in 2003—is to focus on preserving your wickets against the new ball. Unsurprisingly, in the last three seasons of IPL, Kane Williamson has the best record in this regard. Facing 203 Powerplay deliveries, he has been dismissed just three times, or, on average, he faces around 67 balls before getting out. Remarkable for T20s.

The other names up at the top of the list—David Warner, KL Rahul, Manish Pandey—are all masters of controlling the innings early on. One surprising outlier is Rishabh Pant, who hasn’t been dismissed at all in the Powerplay in the last three IPL seasons, despite facing 120 balls in the phase—no one else who has faced 100+ balls in the Powerplay has managed that.

But how well do these batsmen, who are so good at preserving their wicket, score?

One way to score steadily without getting out is playing low-risk shots; Virat Kohli is the master of this, as shown by his dot-ball percentage in the Powerplay from the last three seasons—36.8%—the lowest of any player on our list.

His RCB colleague Devdutt Padikkal is right up there by this measure, following his 2020 breakthrough season when he recorded a 39% dotball percentage.

Hit or miss

At the other end of the spectrum are those who simply want to exploit the Powerplay’s fielding restrictions and send as many balls over the top as possible.

The absolute king of that in recent years, and the man who perhaps best illustrates a team making concessions to their normal batting order in order to maximise the Powerplay, is Sunil Narine.

His Powerplay scoring rate of 10.4rpo in the last three seasons (a strike rate of 174) is comfortably the highest of any batsman.

However, that naked aggression comes at a price; his dismissal rate of 11.9 is the worst of our group. He scores quicker than anyone, but gets out more often than anyone.

One man who has almost all of Narine’s scoring ability, but matches it with greater solidity, is Jos Buttler. In the last three seasons Buttler goes at 9.4rpo in the Powerplay (a strike rate of 156), but manages to record a dismissal rate of 36 alongside it. Chris Gayle and Suryakumar Yadav also perform excellently in this phase,