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Home (Dis)advantage!


The IPL with its sheer longevity throws up a large database for statisticians to work upon, fans and followers to stay involved and for observers to derive trends and delineate observations. The home-away format returned to the IPL after a blip last year. The format which endeavors to the dilute the advantage of playing conditions has been tested after manipulation with the scheduling. This season we have now had a couple of teams playing each other twice in a space of less than a couple of days! The thought advocating this schedule suggest the rivalry and the sense of ‘revenge’ as a tool for superseding bore and repetition. Somehow this season we have had an incredible observation for such matches - either team winning one game apiece!

While the above observation can have different reasons, here is another - team’s struggling to win home matches! Chepauk (Chennai) & Sawai Mansingh (Jaipur) have been breached, Deccan hasn’t won a game at home, Punjab & Mumbai have won more matches away than home. There could be reasons - quality of opposition or occasional collective failure; but these reasons cannot explain the common trend across the board over some period of time. It isn’t that teams haven’t managed to win at home, but largely teams haven’t managed to dominate home matches or notch up points with home wins.

As we dig down in pursuit of reasons, let us not overlook the fact that T20 format is possibly the only format which provides equal chance to both teams irrespective of strengths on paper. Crowd pressure, pressure to win home matches could be the popular reasons to account for the results. Dig deeper and you will find that it has more to do with the team captains and inability to read tracks. While Pune & Mumbai have read too much into the respective tracks, Rajasthan & Bangalore have underestimated their respective pitches. T20 tracks aren’t expected to chance too much over the 40 overs, you can sense the captains have preferentially weighed tracks on the basis of factors like dew, past scores, ability to chase totals. A 180 total could be match-winning at Pune or Kolkata, it could just about par at Bangalore or Jaipur. The struggle to identify ‘par’ totals has been a bit of problem for most teams this season, including home teams; all the more reason why chasing has been a better or preferred option, which not necessarily is the strength of teams opting to chase.

The home-away format should suggest better success rates at home and okay-ish away. Thus far (upto Match 40) Delhi has had 4 wins at home, Kolkata, Rajasthan & Chennai with 3 each. Barring Rajasthan the other 3 teams fill the top 4 slots at the moment. The middle muddle on the points table could separate over the next couple of weeks with ‘home-wins’ being the parameter for this separation.

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