Hello, its time for another preview before the IPL starting tomorrow. This is part of a series which i have been reviewing certain data for all the teams taking part in the IPL in order to review team strengths and weaknesses ahead of the big tournament. The next team up is the Rajasthan Royals. They won the tournament in the first year in 2008 however have not won it again since and spent two years outside the league suspended. They made it to the playoffs last season so lets see if this is a squad that can get them further

Bowling

First up, i’m going to review the batting line up. The blue dots are the Rajasthan batsmen and the grey are the batsmen for the other teams. On batting average the Royals look to have good strength and depth. They have a number of batsmen able to average over 30.

Moving on the strike rates for the batsmen, all rounders and wicket keepers. The strike rates on the whole are not too bad and therefore this is starting to look like a strong promising batting line up.

Non boundary strike rate is the opposite of the Mumbai batsmen. Most of the Royals batsmen are able to rotate the strike and don’t just rely on hitting 6’s and 4’s. It might be interesting to compare how the two batting line ups fare as they seem to be composed of different types of batsmen.

Bowling

Moving on to reviewing the bowling attack, I am starting by looking at the wicket strike rate. I.e on average how often does the bowler take wickets. Things look good for Rajasthan as they have a number of batsmen taking wickets under every 20 balls. This should help restrict the opposition to the lowest amount of runs possible.

Next taking a look at the batting average batsmen the bowler has got out which is my attempt to further look at bowling skill. A higher batting average for a batman suggests they are a better batter therefore if a bowler takes these batsman wickets more often it could be a measure of how good the bowler is. Its more valuable to take a top order batsmen wicket then a tailender. On this measure the Royals compare well to other bowlers in the competition. They perform at least at average.

Now looking at the run rates conceded by the bowlers in the IPL and I have made a slight adjustment to plot filtering out the highly run rates as I don’t think they are representative. Overall Rajasthan have an average bowling attack by this measure. No one likely to really restrict the score however no one likely to go around the park. This looks to be a bowling attack that restricts by taking wickets rather then bowling economically.

Thats it for this preview, If you haven’t checked out the others go check them out and the final 2 teams will follow soon.