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So Deccan have won a thoroughly close contest in the IPL 2009 final – and in general won a tournament that was edge of seat for most of the last few weeks. (of course there will be the usual match fixing claims doing the rounds)

I already said in earlier articles that we shouldn’t be too surprised that last years bottom of the table team is this years winner. They did have the player of the tournament (Adam Gilchrist), the purple cap winner (RP Singh), the under 23 player of the tournament (Rohit Sharma) and X factor winners in Symonds and Gibbs.

In fact in an ironic twist the Deccan chargers today displayed total team work with everyone trying to do their bit whereas the Bangalore Royal challengers tried to go for the X factor individualism (Van de Merwe, Dravid, Taylor all attempting to close it out as heroes when just staying around would have seen them home). But there will be a million what if’s – I wanted to ask a different question.

Does the IPL format need a change – does the best team really win? Even if you adjust it for the finals and semifinals; Deccan Chargers would end with 18 points. Two points shy of Delhi with an extra game and a worse net run rate. And their IPL scorecard against Delhi would be 2-1 in favor of Delhi. (Actually 2-0 for Delhi vs Deccan and 0-1 for Delhi vs Adam Gilchrist). Doesn’t sound totally fair. You’d argue that this is true for all major competitions including cricket itself. Yes, that’s right however those leagues aren’t as elaborate as this one – ie 8 teams playing 14 games each. It’s one thing to have 2 groups with 3-5 games each and a knock out stage and quite another to play so many games and then hinge result on one bad day. Take a look at the points table on http://www.thecricketnation.com to understand the numbers above.

The English Premier league which by the way has 20 teams and each play 38 games DOES NOT have a semi-final and final. The team with the highest points wins. Well, the downside of that is less excitement and perhaps interest if one team is too strong but still a fairer result.

How about an alternative option?

Each IPL team plays each other just once (so 7 games instead of 14). I don’t think the home and away argument holds – after all we played a whole tournament very far away from home The top 4 teams are then in a “semi-final league” where they play each other once (or twice even if needed). Then the top two from this play a best of 3 final.

Practically speaking as well – as the number of franchises increase it will be hard to have the teams play each other twice; unless of course T-20 becomes the only form of cricket!!!

I do think this will maximize the chances of the best team winning while keeping the total number of games played in the same range. I hope we can make this change happen for IPL 2010. Till then lets enjoy the T-20 world cup in June in England.

http://www.thecricketnation.com

2004 2005 LONDON KNIGHTS

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