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IPL 2024 Comes to a Close
We are coming to the end of this year’s Indian Premier League, the major T-20 cricket league in India which is finishing up its 17th season over the next week. To put the scale of this league in perspective, at the last renewal of broadcast and streaming rights, it commanded the highest per-game license fee of any sport in the world.
The final two regular-season matches are tomorrow morning US time (tomorrow afternoon and evening India time). Here is the current points table:
The top four teams go to the playoff and those teams are set. The two matches played tomorrow will determine 2nd and 3rd place.
Today’s game was a much-anticipated match between then 4th-placed Chennai Super Kings (CSK) and 5th-placed Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB). To make the playoff, RCB needed to win by 17 runs to both get the two points for the victory and increase their net run rate (NRR) which ranks teams that tie in points.
CSK won the toss and decided to bowl. After a brief rain delay in the third over, RCB went on to put up 218/5 in their 20 overs. CSK started their chase strong, but the wickets started falling, and with some great catches by RCB, CSK only made it to 191/7. RCB wins and makes it to the playoff for the 9th time.
The playoff format is interesting. First, the top two teams play in a qualifier match. Then, the 3rd and 4th teams play in an eliminator. The loser of the qualifier plays the winner of the eliminator, and the winner of that match plays the winner of the first qualifier match in the final. Thus the top two teams have two chances to make it to the final.
The playoff format looks like this in a graphic format, which is a little easier to follow than the prose version.
The 2nd place Rajasthan Royals and 3rd place Sunrisers Hyderabad play in separate matches tomorrow. Those matches will decide who gets two chances to make it to the final.
The playoffs are this coming Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, with the final on Sunday, May 26.
Here’s to a big week of cricket!
P.S., The T-20 World Cup starts June 1 with a match between the US and Canada in Dallas. This 55-match tournament will be played in June across the US and West Indies.
P.P.S., I have toyed in the past with writing a post trying to explain cricket and its various formats, but have not gotten around to it. Let me know if you would be interested and that would give me the impetus to get it done.
Published in Sports
Explain Cricket, please.
OK, I will start working on it.
Here is a view out of a box seat at a Mumbai Indians match at Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai. It does look a little cramped, but what was really nice about the boxed seat was the air conditioning. It was a warm night.
One of India’s two true religions.
When you’ve done cricket please also explain Bollywood.
Thank you in advance.
Even having worked most of my career in entertainment, I am not sure I can do Bollywood. We shall see. Perhaps I can make it a research project.
And your comment on “true religions” is spot on. On my first trip to India in 2006, I was amazed on my drive from the airport to the hotel in Pune that people were playing cricket everywhere. Then when I read about the formation of an India-based league (with money from Sony Pictures Networks India) with a game format that lasts 3-4 hours, I thought it would be huge. 1.4 billion cricket-obsessed people with a game you can watch in a few hours in the evening? Huge!
Has Obama announced his cricket brackets on ESPN yet?
Throwing out the British before cricket was invented was premature
I would love an explanation of cricket. I suppose my confusion begins when I try to compare it to baseball, which you cannot.
I used to read a webcomic where one of their side projects was explaining the steps you’d need to get from one to the other. I’m pretty sure they did baseball to cricket or vice versa at one point. Possibly both; they were very thorough.
I used to follow it when I traveled to India for work – went to a couple of the Chennai matches
That would be interesting. Both sports have runs, innings, and outs. But then things begin to diverge.
The longest cricket match on record is 168 hours 20 minutes. That’s actual playing time.
Do you know when that was played? The longest format currently played professionally, the Test Match, is capped at five days of play, with six hours of playing time per day.
Today’s matches are done and the playoff picture is set. SRH beat PBKS by 4 wickets with five balls left. The RR/KKR match was rained out. RR and SRH finish with a tie in points at 17, but SRH has the edge in NRR so will play in the qualifier against KKR. RR faces the surging RCB in the eliminator.
It isn’t capped, they just schedule it for that long. From wiki: