Explained: How have Impact Player - Batsmen fared in IPL 2023?

Indian Premier League (IPL) introduced the Impact Player rule this year which allowed the teams to be flexible with their Playing XI. The teams now can announce the playing XI after the toss, giving them a free hand to choose an extra bowler or batsman depending on what they have chosen to do after calling rightly at the coin flip.

With 50 league matches done out of 70, most of the teams have settled their tactics around the use of Impact Player. For example, Punjab Kings have chosen to use the batsman at the top to open their innings, while Chennai Super Kings have chosen to do so in the middle of their batting order.

The results, however, are not the same for everybody and the reason behind this is that the batsmen who come in as Impact Player (while the sides are chasing a total) are not living up to the expectations of their teams. The batsmen who have played in the first innings and got replaced by an Impact Player - Bowler, on the other hand, have been very effective, especially at the top.

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However, before we move ahead with all the data, let's understand the Impact Player rule first:

Impact Player rule in IPL 2023

As per the rule, IPL teams are allowed to name four substitutes apart from the Playing XI after the toss. There's no restriction on the specialisation of players to be named as substitutes, that is, all of them can be batsmen or bowlers, depending on the choice of the team.

The Impact Player, whenever notified by a team to the on-field umpire, however, has to be from those four substitute players only. A team can announce the change at any point in the match. Although, the change once done cannot be undone and the Impact Player will play the rest of the match from that point on.

Impact Player-Batsmen - How have they fared?

In 50 matches (#50 between RCB vs DC) of the IPL so far, the players who have come in as Impact Player-Batsmen (Mostly in the second innings of a match) - have scored fewer runs than the batsmen who have given way to an Impact Player - Bowling (for the opposition). The difference in runs among these two sets of batsmen is massive - 634 runs!

The Impact Player-Batsmen, who have been in action 44 times out of 50, have scored 810 runs at an average of 20, while the batsmen who have been replaced by an Impact Player-Bowlers have scored 1,444 runs in 45 innings of 50 matches at an average of 32.

The strike rate of Impact Player-Batsmen has been a meagre 128.77 while hitting those 810 runs, while that of the batsmen giving way to Impact Player-Bowlers has been a whopping 142.40 - adifference of nearly 14 runs per hundred balls.

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Talking about the 50+ innings played by the Impact Player - Batsmen, there have been just two such instances - first by Kolkata Knight Riders' Venkatesh Iyer, who scored 83 off 40 against Gujarat Giants in match 13 and the other one by Mumbai Indians' Suryakumar Yadav, who bulldozed his way to a 31-ball 66 in match 46 against Punjab Kings as MI chased down a mammoth 214.

The batsmen who have been replaced by an Impact Player - Bowler, however, recorded 50+ scores 14 times and two of them have been a century as well.

Out of 44 times, Impact Player-Batsmen have batted in the Top 4 of the batting order 32 times, and their team have won almost 50 per centof the time - 15 to be precise. The preference of the teams, however, has been to make the Impact Player-Batsmen play in the Top 4 only as there only have been three times out of 12 that a team has won when their Impact Player has batted at number five or lower.

The batsmen who have been replaced by Impact Player-Bowler, however, have managed to take their team home 12 out of 14 times they have hit a 50+ score and 11 of them have been in the opening position.

There, however, have only been two instances in 50 matches so far that a batsman has replaced a batsman as an Impact Player - both times by Rajasthan Royals - once while batting second and once while batting first. In match 32 against RCB, Royals replaced Devdutt Paddikal (52 off 34) with Abdul Basith (1 not out off 1) but lost the match by seven runs as Basith, who came in at 19.4, could not score 10 needed to win.

The other time the Royals decided to replace a batsman with a batsman was against Gujarat Titans in match 48 where Riyan Parag replaced Yashasvi Jaiswal. Batting first, Jaiswal fell as the second wicket having scored 14 off 11 and Parag came in at number four with RR at 60/3.

Parag, however, could not make much of an impact as he scored only four off six balls and the team could manage only 118 runs, losing by nine wickets.

Conclusion

It is clear that Impact Player-Batsmen have not succeeded as much as their teams would have wanted them to and on the flip side, teams batting first have managed to get more juice out of the rule with usually their top player making runs at the top-order and then making way for a bowler in the second innings.

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