Defending champions Gujarat Titans needed a win against the Mumbai Indians to seal qualification for the playoffs this season. But the 5 time champions, thanks largely to Suryakumar Yadav‘s incredibly feisty maiden IPL century, pulled off a win to climb back into the top 3.
So which four teams have the best chances of making the final four cut?
With 13 matches left to play in the league stage of IPL 2023, there remain nearly 8,200 possible combinations of results. TOI looks at each of these possibilities to calculate the chances of individual teams making it to the playoffs. As things stand, two teams are almost certain to make the play-offs, one other is a strong favourite to do so, and none of the others is as yet definitely out and all but DC and KKR can in fact tie for top spot.
TOI’s Shankar Raghuraman does the number crunching to determine how the teams stand as of Saturday, May 13 morning:
1. GT are already certain to finish in one of the top three slots in terms of points. The lowest they can finish is tied third but their chances of being sole leader have dropped after Friday’s loss to 53.5%. It is still theoretically possible that they miss out on NRR after finishing in a tie with more than one other team for the third spot but that’s just a 0.9% chance
2.CSK‘s are also almost certain of making it to the top four on points with their chances of finishing in that bracket either singly or jointly now at 98.7%
3. With their win on Friday, MI have moved back into third place, and dramatically improved their chances of making the top four on points to 89.3%, though that includes scenarios where they’re tied for the fourth spot
4. Though currently in fourth place, RR’s chances of making the top four on points are now less, at 49.4%, and even that includes situations in which NRR could come into play.
5. In fifth spot currently, LSG are more likely than not to miss out with a 40.3% chance of getting into the top four and once again that includes scenarios in which they are only joint fourth, some of them with multiple teams.
6.RCB are currently placed sixth and their chances of finishing in the top four are 30.4% and even this includes situations of teams tied on points for the last spot.
7. KKR are now in seventh spot, and their chances of finishing in the top four in terms of points, either singly or jointly, are down to 12% or less than one in eight. The best they can hope for is a tie for third spot with anywhere between two and five other teams.
8. PBKS are now in eight place, and like RCB they now have less than a one in three chance of finishing among the top four on points – singly or jointly. To be precise they have a 29.9% chance of achieving that.
9. Ninth placed SRH have a one in four (20%) chance of finishing among the top four on points, but this tournament has been so even that they can still finish tied for the top spot if they win all their remaining games and other results go their way.
10. Languishing at or near the bottom for most of the tournament, DC can still make it to the play-offs but their chances of making the top four in terms of points are no more than 5.2%. They can at best tie for third or fourth spot and most of those involve multiple teams.
How we calculate these probabilities:
We look at all 8,192 possible combinations of results with 13 matches remaining. We assume that for any given match the chances of either side winning are even. We then look at how many of the combinations put each team in one of the top four slots by points. That gives us our probability number. To take a specific example, of the 8,192 possible result combinations, DC finishes in the top four in just 425 of them. That translates to a 5.2% chance of making the top four on points. We do not take net run rates or No Results (NR) into consideration because predicting those in advance is impossible.