Dot balls, boundaries, and the luckiest captain

Cricinfo looks back at some of the important stats from the 45-day IPL tournament.

	Shane Warne: winning matches, winning tosses © Getty Images

The toss factor
Most captains struggled to make the right decision through the early part of the tournament, but in the end, 28 out of 58 games were won by the team calling correctly at the toss - through the first 17 games, only five were won by the side winning the toss, a percentage of just 29.40. In the last 41 games, the percentage almost doubled to 56.10. This was largely because of the fact that most captains realised that chasing a target was the better option, with teams often unsure of what a competitive target could be when batting first.

Through the first 24 games, 14 times the captain winning the toss decided to bat. In the next 34 matches, only 12 times did they bat first. That was clearly the right way to go about it, for 36 out of 58 matches were won by the team batting second.

Rajasthan Royals were the luckiest team with the toss, winning it 11 times in 16 games. They made good use of it too, winning nine of those 11 matches, and didn't do badly when the coin didn't fall their way either, winning four out of five. Deccan Chargers, on the other hand, frittered away the toss advantage - they called correctly nine times, but only won two of those games.

Mahendra Singh Dhoni was the unluckiest captain, winning just five tosses out of 16. Rahul Dravid was almost as bad, with five from 14 games, while Virender Sehwag managed six out of 15. Bangalore Royal Challengers, though, were the worst in utilising the toss advantage, winning one of those five games.

How the runs were scored and conceded
Deccan managed the highest percentage of runs in boundaries, but they played a fairly high number of dots. Their running between the wickets wasn't great either, with just 73 twos, 47 fewer than Rajasthan, who relied more on singles, twos and threes than on finding the boundaries.

Rajasthan also bowled plenty of dot balls - their percentage of 45.81 was next only to Kolkata's 48.83. Deccan were the worst in terms of applying pressure on the batsmen - their dot-ball percentage was only 41.59, the least among all teams.

Powerplays, slog overs, and more
Rajasthan's strength was their ability to outperform their opponents through the middle and final stages of the innings. During the Powerplays, Mumbai Indians were the best side, losing just 18 wickets and taking 26. Their average runs scored and scoring rate were both higher than what they conceded, while Kings XI Punjab were pretty impressive as well. At the other end of the spectrum were Bangalore, who were woeful with both bat and ball during the Powerplays - they averaged 18.82 per wicket when batting, and conceded 55.08 per dismissal when bowling. Clearly, their performance when facing and using the new ball needs huge improvement next season.

In the middle overs, though, Rajasthan and Delhi Daredevils were the leading teams. Rajasthan scored at 8.7 runs per over during this passage, and only conceded 7.42 per over. Delhi are close behind, while Chennai Super Kings' high batting average is offset by an even higher bowling average. Bangalore continue to languish at the bottom.

During the last six overs, Rajasthan were clearly head and shoulders above the rest. Their ability to take wickets was most impressive - they took 48 during this period, the highest among the eight teams. Chennai and Delhi were among the wickets too, while Bangalore managed to lift themselves from last place, which went to Deccan - they lost 48 wickets during the last six overs.

The opening gambit
As you'd expect in a 20-over contest, a good start was crucial to the fortunes of most teams. The sides that won games averaged 42 for the opening partnership, while the losing sides managed just 23.

Though Graeme Smith missed the final, he had a huge role to play in Rajasthan's success. His opening combination with Swapnil Asnodkar was the most successful of the tournament, in terms of runs per partnership (among pairs with at least five partnerships). Mumbai's heavyweight pair of Sanath Jayasuriya and Sachin Tendulkar had a rollicking time too - thanks largely to Jayasuriya's stunning form - while Delhi's pair of Gautam Gambhir and Virender Sehwag aggregated the most number of runs for the first wicket.

Pace or spin?
The fast bowlers and the slow ones both had plenty to celebrate over the last 45 days. If Sohail Tanvir, Sreesanth, and Farveez Maharoof were some of the stars for the seam bowlers, then Shane Warne, Amit Mishra and Piyush Chawla kept the spinners' flag flying high. As the table shows below, there was little to separate the spinners from the fast bowlers.