Key takeaways from the opening week of IPL 2020
What's the story
The Indian Premier League (IPL) 2020 season started on September 19 and a week has passed by.
Seven matches have been played so far with Delhi Capitals maintaining a 100% record after two wins on the trot.
Besides a few cliff hangers, the tournament in UAE has seen several one-sided contests since then.
Here we present the takeaways from the opening week.
Toss
Teams put into bat have won six games
The first week witnessed captains wanting to chase after winning the toss.
In all seven games, the trend continued.
However, only the opening match was won chasing with the rest of the wins coming for teams who batted first (six straight games).
Notably, this is the first occasion where six games have been won batting first in the opening week since 2014.
Spinners
Spinners have done well in the opening week
According to Cricbuzz, in the first week, spinners have bowled 100 overs.
Notably, 83 of them have been bowled in the middle overs.
Spinners have accumulated 32 wickets in total, with 19 coming in the middle overs.
Also, the economy rate of spin bowlers has been 7.88 between overs 7-15.
Leg-spinners have done well, claiming 22 wickets.
Meanwhile, the pacers have clinched 54 scalps.
Fielding
Fielding hasn't been up to the mark
Majority of the players are playing cricket after a long break amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The seven matches have seen players being rusty at times on the field.
So far, a total of 17 catches have gone down.
RCB lead the list with six dropped catches, whereas, Delhi have seen five catches going down.
Duo
The two costliest buys in IPL auction fail to deliver
In the IPL 2020 auction, the Australian duo of Pat Cummins and Glenn Maxwell fetched the maximum sums.
Cummins was bought by KKR for Rs. 15.50 crore, whereas, KXIP shelled out Rs. 10.75 crore for Maxwell.
However, both players disappointed in the opening week.
Maxwell managed just six runs in two matches.
Pacer Cummins gave away 49 runs from three overs against Mumbai.
CSK
Chennai have left it too late while chasing
CSK got off to a perfect start against champions Mumbai in the opening encounter, however, from there on their application while chasing has baffled everyone.
In pursuit of 217 against Rajasthan Royals, CSK left it too late and MS Dhoni's three sixes in the final over came when the game was lost.
Against DC, CSK repeated similar mistakes and were never in the game.
Twitter Post
Unique stat from IPL 2020 opening week
In the opening week, captains have opted to chase in all the seven matches. However, teams batting first have won six of them #IPL2020 pic.twitter.com/sJ2zyWpGm2
— Cricketpedia (@cricketpedia_in) September 26, 2020