The Economic Times, has come out with this interesting statistic, mid way through the IPL tournament, on the Return on Investment of the millions of dollars spent on the players against the runs and wickets they have scored. While this does not include intrinsic value of the players, like the hundreds who throng Eden gardens just to see Saurav Ganguly irrespective of the runs he scored, or to Chepauk to cheer for Dhoni even if he hails from Jharkhand, it makes for interesting reading from a purely cricketing perspective and throws up a few surprises.

ET analysed the moolah-run rate(MRR) of the players, which reveals that the real stars of the league matches have been batsmen like Abhishek Nayar (Mumbai), Shane Watson (Rajasthan) and Yusuf Pathan (Rajasthan), who have fared much better than star players like MS Dhoni, Andrew Symonds and Rahul Dravid, to name a few, who took home million-dollar-plus pay cheques for the debut season of the IPL.

continuing, the article adds

Among the batsmen who have had disappointing debut at IPL given their MRR include Shahid Afridi, Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly, Ricky Ponting and MS Dhoni, among others. However, things might change going forward. A similar analogy can be drawn for bowlers where the top performers are ranked purely with respect to wickets. Among those who have picked 5 or more wickets, the moolah-scalp rate(MSR) was the best for Ajit Agarkar. The speedster, who is representing Kolkata in IPL, has picked up wickets at the rate of Rs 23 lakh per wicket, followed by veteran Aussie spinner Shane Warne whose MSR is Rs 30 lakh/head.

Even as the teams were auctioned, people felt that Mumbai and Bangalore had played their cards badly and it was vindicated with both teams having players unsuited to this version and the big names failing to provide any spark, however the real surprise has been the form or non-form of the Deccan Chargers, with Symonds, Gilchrist, Afridi, Laxman and Gibbs, they were supposed to be the team to beat, however the returns have been just about average so far and recently Kolkotta Knight riders with Ganguly & Ponting also seemed to have slumped after a bright start.

First Posted at Prem Panicker's on April 30, 2008.