IPL 2021 Preview: Are High-Priced Bowlers Worth the Cost?

By: Chinmay Vaidya

The IPL auction is always a wild ride. With exorbitant numbers being thrown around in an attempt to snag the world's best players, franchises can occasionally go overboard. This leads to big paydays for players, but do franchises recoup this value on the field? And if they don't, have they learned from their past failures?

METHODOLOGY

There needs to be some sort of cut-off point for auction price and frankly, no number is perfect for this. I've settled on 8.0 crores as the minimum price for a bowler to qualify as "high cost". There's players who don't meet this qualification but certainly could be considered "high cost", like all-rounder Moeen Ali going for 7.0 crores to Chennai Super Kings in this past auction. 

Since all-rounders are technically bowlers, they're included in this analysis. The one "all-rounder" not in this list is Glenn Maxwell (there'll be a separate breakdown on him) for two reasons; his auction prices and his bowling history. Maxwell has bowled 91 overs total in his eight IPL seasons, with 21 of those coming last year (his highest ever in a season). His auctions price, on the other hand, has climbed from 9.0 crores to 10.75 crores to 14.25 crores in 2021. He's being bought primarily for his batting ability and including him in this analysis would throw off the numbers for true bowlers and bowling all-rounders. Mitchell Starc went for 9.4 crores in the 2018 auction, but withdrew from the IPL due to injury. He is not included as well.

I went back over the last five auctions and compiled a list of the bowlers and all-rounders meeting the above criteria. Including the 2016 auction, 14 players have gone for 8.0 crores or more. For those players, I looked at the number of matches played, number of overs bowled, economy rate, wickets taken, wicket ranking compared to the rest of the league and team standing for the season.

The 2021 auction saw Chris Morris, Kyle Jamieson, Jhye Richardson, Riley Meredith and Krishnappa Gowtham join the high-priced bowler club. Do the numbers say they'll be worth the price?

For starters, let's look at the list of players who meet this criteria over the last five auctions. Their auction price is list in crores, along with their relevant statistics and their team's league standing at the end of the season.

There are some obvious memorable duds from past seasons. Varun Chakravarthy, who actually led KKR in wickets last season, only bowled three overs for KXIP after being scooped up for 8.4 crores in the auction. Tymal Mills only took five wickets despite his high price tag in the 2017 auction and Pawan Negi managed just one wicket for Delhi in 2016. There are also some star performers like Rashid Khan and Shane Watson, who each took at least 20 wickets after going for big money in the auction. Only one player to go for big money has won a championship in the ensuing season. That was Nathan Coulter-Nile with Mumbai Indians last season and while he performed well in the final, Mumbai would've likely been okay with another less expensive all-rounder in his place. Jimmy Neesham could fill that spot this upcoming season.

​Here are the averages for the 14 "high cost" players listed above: price of 10.36 crores, economy of 8.48, 35.1 overs bowled, 9.6 wickets taken, average wicket ranking of 31.2 and 10.57 games played. These players' teams averaged a finish of 4.43, which is on the playoff fence. While that level of production is not awful, it is not reflective of a player accounting for a huge chunk of a team's payroll. But it would be too easy to say expensive auction bowlers don't pay off. Three of the above players hilariously flamed out after going for big money and eventually didn't play out the season. If we remove Chakravarthy, Mills and Negi from the equation, the list looks a lot more productive.

While this group of players is slightly more expensive at an average price of 10.56 crores, they obviously perform better across the board and more reflective of true high-priced bowlers.

Full 14 averages: 8.48 economy, 35.1 overs bowled, 9.6 wickets taken, 31.2 wicket ranking, 10.57 games played, 4.43 team finish
Top 11 averages: 8.11 economy, 42.0 overs bowled, 11.6 wickets taken, 22.1 wicket ranking, 12. 2 games played, 3.82 team finish

While these expensive buys still aren't delivering at a truly elite level, they're performing far better once the three negative outliers are removed. The wicket numbers and average team finish improve enough to make a big-time bowler worth buying for a team flirting with playoff contention. To get a true sense of pure bowling performance, there's one more step to take. Since we removed the negative outliers, we should also remove the positive outliers and all-rounders. This eliminates the over-the-top performance of Rashid Khan with the ball in 2018, but it also takes out Ben Stokes, Shane Watson and Krunal Pandya as these players were contributing to their team success with the bat as well. Chris Morris and Coulter-Nile might want to claim they are all-rounders, but they combined for 59 runs in their above seasons. Meanwhile, Stokes' disappointing 2018 campaign with the Royals saw him tally 196 runs. There's really no comparison. Once we remove the positive outliers and genuine all-rounders, the picture becomes a lot clearer.

As you can probably guess, the genuine all-rounders are worth their price point. Here are the averages of the six "high cost" bowlers from the last five auctions. They've bowled at least 20 overs and have no true batting value tied to their price point, although Cummins, Morris and Coulter-Nile can occasionally play a decent knock.

​Full 14 averages: 8.48 economy, 35.1 overs bowled, 9.6 wickets taken, 31.2 wicket ranking, 10.57 games played, 4.43 team finish
Top 11 averages: 8.11 economy, 42.0 overs bowled, 11.6 wickets taken, 22.1 wicket ranking, 12. 2 games played, 3.82 team finish
Final 6 averages: 8.58 economy, 36.1 overs bowled, 9.2 wickets taken, 27.7 wicket ranking, 10.3 games played, 4.5 team finish

The averages drop across the board and without the influence of the all-rounders, the high-priced bowlers don't actually fair that well. They'll take wickets and keep the economy rate manageable, but they usually will underwhelm relative to their price point. Sure, you may get a Rashid Khan but you can also get a Varun Chakravarthy. A high auction price is great for your bank account, but you still have to bowl the ball to a real batsman in a real match to back it up. So far, franchises haven't seen the type of return you'd expect for bowlers bought at 8.0 crores or more.

So what does this ultimately mean for Morris, Jamieson, Richardson, Meredith and Gowtham in 2021? Three of the group will likely have some chances with the bat to add value and all five are going to get more than 10 games barring injuries. They're going to have good games, but they're also going to have bad ones. And in all likelihood, they'll be average to slightly above average IPL players.