Wooble Hackathon Series · Data Track · 2026
Five seasons of IPL ball-by-ball data. Backing opinions with numbers. Here's what the data actually says.
Every match across 5 seasons compared by toss outcome vs final match result.
Toss luck is mostly a myth. Teams that lost the toss won 49.5% of matches vs toss winners at 50.5%. The coin flip has almost no predictive power — execution on the field is what decides matches.
Average runs scored per phase by winning vs losing teams. The largest gap reveals the most decisive phase.
The Middle Overs is the game-changer. Winning teams score an average of 74.3 runs vs just 66.5 for losers — a gap of 7.8 runs. That's the largest phase differential by far.
Top 5 batters by total runs and top 5 bowlers by wickets, seasons 2009–2025.
| 01 | 🥇 V Kohli | 9,040 |
| 02 | 🥈 RG Sharma | 7,267 |
| 03 | 🥉 S Dhawan | 6,769 |
| 04 | DA Warner | 6,565 |
| 05 | KL Rahul | 5,667 |
by total runs across all seasons
| 01 | 🥇 YS Chahal | 229 |
| 02 | 🥈 B Kumar | 215 |
| 03 | 🥉 SP Narine | 201 |
| 04 | PP Chawla | 192 |
| 05 | R Ashwin | 187 |
by wickets (run-outs excluded)
The Middle Overs phase is where IPL matches are truly won — winning teams score 7.8 more runs than losers in those overs, while the pre-match coin toss has almost zero effect on who takes the trophy.
Data source: ipl_matches.csv — 1218 matches, 289,498 deliveries, seasons 2009–2025. Each row is one delivery. Phases: Powerplay (0–5), Middle (6–14), Death (15–19). Phase runs averaged per innings per match then across all matches. Wickets exclude run-outs (not credited to bowler). Cleaned and analysed with Python + pandas.