- Ratings
- Every player has a rate for each kind of ball, from a dot to a six to a wicket, and a measure of how that shifts with the game: the stage, the rate needed, how set he is, who's bowling. Players who've played in more than one competition are what put all eighteen on the same scale. Not all of a player's standing travels, though: in the IPL, what he did there counts in full, and what he did elsewhere counts about three-quarters for a batter and two-thirds for a bowler, because that's how much of it carried over when players moved. Recent seasons count most; each season back counts about three-quarters as much. For a batter who's still playing, the rating also allows for age: batters hold their level to about 27 and lose a little each year after, so a rating built on his early-thirties seasons is brought down to where he is now. His rating is what all that is worth in win chance against an average IPL player, over the balls he actually gets: per innings for a batter, per match for a bowler. That's why an opener can outrank a finisher who's more dangerous ball for ball: twenty-five balls an innings beats nine.
- Chases
- Each chase starts from 300 real IPL moments that match the situation, with the real partner, the bowlers still to come and the venue. From each, the rest of the game is played out ball by ball ten times with him and ten times with an average player: 3,000 games each. Win chance is the share won. The chart on his page draws 1,000 of them.
- Ranges
- Every rating is recalculated across 120 plausible versions of each player and competition; his range covers the middle 89% of the answers, so a short career gets a wide one. To check them, every player was rated twice, from two random halves of his matches: the gaps between the two came out the size the ranges said they should.
- Tested
- Rebuilt from earlier seasons only, the ratings were asked to predict each of the last six seasons. They did it better than a player's past win value, his past runs above average or simply his last season, for batters and bowlers alike; once the rating is known, those simpler numbers add almost nothing. A second test rates both real XIs before each match and checks how well that picks the winner; every change to the model has to pass both.
- IPL numbers
- Strike rate, economy and the rest are the same player run through today's IPL (the 2026 season's scoring) against average opposition. Tested the same way, they predicted the next season's runs at about the right size.
- Next season
- A forecast, not a rating. Form fades, so his rating is scaled back to what typically carries into the next season: about 85% for bowlers, 65% for batters. Batters are also adjusted for age: they hold their level to about 27 and fall away steadily after.
- Fielding
- A run-out is credited to the fielders who made it, as win chance per match. Catches aren't: the records don't show dropped catches, so a catch count says more about where a man fields than how well he catches.
- Data
- Ball-by-ball records from Cricsheet; players with 500 balls or more overall, or 120 in a competition to appear in its list.
