IPL: Who's giving the best value for money so far?

It's still very early days in IPL2, and really too early to talk seriously of the paisa vasool index (PVI).

But some numbers have started coming in, and we decided to share them with Rediff.com readers. These are still not significant numbers; it's a little like the leads data at 8:15 a.m. after election counting starts at 8:00 a.m.

When we look at the top 10 names with the best (lowest) PVI, we see the usual suspects: Karan Goel, Pragyan Ojha, Harmeet Singh, Manpreet Gony and other young Indian cricketers. In fact, here's that list below:

*2008 prices, cannot confirm if 2009 prices have changed

While some of these players have indeed been impressive - recall Karan Goel's blazing start against Delhi Daredevils, or Abhishek Nayar's three sixes off Andrew Flintoff - the real reason why they figure at the top of the list is because they are so low-priced.

Where, for example is Matthew Hayden after two good knocks? He's not there because he's priced $375,000, and that raises his PVI to 376.

376 is actually an unbelievably good PVI. Our 2008 analysis suggested that auctioned players with a PVI below 1000 could be classified as 'outstanding', between 1000-1500 as 'excellent'; even 1500-2000 was 'good' enough.

Let's therefore look at the PVI of the 30 best performing players (with highest MVPI) so far in 2009.

These numbers are slightly misleading - because some players have played an extra match - but the list does appear to confirm what many commentators are already saying: this could be a bowlers' IPL. Only a third of the names on the list are pure batsmen, and these are among the world's best.

Finally, let's look at the 30 highest paid players. How many of them have started well?

This table seems to confirm what we've suspected: a sizeable fraction of the player price is paid for brand-selling value rather than cricketing skills. The list of players offering paisa vasool in pure cricketing terms is very small:  Tendulkar, Dravid, Jayasuriya, R P Singh, Sehwag and Daniel Vettori. These names, in many ways, constitute the 'best bargains'.

Notice too that single-skill players are almost always a losing proposition: Ishant Sharma, Chris Gayle (although he can bowl a bit), Robin Uthappa (he's trying to keep a bit, but wicketkeepers don't add real value in IPL) and Manoj TIwary are just a few names that immediately attract attention.

Based on the detailed IPL1 analysis carried out by Purnendu Maji in 2008. The paisa vasool index uses a model developed by M J Manohar Rao and Rajeeva L Karandikar.

Srinivas Bhogle heads the Bangalore operations of TEOCO Software Pvt Ltd