Jadeja most valuable player in England-India ODIs

Srinivas Bhogle and Purnendu Maji's MVPI formula shows India's Ravindra Jadeja was the most valuable player in the recently concluded India-England ODIs.

With Ravindra Jadeja one has often felt that he did enough to stay in the team, but not enough to help the team win.

That might have changed after the recent India-England series where Jadeja was indisputably the most valuable player. With 128 runs at a brisk strike rate of 93, and 9 wickets at a very decent economy rate of 3.5, Jadeja was the dominating all-rounder in the series with a MVPI of 450.

The MVPI formula picks out batsmen who score a lot of runs at a high strike rate and bowlers who take a lot of wickets at a low economy rate, and expresses a player’s overall batting + bowling + fielding performance in terms of a ‘run equivalent’.

Suresh Raina was second with a MVPI of 367; he was also the top scorer of the series with 277 runs. England’s best bowler, James Tredwell with 11 wickets, and best batsman, Ian Bell with 234 runs, bag the next two MVP places.

Table 1 lists the MVPI of all the players who played in the ODI series. The table also identifies the disappointing performers: Jade Dernbach and Eoin Morgan from England and Gautam Gambhir and Ishant Sharma from India. 

Table 1: Most valuable players in the India-England series (Jan 11-27, 2013) 

Runs (scored) | Top score | Strike rate | W: Wickets taken | Eco: Economy rate | | M: Matches played | MVPI: Most valuable player index = sum of batting, bowling and fielding points |*Run outs are counted as 1 (wicket) for a direct hit, and 0.5 (wicket) if the fielder is an equal participant in a run out dismissal.

Table 2 shows India’s most valuable players in the 13 matches played so far in India’s 2012-13 season. Although we are talking of ODI performances, which do tend to be different from T20 performances, it must surprise that four of the top five places (and by a decent MVPI margin) have been claimed by players from the Chennai Super Kings (CSK) franchise.

Notice too that the star of the 2011 World Cup triumph, Yuvraj Singh, is not even in the top ten. He hasn’t scored enough runs (most of India’s runs have been scored by just four batsmen this season), and, even more surprisingly, he hasn’t claimed a single wicket!

Table 2: India’s most valuable players in the 2012-13 ODI season (13 matches so far)