Who will make it and who won’t? 12 PM, 1st Nov 2020
As an ardent Kohli, ABD & RCB fan, it was devastating(not really, but it was not fun) to see yesterday’s loss to SRH with such a margin(rcb-vs-srh-52nd-match), which was a big hit on the NRR along with putting more doubts on the playoff spot for RCB. From being a contender for the top 2 spots, RCB is now in a position to fight for a spot in the top four.
On 1st Nov 2020, at noon, this is the status of the current points table and Net Run Rate(NRR) of all the teams.
At this point, every team has one more match to play. Only one team(CSK)has been eliminated so far and only one team(MI) is qualified for sure. This means six teams are fighting for the remaining three spots in the top four which will be qualified for the playoffs.
This means there are 16 combinations of results from the remaining 4 matches based on points alone and more combinations if you consider Net Run rate as well.
So, rather than wait for every result, I thought let's figure out what is the probability and what are the results that affect RCB’s spot in the playoffs. And here is a quick look at 16 different points tables depending on different results from the remaining four matches.
While most of the information below is straight forward, there is one column that is a bit cryptic.. the 4th column, which says +ve or -ve, what does that mean? While we can calculate points based on win or lose for every match, there is no way we can predict how it will affect the Net Run Rate(NRR). So, I have mentioned +ve against the team that wins a match indicating that their NRR will be slightly higher than what it is now and for losing teams it’ll be -ve as their NRR will go down because of a loss.
At the end of the remaining 4 matches, the points table will look like one of the below 16 tables. So, if you are a cricket fan and wondering how each match will affect your team's position in the top 4, just have a look below and you can play all “if and else”s and arrive at the end result.
Now, let’s get to it, on Nov 1st, 2020 — CSK vs KXI, If CSK wins there are eight different possible outcomes as shown below.
Nov 1st, 2020 — CSK vs KXI, If KXI Punjab wins, there are eight more different possible outcomes.
While NRR is unpredictable, in many cases it really does not matter. For example, if MI wins, their NRR will go up further which does not affect anybody. Similarly, CSK’s NRR going down or even up won’t affect any other team. So, where does it matter? it matters to the teams that stay at 4th and 5th positions. As you might have already noticed, teams at 4th and 5th positions will have 14 points each and one of the team is going to miss out because of NRR.
Who are such teams?
RCB, DC, RR, and KKR(very unlikely but it's a mathematical possibility).
As you can notice, when RCB or DC is at the 4th position and RR is at the 5th position based on points, the team at 5th will have a better NRR than what they have now and the team at 4th will have a lesser NRR than what they have now. If the increase of RR NRR(if they are 5th by winning) and the decrease in NRR of RCB or DC is such that RR crosses the NRR of the team that stands 4th, then RR will go to the 4th position thus pushing either RCB or DC out of of the contest.
All in all the probability of RCB being in the top 4 is 14 out of 16 purely based on the points. And there are 2 more cases where RCB may not make it because of the NRR(Given RR wins with good NRR). The other NRR scare for RCB is with KKR, but the probability is very very less as the difference is good enough and not easy for KKR to cross RCB in terms of NRR.
I hope we don’t need all of this and RCB just wins against DC, thus securing a spot and can also sit at the 2nd position.
Fingers crossed! Cheers!
