There's a growing perception that the IPL (and T20 cricket, in general) is dominated heavily by chasing teams, even leading to drastic reforms aimed at reducing the second batting teams' "advantage". Numbers don't back that perception though.
Two days ahead of the start of IPL 2025, BCCI have reportedly made two significant rule changes: allowing the use of saliva to polish balls and provisioning the replacement of the ball used in the second innings after 11 overs. Both are aimed at helping bowlers across the board, but the second one is specifically intended to counter the effect of dew in the second innings of night games, which many, including key decision-makers, believe provides chasing teams an undue (undew?) advantage.
The idea behind providing defending teams with a dry ball after the 11th over is that it would allow bowlers, particularly spinners, to grip the ball better and essentially keep conditions similar to what they were in the first innings. In principle, it makes perfect sense, but in reality, the "advantage" that people think chasing teams have is overblown.
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Last year, of the 71 IPL matches that had a result, 35 were won by the team batting first, and 36 by the team batting second. The year before that, 40 out of 73 matches were won by the defending team.
If you restrict the discussion to night games only - the Cricbuzz report which broke the news of the rule changes states that two balls are "unlikely" to be used in afternoon games - the split was exactly half last year, with teams batting first winning 30 matches out of 60, same as teams batting second. In 2023, 30 out of 56 night games were won by the setting team and in the year before that, the split was again 50-50. IPL 2021's numbers are slightly skewed towards chasing sides but is also something of an outlier as half of the matches were played outside India.
The suggestion of providing the replacement ball after the 11th over is also interesting.
There's nothing in the last two years' IPL data to suggest that batting has become particularly easier after the 11th over in the second innings. In fact, the post-11 over batting strike rate has been lower in the second innings than in the first since IPL 2023.
| Overs/Innings | 1st | 2nd |
| 0-11 | 137.40 | 139.75 |
| 12-20 | 161.42 | 153.29 |
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The primary beneficiaries of the two-ball rule are supposed to be spinners. One would expect that they'd have been at a significant disadvantage over the last couple of years for BCCI to consider such a drastic move. As it turns out, spinners have fared almost identically in the second innings under lights since IPL 2023.
| Wickets | Avg | ER | |
| 1st innings | 229 | 30.83 | 8.34 |
| 2nd innings | 226 | 29.87 | 8.34 |
If these trends are despite the presence of dew and if the change of ball ends up doing what it is intended to do - which is to make bowlers, especially spinners more effective - the gap will only widen and the scales might start tilting too far in favour of teams batting first, which for some reason is treated with a lot more acceptance than the chasing side being favoured.
A natural phenomenon like dew is hard to control or predict, and it can significantly affect games and even tournaments at times, although the extent of the effect is difficult to quantify. But as far as the IPL is concerned, the fear of the impact of dew is currently worse than the impact itself. There are already other similarly unquantifiable factors that naturally counter its effect, including but not limited to scoreboard pressure while chasing and pitches slowing down and getting more difficult to bat on as the tournament progresses.
While checks and balances are necessary, the intrinsic design of cricket is such that multiple elements cancel each other out and maintain a natural equilibrium between the fundamental facets of the game like batting and bowling, or defending and chasing. The two-ball rule, supposed to be aimed at facilitating that equilibrium, actually seems like a forced attempt to disturb it.
