Andre Russell and David Warner take Smart Stats honours

After the first week of IPL 2019, here are the batsmen and bowlers who have hit the ground running. These leaderboards are based on Smart Stats, ESPNcricinfo's new set of metrics which take into account opposition strength and context, when rewarding players for runs, wickets, economy rates and strike rates.

With scores of 85, 69 and 100 not out in three innings, David Warner is the Orange Cap holder in terms of conventional runs, and he is also on top in terms of Smart Runs, with a tally of 288.

The second position is more interesting: Andre Russell has 39 fewer runs than Jonny Bairstow, but given his strike rate and the pressure under which he has scored his runs, Russell's Smart Runs are valued at 236, three more than Bairstow's 233.

In his first game against Sunrisers Hyderabad, Russell's unbeaten 49 off 19 was instrumental in Knight Riders chasing 53 from the last 18 balls; in the next game, his 48 from 17 helped them amass 55 off the last three, while against Delhi Capitals he slammed 62 off 28.

Bairstow has been terrific too, but his 39 off 35 in his first game, against Knight Riders, pulls down his overall Smart Runs aggregate. Similarly, Rishabh Pant has a higher Smart Runs aggregate than Chris Gayle, even though Gayle has scored 25 more runs.

With 159 runs at a strike rate of 248.4, and five wickets in the bag as well, Russell clearly been the all-round player of the first week.

In terms of Smart Strike Rate, which is calculated by dividing Smart Runs by balls faced, Russell stands tall at 368.8, well clear of the second-placed Rishabh Pant, who is on 300.

Three bowlers have taken six wickets each, but in terms of Smart Wickets - which takes into account the quality of batsman dismissed, as well as his score and the context of the match - Dwayne Bravo leads the way with 6.69 Smart Wickets. Bravo's scalps include Pant, Colin Ingram and Ben Stokes, with Stokes getting out in a tight run-chase in the last over when Royals needed 12 to win.

Russell comes in second place, with his five wickets being worth 6.38 because his victims include Warner, Chris Gayle, Shreyas Iyer and Yusuf Pathan.

In three innings so far, Deepak Chahar has bowled four overs in each game and returned figures of none for 17, 1 for 20 and 2 for 19. With Chahar, MS Dhoni has employed a simple formula, bowling his four overs straight through in each of the three games. That means he has bowled nine out of 12 overs in the Powerplays, and has done very well despite having little protection in the outfield.

Imran Tahir comes in next at 3.9, while Jofra Archer is ahead of Rashid Khan despite both of them having the same economy rate. That is because Archer has bowled all the tough overs: six in the Powerplay, and five at the death. Rashid, on the other hand, has mostly bowled the middle overs - 10 of his 12 overs have been between the eighth and the 16th.