Smart Stats: Russell goes high, Williamson goes low

With the league stage of IPL 2022 now complete, we look at the players who had a positive and negative effect on their teams through the lens of ESPNcricinfo's Smart Stats, which are designed to bring out the true value of individual performances in the game of cricket.

Every season the IPL throws up a few duds but this time it threw up a big one. Sunrisers Hyderabad captain Kane Williamson could only score 216 runs at an average of 19.63 and a strike rate of 93.5, the lowest for any opener in an IPL season and the fourth-lowest for any batter ever (min of 150 balls faced).

Impact is a Smart Stat that tries to explain how much a single player managed to influence to result of a game. It is calculated based on an intelligent algorithm which quantifies the pressure on the batter and the bowler every ball of an innings. In IPL 2022, Williamson's Batting Impact of 38.64 is the lowest for a specialist with a minimum of 100 balls played. His Impact Per Ball - 0.167 - is another all-time low.

Williamson just could not get going as an opener this season and was pushed down the order in their penultimate game against Mumbai Indians. In spite of these returns, Sunrisers had a good tournament stringing five wins from their first seven games before losing six of the next seven.

IPL legend Kieron Pollard also did not have a good season with the bat which affected his team's progress. He had the second-lowest Impact after Williamson (59.42). The Indian youngsters Shahrukh Khan, Anuj Rawat and Lalit Yadav complete the bottom five.

Using Impact, lets look at the players on the other end of the spectrum. Although not among the top five, Andre Russell's Batting Impact Per Ball score was 2.59, the seventh-highest in the IPL's entire history. It is also his third entry in the top seven. He managed higher scores in 2015 and 2019, but his performances in 2022 are nothing to trifle with. Russell scored 335 runs at an impressive strike rate of 174.47, hitting 32 sixes and 18 fours. He also took taking 17 wickets at a strike rate of 9.9.

A lot of spectacular individual performances took place in the last week of the IPL. Although Moeen Ali had a poor tournament with the bat, he produced the Most Impactful Performance of the IPL's league stage, against Rajasthan Royals.

One of the main reasons for this is that Moeen scored 93 runs out of a total of 150. While he went at a strike rate of 163, his partners together managed just 82.5. In fact, even from the opposition team, only two batters struck at more than 100. On a pitch which seemed difficult to bat on, Moeen played a very impactful knock. He also took 1 for 21 in four overs.

The next Most Impactful Performance of the season was Quinton de Kock's. In one of the best games of the tournament, the Lucknow Super Giants opener smashed an unbeaten 140, which ended up being the highest score of the league stage.

Impact adds context to a player's score by taking into account what happens at the other end as well. And in this game, the other end produced just 68 runs at a strike rate of 133.33. All the responsibility of putting up a par-plus total was on de Kock and he rose to meet it, even setting the record for most runs scored by a single batter (71) in the last five overs of an IPL game.

Something similar happened when Super Giants played against Mumbai Indians earlier this season. KL Rahul made 103 off 62 balls in ill-fitting conditions for strokeplay. It was a phenomenal innings because he made those runs at at a strike rate of 166.12. But the other batters - from both teams - could manage a run a ball. In fact, the only one whose stuck in excess of 130 was Tilak Varma, who scored 38 off 27.

The only bowling performance that made the top five was a scintillating one from Umran Malik. The Sunrisers speedster took all five Gujarat Titans wickets that fell that day. He maintained an economy rate of 6.25 in a game where all other bowlers went over 8 runs an over. The match run-rate was close to 10. In fact, this is the Most Impactful Bowling Performance ever in the IPL.