Which franchise league is most entertaining?
How is it possible to compare leagues?
Good question!Well, we have looked at a range of metrics, including things like the average number of sixes per game, dot-ball percentage, the impact of home advantage, the style of bowling taking the wickets and how many games went down to the last over or even the last ball.The metrics are subjective - some people like lots of runs, other prefer a low-scoring thriller. Fast bowling gets the juices going for some, while others prefer the sheer artistry of spin.What isn't in doubt though is that the neutral - and almost certainly those who end up on the winning side in such situations - prefer a match which goes the distance.The Hundred was expected to provide those nail-biting finishes because of the squeezed nature of the format. So has it?In short, yes! Only the IPL has had marginally more matches on average go down to the final ball.
If we extend the metric to matches which go down to the final over (or five balls in The Hundred's case), the IPL again comes out on top (28.9%), with the PSL second (27.5%) and The Hundred pushed down to third (24.4%).But does home advantage play a key part in how these matches pan out? For this, we could only look at The Hundred, IPL, Big Bash and SA20.The SA20 was the league containing the highest percentage of matches won by the home side (60%), with the lowest being the IPL (45.4%).
Never mind that, I want runs, runs, runs...
Fans of T20 leagues are fed on a fast-food diet of fours, with a healthy side of sixes.From ball one, teams are on the front foot and muscling the ball into the stands.Again, the IPL is the king here, followed by (again!) the PSL and the ILT20.Curiously, The Hundred is bottom on this scoring, but is that because there is a more favourable balance between bat and ball?It's hard to look past the fact the runs flow in Asia, while there are fewer boundaries in places you'd expect bowlers to have a fairer shake: England, Australia and South Africa.In terms of average first-innings total, the PSL (180) edges the IPL (179) by one run. All leagues are in the 160-180 ballpark, with the ILT20 (161) bottom of the pile. The Hundred's average first-innings score is 144 but teams play 20 balls fewer. If we extrapolate to a full T20, the average in The Hundred is 167.
What about the bowlers, then?
Well, the most prolific place for spinners to take their wickets is not as you might expect - in India, Pakistan or the UAE. It's actually the Caribbean, the home of the legendary fast bowlers of the 1980s and 1990s.The faster bowlers - and this includes medium pace - enjoy the most success in Australia.In fact, the percentage of wickets taken by pace over spin is similar across the board - only the CPL is closer to a 50-50 split.
Are there any other things at play here?
One of the things we looked at is the quality of player in each league, based on international caps across all formats.We looked at the average number of international caps held by the starting XIs in each game and here is where the ILT20 comes out on top (423), followed by the PSL (351) and the IPL (335).There is a huge disparity here between the top of the pile and the bottom, with the Big Bash average of just 145 almost 300 caps short of the ILT20.This could be attributed to the fact Australia's best cricketers are playing an international summer at the same time as the Big Bash is being contested, whereas in India, for example, the whole cricketing world stops for the IPL window.Another factor is that the ILT20 allows up to nine overseas players per team, compared to the three or four spaces given up for players from abroad in other competitions.The ILT20 manages to attract so many players from overseas because of the money on offer - only the IPL pays its players more, with one report in Forbes suggesting teams in the UAE have a salary cap of more than £2m for a month-long competition, compared to the £1.5m offered by the Big Bash for a competition that runs for almost twice as long.One of the sticks used to beat certain leagues is how long they take to complete. How often have you heard a commentator say that IPL matches last four hours now?Well, in the latest iteration of each competition, it's actually the CPL - the league where spin is king - which takes the longest on average, with matches lasting just six minutes short of that four-hour figure.The IPL is second on the list (three hours 44 minutes) with the Big Bash the most economical of the T20 leagues in terms of time (three hours 10 minutes).The average men's Hundred game - which is 40 balls shorter, don't forget - lasted two hours 42 minutes.
The conclusion
As subjective as it is, we wanted to try to give a sense of what the best league is, so we looked at five key metrics: average fours and sixes scored, average strike-rate of each batter, the percentage of last-ball finishes and the average number of international caps per game.We then scaled each metric from 0 to 1 with the top-performing team scoring 1 and the lowest scoring 0.Adding up these six scores gave us an overall 'Entertainment Index', allowing us to rank the franchises for entertainment.The IPL, the gold standard of short-format franchise cricket leagues, came out on top.Then comes the PSL and ILT20, with The Hundred in fourth - a respectable finish for a competition which is about to be turbo-charged by the wealth of its new investors.The Big Bash propped up the rest, suggesting a tournament that has for so long been a high point in many cricket fans' winters might need to evolve if it is to compete with the newest, shiniest models of T20 leagues.That Cricket Australia has started the process of inviting investment suggests this is very much under way.
Have your say
Tournaments taken into account for this project:BBL 2021-22, BBL 2022-23, BBL 2023-24, BBL 2024-25CPL 2021, CPL 2022, CPL 2023, CPL 2024ILT20 - All editionsIPL 2021, IPL 2022, IPL 2023, IPL 2024, IPL 2025PSL 2021, PSL 2022, PSL 2023, PSL 2024, PSL 2025SA20 - All editionsThe Hundred - All editions
Additional reporting by Lee Martin and Soham Sarkhel
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