The following graph shows the progression of each team by match. The vertical axis shows the number of points and the horizontal axis shows the matches completed.

Some observations:

• Delhi was ahead from the first day and stayed ahead except for one match. They shared the lead for a time with Deccan until Deccan started faltering. On the other end of the spectrum, Kolkata fell behind and their “revival”, if you can call it that, came too late for it to matter. They did keep their promise to knock one team (Rajasthan) out of the tournament.
• All the remaining teams (Deccan to Mumbai) stayed in the running for a very long time. You can see the lines criss-crossing several times. Only towards the end, we see some clear trends like Chennai maintaining that small lead over the rest of the pack and Mumbai struggling to keep up and then dropping off.
• Look at that Bangalore curve. Behind for most of the tournament, there are 2 spikes, the second from the 10th match that allows them to cut through the graphs of all the other hopefuls (Mumbai, Rajasthan, Punjab and Deccan) one by one and finally end up in the No. 3 spot.
• Punjab traced the Bangalore line. They missed that last elusive victory against Chennai.

All the three South Indian teams (Chennai Super Kings, Bangalore Royal Challengers and Deccan Chargers) have qualified for the IPL semi-finals. They join the Delhi Daredevils who completed an extremely competent league phase with 10 wins and are No. 1 by a comfortable margin. Delhi will take on Deccan in the first semi-final tomorrow and Chennai and Bangalore will fight it on Saturday. No rest day before the semifinals, and none before the finals, either.

In the end, the day ended in an anti-climax. Both Delhi and Bangalore won their games comfortably. Whatever small chance that Punjab had for qualifying was crushed when Bangalore raced to 170 off its over quota. Deccan had to overcome that in 11.1 overs and they didn’t even try, because they owed no favors to Punjab. It would have been better for Punjab to have been outright knocked off the tournament than have to wait one more day in vain hope.

For Mumbai, 7 runs made the difference. If they had won those close matches against Punjab and Rajasthan, they would have overtaken Deccan. They should have taken the opportunities when they had them. Punjab was badly injured by those two rain-affected matches, including the one against Kolkata. One more point and they would have been through. As the poet Jon Whittier said,

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
the saddest are these: ‘It might have been!’”

OK, moving away from the tragic side, we come across the miracle of this year’s IPL, Bangalore. After 5 matches, the word “gutter” would have been high praise for the hopeless situation they were in. Then they won three. Hope flooded back. Then they lost two more and then had to win every single match to qualify for the semis. And they did it, in the process beating the remaining semi-finalists. On a roll of 4 consecutive victories, can they keep the momentum? Will Anil Kumble be this year’s Shane Warne?

Here is the final Points Table, followed by some observations:

Team        M  W  D  L    P   P/M   FRR   ARR    NRR

Delhi      14 10  0  4   20  1.43  7.75  7.44   0.31
Chennai    14  8  1  5   17  1.21  8.16  7.21   0.95
Bangalore  14  8  0  6   16  1.14  7.22  7.42  -0.19
Deccan     14  7  0  7   14  1.00  7.74  7.54   0.20

Punjab     14  7  0  7   14  1.00  7.11  7.59  -0.48
Rajasthan  14  6  1  7   13  0.93  6.67  7.02  -0.35
Mumbai     14  5  1  8   11  0.79  7.40  7.10   0.30
Kolkata    14  3  1 10    7  0.50  7.06  7.85  -0.79

• Rajasthan end up with the best Against Run Rate and worst For Run Rate. Which indicates how great their bowling was and how horrible their batting was. They didn’t lose any close matches, but that batting performance against Kolkata in their most important match was inexcusable.
• Chennai are way ahead of everyone in For Run Rate and have the best NRR. Great batting combined with decent bowling that wins matches. Can they win a match if Matthew Hayden doesn’t contribute? Well, their batting clicked once and it failed abjectly another time. So the jury is still out.
• Bangalore are the only team to qualify with a negative NRR and Mumbai the only team to go back with a positive NRR. Moral of the story: It doesn’t matter how you win as long as you win. Losing by runs in single digits is the same as losing by a hundred runs. Even if it looks ugly, you have to learn to crawl across the finish line.
• Deccan & Bangalore made and conceded the most runs and batted and bowled the most overs. Not sure what to make of it. Most of their matches went to the 20th over, win and loss. That shows a weaker bowling attack and the potential for mismanaged chances (leaving it to the last over).
• In the end, Chennai’s abandoned match against Kolkata did not hurt them at all. Rajasthan (on NRR) and Mumbai (on points) would still have been knocked out even if they were able to play against each other and win the match.

Deccan Chargers will qualify if ONE of the following conditions is met

• Deccan beats Bangalore
• Delhi beats Bangalore AND Chennai beats Punjab
• Delhi beats Bangalore AND Kolkata beats Rajasthan
• Chennai beats Punjab AND Kolkata beats Rajasthan

Kings XI Punjab will qualify if ONE of the following conditions is met

• Punjab beats Chennai
• Delhi beats Bangalore AND Kolkata beats Rajasthan AND Deccan beats Bangalore

Bangalore Royal Challengers will qualify if ONE of the following conditions is met

• Bangalore beats Delhi AND Bangalore beats Deccan
• Bangalore beats Delhi AND Kolkata beat Rajasthan AND Chennai beat Punjab
• Bangalore beats Deccan AND Kolkata beat Rajasthan AND Chennai beat Punjab

Rajasthan Royals will qualify if ONE of the following conditions is met

• Rajasthan beats Kolkata AND Chennai beat Punjab
• Rajasthan beats Kolkata AND Delhi beats Bangalore AND Bangalore beats Deccan

And to re-iterate

• Delhi and Chennai have qualified for the semis. Nothing, including rain, will prevent that.
• Mumbai and Kolkata are out of the tournment.

Four matches ago, things were more in a flux in the IPL group stage. With the new results, we are seeing greater clarity, though it would have made it much simpler if Deccan had not crumbled against Punjab and Rajasthan had beaten Delhi. Anyway, here is the current Projections and a discussion of each team’s chances:

Team        M-W-D-L    P   P/M   FRR   ARR    NRR  Prob  Final Chances

Delhi      12-9-0-3   18  1.45  7.70  7.39   0.31  1.15  20.15 100.00%
Chennai    12-7-1-4   15  1.25  8.27  7.25   1.02  2.67  17.67 100.00%
Deccan     13-7-0-6   14  1.08  7.73  7.46   0.27  1.00  15.00  75.00%
Punjab     13-7-0-6   14  1.08  7.33  7.75  -0.42  0.75  14.75  56.25%

Bangalore  12-6-0-6   12  1.00  7.13  7.44  -0.31  1.42  13.42  37.50%
Rajasthan  13-6-1-6   13  1.00  6.81  7.17  -0.36  1.75  14.75  31.25%
Mumbai     13-6-1-6   11  0.85  7.33  6.93   0.40  0.55  11.55   0.00%
Kolkata    12-1-1-10   3  0.25  7.00  7.98  -0.97  1.75   4.75   0.00%

Delhi: Qualified for the semi-finals and most likely to head the group. The only team which can overtake them now are Chennai, but Delhi can end that with one more win in their next two games.

Chennai: Chennai is also through, even though it looks like many teams can overtake them. But two of them – Deccan and Bangalore – have a match against each other. So only one of them can reach 16 points. Punjab can reach 16. That leaves Rajasthan which can only tie with Chennai, but because of their poor NRR will be behind them. So the lowest position Chennai can be in is 4th and hence Chennai has qualified.

Deccan: One of the following

• Beat Bangalore. Then of the rest, only Punjab can equal them on points (but be behind on NRR)
• Hope two of the following three happen: Delhi beat Bangalore, Chennai beat Punjab and Kolkata beat Rajasthan (!). Luckily, the last IPL group match is between Deccan and Bangalore. So they will know what to do in the last match. The good thing for Deccan is that it is well ahead of NRR w.r.t. Punjab and Bangalore

Punjab:

• Defeat Chennai. Only one of Deccan and Bangalore can equal them on points.
• Hope Bangalore loses its remaining matches and Rajasthan lose their match against Kolkata. The latter is very unlikely. So the match against Chennai is its only practical route to the semifinals.

Bangalore:

• Win its remaining two matches.
• Win one of its remaining matches and hope that both Punjab and Rajasthan lose their respective final games. In addition to being unlikely, it depends on Bangalore’s NRR being slightly better than Punjab, which a poor defeat could change. Anyway, Bangalore will know before its final match whether it has a chance of reaching the semis and playing accordingly against Deccan.

Rajasthan:

• Win its final match against Kolkata and hope EITHER Punjab lose to Chennai (in this case, the results of Banglore’s and Deccan’s matches do not matter) OR that Banglore lose to Delhi and beat Deccan. Possible, but improbable considering those teams will be fighting tooth-and-nail while Delhi and Chennai may be taking it easy.

Mumbai: Out of the tournament. Their one remaining match against Delhi is only useful for determining the final positions of Delhi and Mumbai in the Points Table.

Kolkata: Do we need to spell this out? Kolkata is gone. Beating it will help Chennai reach No. 2 (and perhaps No. 1). Defeating Kolkata will allow Rajasthan to still remain in the running for a semi-final spot. A defeat here will automatically end Rajasthan’s run. Not a nice way to exit the tournament, losing to the worst team.

Finally, all these calculations only mean this: None of the four teams who are now fighting for the last two semi-final spots deserve their place. They had many chances to end this rat race and put themselves ahead, but each time they failed in a critical match. The best example is Deccan which won its first four matches, but now has to wait till its final match to qualify for the semi-finals.

But the others are equally guilty. Kings XI Punjab shrugged off their rain-affected losses with a hat trick of wins, but failed to maintain any consistent form. Bangalore Royal Challengers never took its matches seriously until it faced the prospect of elimination. Rajasthan kept relying on their bowling to compensate for their batting failures which only goes so far as a strategy.

The teams most deserving for the Cup are Delhi and Chennai. If justice is served, we will see two teams dragging themselves over the group qualification line and lose resoundingly to Delhi and Chennai in the semis. For one, I cannot wait for the finals.