As it stands, CSK and LSG are the first to fill two of the three remaining spots. RCB, who beat SRH on Thursday, have another must-win game coming up against the Gujarat Titans, who are one win away from matching their league performance from last year – 10 wins.
IPL POINTS TABLE | CALENDAR AND RESULTS
With 5 games left to play in the league stage of IPL 2023, 32 possible result combinations remain. TOI looks at each of these possibilities to calculate individual teams’ chances of making the playoffs.
As it stands, one team are sure to finish top, two others are all but certain of making the play-offs, two others are strong contenders, leaving three to hang on and hope. The last two are already eliminated.
TOI’s Shankar Raghuraman does the math of the numbers to determine how the teams are doing as of Friday, May 19 morning, in 9 points:
1. GT are already guaranteed to be top of the table at the end of the group stage
2. CSK’s chances of finishing in the top four on points are also very good at 93.8% with only two possible combinations of results placing them in fifth place: both have seen RCB, LSG and MI win their last matches and CSK lose to DC. The result of the PK-RR game would not matter in that case
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3. Third-placed LSG are in a very similar situation with a 93.8% chance of being in the top four in terms of points. The only way they can finish fifth on points is if they lose their last game and RCB, CSK and MI win their
4. Thursday’s victory lifted RCB to fourth place and their chances of making the top four on points are now at 75%. They can finish fifth on points if they lose their last match against GT and MI win against SRH
5. MI’s situation in fifth place is a mirror image of RCB’s. They too have a 75% chance of being in the top four in points, but can finish fifth if they lose their last game to SRH and RCB beats GT. They are, however, worse off on a tie due to a lower NRR than RCB
6. RRs are now in sixth place and can only enter the play-offs via the NRR route as the most they can get is the fourth draw (12.5% chance). For that to happen, they need to win against PBKS and hope SRH beats MI and GT beats RCB. The good news for them is that currently their NRR is better than two of the three teams they could be tied with – MI and KKR – and only slightly worse than the third, RCB
(AI Image)
7. Seventh-placed KKR also have a 12.5% chance of being in the top four in the table and that too will result in a three-way or four-way tie. They will need to win their last game by a large margin to make up for their currently poor NRR. But they still need GT to beat RCB and SRH to beat MI
8. Eighth-placed PBKS are also in a very similar situation: a 12.5% chance of tying for fourth place with one or three other teams, and a slightly worse NRR than even KKR. They need SRH and GT to win their last games to have a chance even if they beat RR
9. 9th- and 10th-placed SRH and DC are already out of the play-off race
How do we calculate these probabilities:
We went through all 32 possible outcome combinations with 5 games remaining. We assumed that for each match, both sides’ chances of winning are equal. We then looked at how many of the melds place each team in a top four position by points. This gives us our probability number. We do not take net rates or No Results (NR) into consideration because predicting them in advance is impossible.
