IPL analysis: Evaluating the impact of Impact Player

The fact that the Impact Player rule has catalysed a massive shift in batting mentality in IPL goes without saying. Any fears that it would ruin the national team's prospects in the T20 International format were allayed as they won the T20 World Cup in 2024, the first time since the IPL was established.

The addition of Impact Player has certainly set free the batters in the tournament like never before with the 2024 edition of IPL breaking a multitude of batting records.

There have been more 200+ totals in IPL since the inception of Impact Player than in the first ten editions of the tournament combined. 

Of the ten totals of 250-plus in IPL, nine were scored since 2023 and eight in 2024 alone. The scoring rates have soared with teams scoring a run an over additional in 2024 (9.56) compared to what it was in the last season (8.54) before the rule came into effect in 2022. 

Despite teams putting a lower price on wickets that resulted in an increase in frequency of dismissals, the rise in scoring rates have offset the fall to push the batting average to surge up.

The knock on effect of this has been felt in the batting ranks in national set up too with India's run rate in the T20Is post the World Cup win reading 9.90/over.