16-0 Game · October 7, 2026
The number on a card is an in-game rating, not an official IPL statistic. The most important choice is whether you are playing with that season’s rating or the player’s best rating in this game’s dataset.
What is actually in the pool?
The current build contains 3,132 player-season cards, 730 distinct name entries and 11 franchise codes, spanning 2008–2026. Ratings range from 55 to 97. This describes the game’s included data; it is not a claim of a complete historical IPL archive.
Ratings are curated game-design values, not outputs of a published statistical formula. Some short run, wicket and economy labels in the source data are approximate. Do not cite a card as an authoritative historical record; a full source-by-source audit of those labels is still needed.
Prime and Season answer different questions
Season uses the rating stored on the selected franchise-year card. Prime uses the highest stored rating for that exact player name across the entire dataset, including years outside your selected era filter. The franchise and year still determine who is available to draft.
For example, the game’s 2022 RCB Virat Kohli card is 74 in Season and 97 in Prime. These are our game values, not official player rankings. Daily fixes the setting to Prime, with ratings hidden during its Normal-difficulty draft.
| Player · franchise · season | Season rating | Prime rating |
|---|---|---|
| Virat Kohli · RCB 2016 | 97 | 97 |
| Virat Kohli · RCB 2022 | 74 | 97 |
| Jasprit Bumrah · MI 2013 | 62 | 96 |
| Jasprit Bumrah · MI 2020 | 96 | 96 |
Where the rating goes next
The engine weights each occupied role before calculating the squad score. A wicketkeeper placed in a batting slot receives the batting-slot weight. The four-overseas limit and duplicate-name restriction determine whether a pick is legal; they are not extra rating bonuses.
Runs and wickets shown on the card do not directly feed a ball-by-ball simulation. The rating does. This is why a good-looking statistic should not be mistaken for a separate hidden advantage.
How to report a correction
Send the player name, franchise, year, disputed field and a reliable source link through Contact. Distinguish a factual squad/statistic error from disagreement with our game rating. Changes to a player’s highest card can also change Prime ratings on other seasons of that player.
Repair the weak link or upgrade a star?
A ten-point upgrade is not always worth the same amount. We compared five versions of a Modern XI using the actual scoring functions: ten cards rated 80, one pace bowler rated 60, the same MI opponent and the same home advantage. Each alternative changes exactly one card by ten points. These are invented test cards, not claims about real cricketers, and the percentages are single-match model probabilities, not observed win rates.
| One change to the XI | Squad rating | Win probability |
|---|---|---|
| No change | 78.11 | 31.52% |
| Batter: 80 → 90 | 79.01 | 33.23% |
| All-rounder: 80 → 90 | 79.07 | 33.35% |
| Weaker pace bowler: +10 | 79.06 | 39.32% |
| Spinner: 80 → 90 | 78.98 | 33.17% |
| One change to the XI | Squad rating | Win probability |
|---|---|---|
| No change | 79.06 | 39.32% |
| Batter: 80 → 90 | 79.95 | 41.07% |
| All-rounder: 80 → 90 | 80.02 | 41.20% |
| Weaker pace bowler: +10 | 80.00 | 41.17% |
| Spinner: 80 → 90 | 79.92 | 41.01% |
In Case A, improving the 60-rated bowler to 70 lifts the model’s win probability by 7.80 percentage points. Upgrading the 80-rated batter to 90 adds only 1.71 points. The bowler upgrade crosses the weakest-player threshold of 0.65 × 99 and removes a six-point probability penalty; simply adding more batting quality leaves that penalty in place. The whole attack is already above the separate bowling threshold, so that penalty is not involved here.
Case B is the useful counterexample: the weakest card already rates 70, so no weak-link penalty applies. A ten-point all-rounder upgrade now narrowly beats the pace upgrade because all-rounders have a slightly higher role weight. “Always pick a bowler” is therefore not the lesson. Check which constraint is actually hurting this particular XI.
During a real draft, first check eligible slots, duplicate names and the four-overseas limit. Then use the rating information available at your difficulty to judge the weakest remaining role. You cannot freely replace players after placement; this comparison explains a decision when an eligible choice is available. It does not predict your final record. Opponents, away matches, rain and the perfect-season run-in still change the season.
Calculated directly from squadScore, baseWinRate and matchProbs in the current game. No match results were submitted or invented for this comparison.