Alright so I wanted to figure out if my favorite IPL team was actually the dumpster fire everyone claims it is this season. You know how fans scream “Worst team ever!” every match? Yeah, that one. Time to actually look at the numbers instead of just crying into my beer.
Grabbing the Raw Stats
First thing, I needed the current season’s data. Simple enough, right? Wrong. IPL website stats are scattered like confetti. Points table here, net run rate over there, head-to-head somewhere else. Spent like an hour jumping between tabs like an idiot. Finally said “screw it” and downloaded one of those stupid CSV files someone made on a fan forum. Hope it was fresh!
Opened it in Excel and – boom – immediate regret. Columns all messed up. “Date” was next to “Player_of_Match” which was next to “Venue_Capacity”. Total chaos. Had to clean this beast up.
- Step 1: Yanked out everything irrelevant: Player names, venue capacities, toss decisions. Gone.
- Step 3: Made a new sheet just for the ranked teams. Sorted by Points first. Obvious. But then that NRR messed with my head. Had to re-sort manually twice because Excel kept putting a team with lower points above one with higher points just because of a slightly better NRR. Dumb machine.
Step 2: Focused only on the brutal truth: Team Names, Matches Played, Won, Lost, Points, and that headache called Net Run Rate (NRR).
The Ugly Breakdown
Okay, with the table actually making sense now, it was staring-back-at-me obvious. My team? Rock freaking bottom. Dead last.
- Played: 10 Won: 2 Lost: 8 Points: 4 NRR: -1.3something… that negative number screamed “We get crushed regularly”.
But was it historically bad? Pulled up my notes from last year. Same spot? Yep. The year before? Yep. Three seasons straight glued to the basement. That’s not just a bad season; that’s a freaking pattern.
Why So Crap?
The numbers don’t lie, but why? Dug into the win/loss column deeper:
- Batting Collapses: Half the losses were “Failed to Chase Small Target” or “Crumbled Under Pressure”. Basically, wet paper bag vibes.
- Bowlers? More Like Throwers: Leaked runs like a sieve in the death overs almost every single game. 200+ conceded became standard. Brutal.
- Captaincy Calls: Looking at you, questionable bowling changes and weird batting orders. Felt like throwing darts blindfolded sometimes.
So, The Verdict?
Yeah. My team is officially the worst right now. Point blank. Dead last spot confirms it. No sugarcoating that spreadsheet. More depressing? We’re not just “having a bad year.” We’re consistently the worst. That NRR isn’t just bad; it’s “get steamrolled” bad. Are we THE worst team in IPL history? Maybe not. But this season? Bottom feeders. The stats are right there in black and white, sorted, and highlighted in shame on my sheet.
