Dhoni & The Impact of Captaincy

Jack Hope takes a look at Dhoni's captaincy career in the IPL and tries to quantify his impact!

On our post-Qualifier Two podcast this week Daniel Norcross and I had a discussion about MS Dhoni and the role of captaincy in cricket. The central questions we debated was: does captaincy matter and can you measure its impact? 

On the day of the IPL Final, I’ve written a short article on the impact of Dhoni’s captaincy during his time in the IPL. In this article we’re only considering outcomes, and won’t be going into the decision making processes behind captaincy, but hopefully it helps to show what sort of a difference he is making.

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A Winning Machine!

Dhoni has captained two teams in the IPL. Most famously the Chennai Super Kings, but also the Rising Pune Supergiant, for one of their two years, when Chennai were banned for being naughty. As a starting point let’s combine the records of those two teams and see how Dhoni got on, over the last 14 seasons.

Hmmm, that looks pretty good, overall! Throw in 12 play-off appearances, 10 IPL Finals, and 3 IPL titles and you could probably construct a case that a) Captaincy is probably playing a role in this success and b) MS Dhoni is probably a good Captain. These achievements are particularly notable as they have come in a league built for parity, over a 14 year time span, and with a cast of players that has changed significantly over time.

This of course is all muddied slightly by the fact that Dhoni isn’t the sole decision maker at the teams he has played for, and he has undoubtedly benefited from leading teams loaded with quality cricketers. Added to this he has the good fortune of playing many of his IPL matches at Chepauk, a ground with a noted home bias.

The On Field Tactician

Luckily for us, it is possible to strip away some of the biases above to help us get a clearer view of the impact Dhoni is having on individual matches. This can be achieved relatively simply by taking a list of players who have bowled for teams with Dhoni in position as Captain, but also for teams where Dhoni has not been the Captain, and looking at their records in those scenarios. In fact, we can actually go further than that, and also eliminate the Chepauk effect, by only looking at matches where the teams were playing away from home.

What we see here is that bowlers playing under MS Dhoni outperformed what they were able to achieve under other Captains. On the Runs Per Ball side of this equation, the margin is fine, roughly equivalent to 1.3 runs over the course of a T20 innings. This seems like an underwhelming margin, but considering we are reviewing the same set of bowlers, I’d argue it is actually a pretty significant gain. 

The lower bowling average (and higher frequency of wickets) put up by bowlers under Dhoni’s leadership also leads to slightly more innings where the team batting first is bowled out. This leads to a few more instances where teams are bowled out, and consequently achieve sub-par scores, another plus for Dhoni.

The Master of the Squeeze

At this point, many Dhoni fans are probably scratching their chins and asking why I’ve not mentioned his captaincy when the opposition is chasing yet? This, after all, is where Dhoni is supposed to come into his own, strangling run chases through canny middle over tactical moves. Whilst I do think scoreboard pressure plays an impact and warps the data slightly, it is a fair point. 

If we consider chases where Dhoni has been captaining the bowling side, versus the rest, he excels.

Based on Runs Per Ball, teams Dhoni is captaining restrict their opponents to 3.34 fewer runs versus the league average, over a completed innings. We can also see that Dhoni teams are bowling out teams more frequently, another factor leading to more wins.

If we go a step further, as in the section above, and restrict our analysis to only players who have played for Dhoni, comparing their performance with and without him as captain, we see an even more extreme difference. Under Dhoni, these bowlers would restrict opposition players to 4.48 runs per innings than when they played for other captains.

Again, all of the figures in this section only consider what Dhoni is producing from these players away from home!

The England Tax

Observant readers may have noticed that Dhoni’s team's performance in the second innings of matches, with the ball, must be dragging up the overall statistics. This is true. When bowling first, players bowling for Dhoni generally underperform what they were able to achieve for other teams. 

This sounds like a negative, but I think you can actually make a conceptual argument that can be, at least partially, written off. Basically, because his team’s batting performances are stronger than average, they may well be having an impact on how teams bat against his sides, actually leading them to bat in a more optimal manner. 

Across the history of the IPL teams his CSK side have scored roughly 5.5 more runs per game than the opposition. As a result of this, teams, knowing that the opposition is capable of chasing any total, play more aggressively (and inadvertently more optimally) to try and achieve a score which is competitive.

I have talked about this concept before with the England cricket team, labelling the phenomenon the “England Tax” and strongly suspect that the same phenomenon plays out in the IPL.

Wrapping up

Hopefully I have been able to provide some clarity around the impact of the role of the Captain in T20 cricket, and hopefully you’re able to see how Dhoni has had an impact during his career in the IPL.

Just a quick reminder that we will be live on our YouTube channel to cover the IPL Final, later on today. Head over there, hit subscribe, and make sure you don’t miss any of our content!