Ahead of the Indian Premier League season getting underway on Friday there is just enough time to look at the top batsman market for the IPL 2024 campaign, one which looks very competitive as the best batters in the world descend on India for the tournament.
Shubman Gill announced himself as one of the best players in the world in this competition last season and he will be looking to come out on top in the race for the Orange Cap again this term, but so many good players are up against him.
Recent Winners
2023 – Shubman Gill
2022 – Jos Buttler
2021 – Ruturaj Gaikwad
2020 – KL Rahul
2019 – Dave Warner
2018 – Kane Williamson
2017 – Dave Warner
2016 – Virat Kohli
2015 – Dave Warner
2014 – Robin Uthappa
Market Leaders
Yashasvi Jaiswal has spent the last couple of months belting England red ball bowlers all around India and he is the 9/1 favourite to come out on top in the race for the Orange Cap this season. The Rajasthan Royals batter was the fifth highest scorer in the competition last season in a campaign where his team missed out on the playoffs so had they have got through to the latter stages he would surely have been in the top four. Rajasthan look better equipped to go deep this season and Jaiswal looks a better player. He looks like a worthy favourite.
Two more Indian stars come next in the betting at 10/1. They are the top scorer from last season in Shubman Gill and the fourth highest scorer in that campaign in Virat Kohli. We all know the credentials Kohli has but he missed the majority of the Test series against England so while he might well be mentally fresh he could be competitively short of reps. Gill would interest me more of the two but he now has Gujarat captaincy issues to deal with and that generally puts me off getting involved in him.
Rohit Sharma is one of a quartet of players who are 14/1 to top score this season. The others are Ruturaj Gaikwad, David Warner and Jos Buttler. Sharma doesn’t have to worry about the captaincy this season and I’ll come further onto him a little lower down. Gaikwad does have captaincy affairs to worry about for the first time so he is a no no for me. David Warner plays for a team who might struggle else he would definitely be for me while Buttler has obvious claims having top scored two seasons ago.
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Profile
We need to whittle the field down. There are over 50 batsmen who are going to play regularly in this tournament and we can’t be backing all of them so let us apply some filters to try and get it to a more manageable level. Clearly the first thing we can do is get rid of anyone from side we don’t think will make the play-offs. Depending on where a team finishes their players could get up to three more innings to make a difference and that is significant.
Once we’ve done that we can further chop the field down by looking at batting position. I think the longer this tournament goes on the harder it is going to be to score deeper into the innings. I wouldn’t want to be backing anyone not in the top four but preferably it would be an opening batsman. The other thing is he must be able to play spin as that has been pretty prominent in this part of the world over the last couple of months. The other thing to take into account is the home ground. A player who bats on a small batting paradise like the Wankhede or Chinnaswamy as a home venue is going to have a better chance than someone who plays on tricky tracks in say Chennai or Delhi.
Betting
That leads me to two players. The first of those is Rohit Sharma who now that he doesn’t have to worry about the captaincy side of things has free rein to concentrate purely on his batting. Even though he turns 37 during the tournament, there is no sign of a decline from the Indian opener. He comes into the season off the back of two centuries against England in the Test series while he smashed 121 in the last T20 international he played against Afghanistan. Sharma plays for Mumbai Indians so half of his matches will hopefully be at the Wankhede where runs come naturally. He didn’t have a great campaign last term but that was with the captaincy weighing him down. Freed from that I think he’s a leading runner at 12/1 with the extra place.
I also can’t resist Heinrich Klaasen at 50/1. Klaasen was the second highest scorer in the recent SA20 tournament and he has been battering bowling attacks left, right and centre for the last 18 months or so. He has become a really brutal hitter of spinners and although he bats at a fairly big ground in Hyderabad, it certainly isn’t big enough for him if he gets going. There is enough depth to the Hyderabad batting that Klaasen can play his natural game and assuming he bats at four I expect some serious fireworks from him. Klaasen ranked 12 in the runs last season despite playing only 12 games and having just 11 innings. He averaged a smidgeon under 50 for the campaign so if you add on just the three regular innings that he missed at that level he would have been comfortably in the top 10. At this price, with Boylesports paying five places, I’ll pay to see if he sneaks onto the leaderboard.
Tips
Back R.Sharma Top Tournament Batter (e/w) for a 1.5/10 stake at 13.00 with Boylesports (1/4 1-5)
Back H.Klaasen Top Tournament Batter (e/w) for a 0.5/10 stake at 51.00 with Boylesports (1/4 1-5)
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