Who will make the playoffs? Who are the favourites to win? Will No. 7 retire? Let's put those recurring questions aside and ask a new one that is contextual to IPL 2025: will a team score 300 for the first time?
While that might sound like clickbait, it is extremely relevant after batting records were shattered repeatedly in IPL 2024. Before last season, the record for the highest IPL total had stood since 2013. RCB's 263 for 5 against Pune Warriors was surpassed four times in 2024. In 17 seasons of the IPL, there have been ten 250-plus totals; eight of those came last year with Sunrisers Hyderabad's 287 for 3 against Royal Challengers Bengaluru the new pinnacle.
Their openers Travis Head and Abhishek Sharma - aka Travishek - also plundered a target of 166 in 58 balls - just 9.4 overs - against Lucknow Super Giants. These astonishing feats of batting were no aberration. There was an improvement in almost every batting metric in IPL 2024.
The 300-peak has been scaled in T20 cricket before: three times in men's cricket and five times in women's cricket. It's just never been done in a high-profile game between teams of a certain standard. India came within three runs of 300 against Bangladesh last year, and the Sunrisers threatened it twice last IPL.
So who could break the 300-barrier this season, and how can they do it?
Nathan Leamon, who was the lead analyst for England when they scored the three highest totals in men's ODIs, believes 300 will happen. He has seen the IPL evolve from the outside and has been a strategy consultant with defending champions Kolkata Knight Riders since 2021.
"Yes, absolutely," Leamon tells ESPNcricinfo from Kolkata a few days before KKR take on RCB at Eden Gardens. "We have already seen a huge escalation in scores over the last two years. It would be naive to think that we have got to the fullest extent of that - of teams learning how to take advantage of the new laws. Although average scores have gone up, but it's more the variance, the spread of scores has increased hugely. You have seen several games where 260 has been scored, which never used to happen. You have seen several games where teams score a 100 in the powerplay; I think there were one or two very famous instances of that happening in the whole history of T20 cricket before now. So something has changed."
The catalyst for turbo-charged batting and record scores is the Impact Player rule introduced by the IPL in 2023. Like a performance-enhancing stimulant, the rule, which gives teams more batting depth, has allowed batters to put a lower price on their wicket and play a high-tempo game. Leamon says the rule also influenced franchises to go after aggressive batters at the mega auction for the 2025-27 cycle. "What some teams realised was that you had to increase the aggression of your line-up all the way through if you are going to maximise the advantage of that extra batter."
Mike Hesson, who was RCB's team director between 2020 and 2023, says it becomes "dangerous" for bowlers and coaches once batters have no fear of getting out. "If you remove the worry of getting out, it's amazing what you can do," Hesson says. "And that's the challenge. The reason why it used to be 52 or 54 and then 58 [par] in powerplay is because there was always a balance between 'hey, we don't want to lose more than one wicket or whatever'.
"Now that balance is gone because that's your chance to get ahead of the game. And with the Impact rule, the reality is if you lose an extra wicket, it doesn't matter. If there's someone at the long-on fence, I can assure you none of these guys are even concerned about that. You used to open the blade and try to hit it in the gap. Now they just have it straight over their head."
Data corroborates the rise in aggressive batting between the 2023 and 2024 seasons. The first-innings run rate in the powerplay rose by 2.49% last season. The middle overs (7-16) had the largest increase (5.77%) while the death overs (17-20) had a 3.62% bump in run rate. Compare 2022, the season before the Impact Player rule was introduced, to 2024 and the surge is striking: the overall increase in first-innings run rates between the seasons is 10.8%.
"Let's go back to the old days," Leamon says. "One-hundred-sixty is an average score in T20. Let's say that if you batted more aggressively with the same resources, maybe you would have moved the average score up to 165. But with the traditional approach, your average is 160, and let's say that 90% of scores are then going to fall between 120 and 200.
"Now what you get with that increased aggression is, if it comes off you can access much, much higher scores and if it fails, it fails dramatically. So you go more aggressive, you move your average total to 165, but that spread of scores, which encompasses 90% of the totals that you score batting that way then goes up to 220 and down to 110. So your lower scores would be lower if you are more aggressive and your highest scores will be higher even if the average doesn't move. And if the average moves as well, then you have this compounding effect. And by being more aggressive, you not only raise the average, but you also increase the spread of scores in terms of the total."
The route to 300
Leamon says for a team to score 300 this IPL, maximising the powerplay is a must. He has no doubt that if SRH had batted first against LSG, and Head and Abhishek approached the innings as they did in the chase (166 in 58 balls), 300 would have been breached last season. Should teams be targeting certain scores in the powerplay and middle overs to maximise their total?
"The theoretical answer is your attempted scoring rate and the risk that you take, as in your expected likelihood of losing your wicket, is pretty much a straight line in T20 cricket. So the faster you try and score, the more likely you are to get out, but it's fairly proportionate. It's not a curve that goes ridiculous, therefore what you want to do is try to spread the risk as evenly as possible over the course of the innings. Say you are chasing 300, even if you are setting actually, it would be slightly ahead of the rate at the end of the powerplay. So you are probably talking about a 100 in the powerplay. You are hoping that you are going to have wickets in hand and a slight acceleration at the end. You are going to be accelerating from 15 and over. So I suspect you are going to be about 150 halfway and then you are trying to hold that rate."
Leamon cites the example of England's tempo being pretty even across the innings when they made 498 against Netherlands in 2022 and 481 against Australia in 2018. "So I suspect that if you get to 300, it won't be by scoring 200 off the first ten and then a 100 off the last ten or vice versa - just the physics of scoring that quickly, it will be fairly even across the phases."
Hesson says a team can't plan for 300. "I think you stumble on 300 by accident. If you try and [plan to] get 300, you are asking for trouble in my view because then you start trying to overhit the ball, you start losing your shape. A lot of these sixes have been hit because of good position, good technique. If you try or aim to go too high, that's where you come unstuck."
The untapped overs
There were four over numbers in an innings where the average run rate was below eight in IPL 2024: overs 1, 7, 8 and 13. Leamon is aware of that and says the run rate in the first (6.95) and seventh (7.71) overs are low for different reasons.
"Historically that's incredibly high for over No. 1. I can remember doing those figures a few years back and the average score in over No. 1 was like 3.5 runs. A white ball will only swing for something between six and 18 balls probably in almost every game. So if the ball's going to swing, it's going to swing in over one and you have two batters who haven't faced a ball. The next lowest-scoring over generally is seven. The level of aggression and risk-taking in over six is not going to be that different to over seven, it's not going to be that different to over eight, but in over seven the field has just gone back. And the field going back is worth somewhere between a run-and-a-half an over depending on the level of aggression and everything else."
Which team can score 300? And where?
Hesson says RCB's home base could be where 300 is scored. A punishing venue for bowlers, the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru has some of the shortest boundaries in the league. It's here that Chris Gayle hit 175 not out as RCB made the first 250-plus total in T20 cricket (263) in 2013. It's here that SRH achieved the existing record: 287.
"Look, I think Chinnaswamy has got a chance," Hesson says with a grin. He believes RCB's new-look squad has enough power-hitters to get close to 300. "Outside of Virat [Kohli] and [Rajat] Patidar possibly, who are high-impact and high-volume players, the rest - Phil Salt, [Liam] Livingstone, Tim David, Jitesh Sharma - they are high-tempo players. So if you are looking at a side that could do it, if they get a really good day, I think they are capable of achieving anything because Phil Salt goes from ball one and if Livingstone has a good day, who knows."
Leamon picks a few venues where 300 could happen, and not just in the IPL. "If international cricket had the Impact rule, then I think Trent Bridge would definitely be on the shortlist. It's hard to narrow it down [in IPL]. In India there are so many fast-scoring grounds, Mumbai [is one].
"If Bangalore produces a flat pitch again, then obviously the altitude and the size of the boundaries make it almost a ridiculous game. Hyderabad have shown that they can generate very high scores, part of that is their team. Vizag could produce ridiculous scores, but you've got to throw the balance of probability, and they don't play as many games there so that brings it back down. I mean Eden Gardens, you get in a bad mood as a bowler and there is nowhere to hide. It's hard to look past it at the moment. There's no way of controlling the scoring rate at Eden. You have to take wickets as a bowling side, even if you are going at 13 an over, you have to attack. Otherwise you are dead."
As for the front-runners to score 300 in IPL 2025, Leamon chooses SRH, who have lost "none of their batting power", KKR and Mumbai Indians.
Stats by S Rajesh and Sampath Bandarupalli, graphics by Arjun Namboothiri