Indian Premier League Points Table

Two points for a win and none for a defeat. If a match is abandoned without a result, most often to rain, the two points are shared and each side takes one. Teams are then ranked on their points total, highest first, so a side that wins seven of its 14 matches finishes on 14 points.

A Super Over decides it. Both sides bat one over each, and whoever scores more wins the match outright and takes the full two points. Because the result is settled on the night, a tie does not leave two teams sharing a point the way an abandoned match does.

Net run rate. It compares the rate a team has scored at across the whole season with the rate it has conceded at, so a side winning its matches heavily finishes above one that scrapes the same number of wins. It rewards the margin of victory rather than simply the count of them.

Four of the ten. The top four in the league table after every side has played its 14 matches go through, and the other six are done for the season. Those four then contest three matches, Qualifier 1, the Eliminator and Qualifier 2, to decide the two finalists.

The top two meet in Qualifier 1 and the winner goes straight to the final. The loser is not eliminated, dropping instead into Qualifier 2 for a second chance. Third and fourth meet in the Eliminator, where a defeat ends the season on the spot. Finishing in the top two effectively buys an extra life.

Fourteen in the league stage. Each side plays the other four teams in its own group twice, home and away, plays one designated team from the other group twice, and plays the remaining four once each. That is eight, two and four. Across all ten teams it adds up to 70 matches before the playoffs.

Across roughly two months of the Indian summer. Recent seasons have begun in the second half of March and ended with the final at the close of May. Exact dates shift from year to year, so the season window is better treated as late March to the end of May than as fixed dates.