The IPL Grounds Where Batting First Is a Mistake
Sides batting first have won just 36 per cent at Sharjah and 51 per cent at Hyderabad. The same toss decision is worth very different things depending on where you are standing.
The league-wide figure says chasing wins 54.5 per cent of IPL matches. The ground-by-ground figures say that average hides almost everything interesting.
The spread
Taking every IPL ground with at least 25 completed matches in our data, the share of matches won by the side batting first runs from 36 per cent at Sharjah to 51 per cent at Hyderabad and Pune. That is a fifteen point swing on the same decision.
| Ground | Matches | Bat first wins | Average first innings | |---|---|---|---| | Sharjah | 28 | 36% | 159 | | Sawai Mansingh, Jaipur | 43 | 40% | 177 | | Ekana, Lucknow | 27 | 41% | 177 | | Sheikh Zayed, Abu Dhabi | 36 | 42% | 159 | | Eden Gardens | 77 | 44% | 178 | | Arun Jaitley, Delhi | 74 | 45% | 175 | | Chinnaswamy, Bengaluru | 72 | 46% | 180 | | Wankhede, Mumbai | 107 | 46% | 179 | | Chepauk, Chennai | 64 | 50% | 166 | | Narendra Modi, Ahmedabad | 48 | 50% | 182 | | Rajiv Gandhi, Hyderabad | 51 | 51% | 175 |
Two different kinds of ground
Notice that a low bat-first rate does not simply mean a high-scoring ground. Sharjah and Abu Dhabi are the two lowest-scoring venues on the list, averaging 159 in the first innings, and they are also the two hardest places to defend. Small totals leave no margin, and a chase of 160 rarely needs anything clever.
At the other end, Chepauk averages 166 and yet defending works there half the time. A slow surface that punishes strokeplay makes even a modest total awkward to hunt down, because the chasing side cannot simply accelerate when it falls behind.
Ahmedabad is the interesting one. It has the highest average first innings on the list at 182 and still splits evenly, which is what you would expect from a true surface where both innings play the same.
Using it
If you only remember one thing, make it this: the toss is worth more at some grounds than the difference between the two teams. Our head to head page will give you the bat-first record and the average first innings for any ground, with the number of matches behind it.
Every figure here is counted from IPL matches we hold ball by ball, 2013 to 2026.