Unfair home advantage: How IPL playoff venues favor MI, CSK, GT and KKR

The advantage of playing a game at home isn't as popular a topic of discussion in the IPL as it is in other sports or even other formats of cricket.

In Tests, the home side's understanding of the conditions is seen as a telling factor. That's why India's wins in Australia have been so historic and why England winning an away Test against a struggling Sri Lanka is considered a big triumph.

In ODIs, three of the last four men's World Cups have been won by home teams. In the fourth, in 2023, the final was the only match hosts India lost.

Team analysts and squad builders have always taken into account things like ground dimensions, usual pitch conditions, outfield types, and so on. But IPL 2024 was perhaps the first time that something like 'home advantage' even came into the public discourse and that, too, after home teams won the first nine games.

But that advantage has existed for 16 years and has impacted the journeys of each team. Sometimes it has been there for all of them to exploit equally but on other occasions, it has been a bit unfair.

Let's analyze how using simple data from every match between IPL 2008 and 2023.

Figure 1:

Hover on the graph above and you'll see that out of all matches won between IPL 2008-2023, 345 were won by home teams - around 21 percent more than away wins.

The 388 neutral wins include two seasons that were entirely played outside India, the Covid-19 years, and matches played at alternate venues for teams when their home grounds weren't available (like the Punjab Kings, PBKS, in Indore).

In absolute terms, Mumbai Indians (MI), Chennai Super Kings (CSK) and Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) have the highest number of wins at home - 62, 47 and 45, respectively. But if you look at the figure below, they have also hosted the most games at home.

Figure 2:

The biggest reason for that is these three teams have had a set venue for most of the IPL. MI hosted a few matches at the Brabourne Stadium and the DY Patil Stadium in the initial years but have since struck with the Wankhede.

During that early time, not all teams' stadiums were ready to host seven matches a season, so they also used to shift some games to grounds in Mumbai.

The picture becomes clearer when you see it in percentage terms and it's easier to understand which teams used home advantage better than others.

CSK won 45 out of 64 games they have played at home -- almost 70 percent. Rajasthan Royals (RR, 63.46 percent), MI (61.39 percent), SunRisers Hyderabad (SRH, 60.78 percent), and Gujarat Titans (GT, 60 percent) are the others to win over 60 percent of matches played at home.

Figure 3:

These are signs of pragmatic teams. CSK have been famous for having the best recruitment tactics. They have often focused on signing several spinners to use the grip available in Chepauk. The same goes for MI and pacers.

After all, the IPL format wants every team to play at least half of their group-stage games at home. If you have a squad tailor-made for those conditions that wins you all home games, you just need a couple of away wins to qualify.

It's an excellent, proven strategy for success but it's not a necessity cast in stone. Some teams, especially those who haven't won a title for a long time, like to build balanced sides for all conditions, aiming to maximize away game output. And that becomes a problem when you turn your focus on the 'Playoffs'.

How home-away advantage becomes unfair in IPL Playoffs

In the first two years of the IPL, there used to be just two semi-finals followed by a final. Now we have a Qualifier 1, an Eliminator, a Qualifier 2, and the final. For the sake of simplicity, we'll categorize all of them as "playoffs".

We know how the venues for the group stage are decided - half home, half away - but what about which ground will host the playoffs? There's no written rule but there's a sort of a 'tradition' that the winner of an IPL season hosts the final and another playoff while the runner-up hosts the remaining two in the next season.

The first time this method was followed like this was in 2011. IPL 2010 winners, CSK hosted the final and the Qualifier 2 in 2011 at Chepauk while runners-up MI's Wankhede Stadium entertained the Qualifier 1 and the Eliminator. It's also the case in 2024 when Chepauk and Ahmedabad's Narendra Modi Stadium, the home of IPL 2023 runners-up Gujarat Titans, are hosting two playoffs each.

However, in most other seasons this method hasn't been followed to the T due to various reasons. For example, in 2013, Delhi Capitals (DC)'s home ground, the Arun Jaitley Stadium, hosted the Qualifier 1 and the Eliminator due to the political tensions in Tamil Nadu, even though CSK were the runner-up in IPL 2012.

PBKS came runner-up in 2014 but didn't get to host any Playoffs in 2015, even though winners KKR hosted the final. There was no reason reported but PBKS were having some troubles with their home venue that year.

Most recently, in 2023, RR were the previous year’s runner-up but didn’t get to host even one Playoff while Chepauk got two. The year before that, the final and Qualifier 1 were given to the newly-built Narendra Modi Stadium when GT weren't a part of IPL 2021, and CSK, the 2021 winners, missed the chance instead.

This musical chairs has allowed the Wankhede to host the most Playoffs, followed by the Eden Gardens, Chepauk, and the Chinnaswamy Stadium (the home of Royal Challengers Bengaluru, RCB) in these 15 years.

If you count the DY Patil and the Brabourne Stadium, Mumbai City has hosted more than 1/4th of all Playoffs played in India. At the same time, the home grounds of RR, PBKS, SRH, and DC have together got less Playoffs than the Wankhede.

Figure 4:

If only a handful of grounds are hosting the playoffs, it means that most of the participants play their most crucial matches, the ones that make or break their hopes of winning the title, in this handful of venues.

These venues are homes of MI, CSK, and KKR, who qualify for the playoffs the most. This gives them a higher chance of playing these crucial games at home. And that's what has happened so far.

RR, PBKS, SRH, and DC have featured in 35 Playoffs in total but not even one at their respective homes. Whereas, GT, MI, KKR, and CSK have played 60 percent, 30 percent, 23 percent, and 19 percent of their playoffs at their home stadiums.

Figure 5:

From active teams, MI have played the third-lowest percentage of playoffs away from home and the second-lowest percentage of neutral ones. Contrast that with PBKS and RR, who have played the highest fraction of Playoffs in opponents' homes while DC, SRH, and RCB have played the most in neutral venues.

The impact of this can be seen when you observe how the teams who are getting to play the most Playoffs at home, perform generally in the IPL in away venues. At the same time, we need to see how teams like RR, who only get to play their Playoffs away or in neutral venues, usually perform in home games in the IPL.

Figure 6:

Among the active teams, MI are the most dependent on home games as nearly 40 percent of their wins have come at home ground. They are a decent team away from home, too, but neutral games are their weakest aspect.

Now, in 2015, when PBKS didn't get to host the Qualifier 1, it was the Wankhede that got the chance instead. MI defeated CSK to reach the final where they once again met MS Dhoni's team at Eden Gardens and came out victorious.

They completely deserved to win the tournament but it doesn't mean they weren't helped (even if it's marginal help) by playing Qualifier 1 at home, despite neither winning nor coming runners-up in the previous season. Playing that in Punjab, or another neutral venue, may or may not have given a different outcome.

Similarly, GT enjoyed the advantage of playing their finals in front of their home crowd in 2022 and 2023. The first they won against RR and lost against CSK, both teams which have historically struggled in away games. And, because of how good they were, they came quite close to winning back-to-back titles at home.

But it just doesn't look right when the three teams with the biggest share of home wins in the tournament -- MI, CSK, and KKR -- see the most Playoffs played at their home grounds. Not only that, but they also play and win a lot of those home Playoffs, which for their opponents are difficult away games.

Now, look at the two teams with the lowest percentage of away wins -- RR (21 percent) and CSK (16 percent). Both teams have played almost a similar percentage of away Playoffs but CSK have played around 19 percent of their Playoffs (five) at home. This is also true for MI and PBKS who have similar away-win ratios but the former has played a high percentage of Playoffs at home while the latter just hasn't.

Figure 7:

It’s not that these teams have only been lucky. They have played a lot of neutral playoffs too and are among the most successful. But the teams that have not done as well in neutral Playoffs — like RCB, RR, and PBKS — have never got as many games at home as MI, CSK, KKR, and even a new team like GT either.

Figure 8:

It has been hard for RR, PBKS, DC, and RCB to reach the top four consistently because of their shortcomings. But when they do reach that stage, though, they don't get the benefit of playing at home as much as other teams do.

Why is that? The only plausible reason is perhaps their history. It's the safest thing to give Wankhede, Chepauk, or Eden a spare Playoff because you know the crowd would turn up in good numbers and the pitch would give a good contest.

But that's not the other teams' fault. You can't say you won't host playoffs in Jaipur until they give good crowds because the crowd will say they won't come until the authorities see their team as deserving of hosting the best matches.

Moreover, when there's no system in place, it brings unnecessary doubt over the league's credibility. If the group stage is designed to be fair to all, why can't there be a stone-casted system to decide which ground will host the playoffs? The same happens in the Big Bash League in Australia.

If that creates a logistical mess in IPL, they could pre-decide neutral venues like Dharamshala for the Playoffs. "Which teams will go to Dharamshala this season?" has a nice ring to it too. This is already being done in football where you already know who'll host the 2025 UEFA Champions League final.

IPL needs teams other than CSK, MI, and KKR to win titles to build a brand and avoid falling into the 'big-three' trap. A big step towards that would be standardising a way of selecting Playoffs' venues which is fair for all 10 teams involved.

With inputs from Bhumika Singh Dikhit and Arishaa Izaj.