May 12, 2019. Hyderabad. Two runs to defend off the last ball.
Lasith Malinga had been hit around the park all evening. He runs in. Bowls a slower one. Shardul Thakur misses it completely. The ball thuds into his pad. The umpire’s finger goes up.
Mumbai Indians win their fourth IPL title by one run. Malinga stands frozen, arms outstretched. He looks like he can’t believe what just happened.
May 29, 2023. Ahmedabad. Two in the morning. The final has stretched into a third day after rain.
CSK need 10 off the last two balls. Mohit Sharma has bowled four unhittable balls in the over. He misses his yorker length by inches. Ravindra Jadeja launches it over long-on for six.
Four needed off one. Mohit goes for the yorker again. He gets a low full-toss. Jadeja flicks it through fine leg. CSK win their fifth title off the literal final ball.
May 21, 2017. Hyderabad again. Mumbai are defending 129 against Rising Pune Supergiant. The match is alive until the very last delivery. MI win by one run.
These are the moments cricket fans replay. The Malinga ball. The Jadeja flick. The Mohit Sharma over you’d want back.
Cricket finals are usually boring. The only ODI World Cup final anyone genuinely remembers as a contest is England vs New Zealand 2019. But IPL finals keep ending on the last ball.
Is that just cherry-picking memory? Or does the IPL actually produce closer cricket than the rest of the format?
I pulled the ball-by-ball data for every IPL match from 2008 to 2026. Then every men’s T20 international from 2005 to 2026. The headline finding: yes, the IPL really is closer. Not by a hair. By a meaningful, consistent margin. Year after year.
What “close” actually means
A T20 game is close when neither team had it won before the death. Reaching the 20th over is necessary, but it’s not sufficient. A side dismissed for 130 in the 20th over chasing 195 has technically “reached the final over” and lost by 65 runs. Nobody watching that called it a thriller.
So the rule is stricter. A match counts as close if the chasing innings reaches the 20th over AND one of three things is true:
- The chasing team wins. They had to reach the last over to do it, so the chase was alive.
- The chasing team loses by runs, with a margin of 10 or fewer.
- The chasing team is all out, with a run margin of 10 or fewer.
Ten runs is the threshold because in the death overs it represents about two boundary hits. The chase was alive on the last over even if the team didn’t get home. Tied matches count automatically. No-results are excluded. Rain-shortened games use their reduced over allotment, so the 2023 CSK-GT final (a 15-over chase that ended on the last ball) counts as close.
Apply that rule to the iconic finals above:
- 2017 final, MI by 1 run. Chase reached the 20th over. Lost by 10 or fewer. Close.
- 2019 final, MI by 1 run. Same. Close.
- 2023 final, CSK by 5 wickets in 15 overs (rain). Chase reached the final allotted over and won. Close.
Now apply it to some matches that look close-ish but aren’t:
- 2025 LSG vs MI. Mumbai’s chase reached the 20th over and they lost by 12. Not close.
- 2018 CSK vs SRH final. Chase didn’t even need 19 overs. Not close.
The IPL number: 30.9%
Across 1,210 matches from 2008 through what’s been played of IPL 2026, exactly 374 were close by this definition. That’s 30.9%.
Roughly one in every three IPL matches is a genuine 20th-over thriller. The rest are over before they need to be.
It’s worth noting how much that filters out. Nearly 60% of IPL games see the chase reach the 20th over but once you require the result to also be in doubt at that point, half drop out. Reaching the death overs is common. Reaching them with the match still alive is not.
Compared to international T20s
Across 5,103 men’s T20Is since 2005 (excluding no-results), 1,039 were close under the same definition is 20.4%. The IPL produces close matches 50% more often as international T20s do.
IPL finals are absurdly close. Much more than other cricket finals.
The general close rate is one thing. Finals are another.
There have been 19 IPL finals so far. Under the strict definition, 10 of them were close; 52.6%. More than half. The nine that weren’t include the early Chennai dominance (2010, 2011, 2013, 2015), the 2018 SRH-CSK final, MI’s 2020 win over Delhi, KKR’s 2021 demolition of CSK, the 2022 GT win, and KKR’s 10-over evisceration of SRH in 2024.
International T20 finals don’t come close to that rate. The 2014 World T20 final had Sri Lanka chasing 131 in 17.5 overs. The 2007 inaugural T20 World Cup final ended in 19.3 overs. The 2010 World T20 final was over by the 17th. International finals collapse early at a much higher rate than IPL finals do.
Why the IPL is closer
The reasons are easy to guess.
First, the auction is a leveler. International T20 sides reflect the depth of their domestic systems. India and Australia have eight quality death bowlers to choose from, Ireland has two. The IPL forces those resources to redistribute. Every team gets some of the best. No team gets all of them. The result is teams that are more similar to each other than national sides are.
Second, the format is short enough to produce close finishes by structure. Twenty overs is brief enough that one bad over can be retrieved, one good partnership can swing a match. Tests almost never finish on the last ball; ODIs occasionally; T20s, structurally, often.
How close has each IPL season been?
Not every IPL season is created equal. Here is the close-match rate by season:
| Season | Matches | Close | % |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2008 | 58 | 17 | 29.3% |
| 2009 | 57 | 18 | 31.6% |
| 2010 | 60 | 14 | 23.3% |
| 2011 | 72 | 15 | 20.8% |
| 2012 | 74 | 22 | 29.7% |
| 2013 | 76 | 23 | 30.3% |
| 2014 | 60 | 18 | 30.0% |
| 2015 | 57 | 20 | 35.1% |
| 2016 | 60 | 20 | 33.3% |
| 2017 | 59 | 14 | 23.7% |
| 2018 | 60 | 20 | 33.3% |
| 2019 | 59 | 24 | 40.7% |
| 2020 | 60 | 18 | 30.0% |
| 2021 | 60 | 24 | 40.0% |
| 2022 | 74 | 25 | 33.8% |
| 2023 | 73 | 30 | 41.1% |
| 2024 | 71 | 20 | 28.2% |
| 2025 | 71 | 17 | 23.9% |
| 2026 (so far) | 49 | 15 | 30.6% |
Three seasons stand out at the top. 2023 at 41.1%, 2021 at 40% and 2019 at 40.7%. In those seasons, roughly two in five matches were genuine thrillers. Watching the IPL in 2023, you basically couldn’t go to the kitchen.
At the bottom: 2011 at 20.8%. The league’s expansion year with 10 teams, schedules stretched thin and the lower half of the table noticeably weaker. 2025 was the next-lowest at 23.9%, which fits a recent narrative: the 200-and-200-plus first innings totals everyone has been celebrating come with a hidden cost. When the chase falls 30 runs short, the result is decided early.
2026 has rebounded a little from 2025’s lull, but it’s only 49 matches in. The slope is real, but the final number will move.
Which teams give you the close games. And which steamroll.
If you sit down to watch a specific fixture, what should you expect?
Among matchups with at least 20 meetings, ranked by close-match rate:
| Matchup | Meetings | Close | % |
|---|---|---|---|
| RCB vs SRH | 22 | 12 | 54.5% |
| CSK vs KKR | 32 | 16 | 50.0% |
| RCB vs KKR | 32 | 14 | 43.8% |
| CSK vs SRH | 23 | 9 | 39.1% |
RCB, SRH, KKR and CSK have the closest games with each other.
The other end. The most blowout-prone fixtures.
| Matchup | Meetings | Close | % |
|---|---|---|---|
| DC vs KKR | 34 | 4 | 11.8% |
| MI vs SRH | 26 | 4 | 15.4% |
| DC vs MI | 38 | 8 | 21.1% |
| PBKS vs RCB | 33 | 7 | 21.2% |
DC vs KKR has produced just 4 thrillers in 34 meetings. These two basically take turns demolishing each other. Whatever you tune in for, it’s not a tight finish.
Which teams play the closest cricket?
At the franchise level, the newer teams are noticeably above the league average for close matches.
| Team | Meetings | Close | % |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gujarat Titans | 70 | 32 | 45.7% |
| Lucknow Super Giants | 67 | 24 | 35.8% |
| Rajasthan Royals | 243 | 84 | 34.6% |
| Chennai Super Kings | 261 | 90 | 34.5% |
| Kolkata Knight Riders | 271 | 93 | 34.3% |
| Sunrisers Hyderabad | 206 | 66 | 32.0% |
| Royal Challengers Bangalore | 237 | 74 | 31.2% |
| Mumbai Indians | 287 | 81 | 28.2% |
| Punjab Kings | 271 | 76 | 28.0% |
| Delhi Capitals | 273 | 69 | 25.3% |
Gujarat Titans show up at 45.7%. Nearly half of their 70 matches have been close, and they’ve won 66% of those. Lucknow Super Giants sit at 35.8% with a striking 74% close-match win rate when they show up in 20th overs, and they win them. Both are newer teams. They have seen T20 and IPL evolve over the years.
The old guard clusters around the league average. The notable outliers on the low side is Delhi Capitals at 25.3%. They’ve won only 36% of the close ones they’ve been in.
So what?
The IPL has been around for 18 years. We’ve now got enough data to test the things cricket fans say casually as if they’re true. Some of them are.
The IPL really is closer than international T20 cricket by roughly 50%. Its finals are genuinely different. RCB vs SRH genuinely produces close games more reliably than any other rivalry. Gujarat Titans really do play more thrillers than anyone else.
One in every three IPL matches is genuinely in doubt at the death. That’s not most of them. But it’s enough to keep watching.
Source: ball-by-ball data from Cricsheet, covering 1,219 IPL matches (April 2008 to May 2026) and 5,103 men’s T20 Internationals. Close-match shortlists for individual seasons cross-checked against ESPNcricinfo scorecards.
The 20th Over Index definition used throughout this post is the strict one documented in full on the Methods & Sources page: chase must reach the 20th over, AND the result must be (a) won in the final over or on the final ball, (b) lost by ≤10 runs, or (c) all out in the 20th with margin ≤10 runs. Ties always count as close.
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