The Oddsworth Smell Test
Claim
“Very few players with nine or fewer IPL appearances by the age of 33 go on to justify big price tags in the tournament.”
Smells right
Data Two of 30 men with nine or fewer IPL games before turning 33 played 20 or more after it, 7%, against 30% of those with 10 to 39 games and 65% of those with 40 or more.
Imran Tahir had not played an IPL game when he turned 33. He went on to play 59, more than any other late starter, and he is the story every franchise tells itself when it bids on a thirty-something with a thin IPL record.
The trouble is that almost nobody follows him. Of the 30 men who turned 33 between 2012 and 2024 with nine or fewer IPL games behind them and still got a game after that birthday, only two went on to play 20 or more, 7%. Mohammad Nabi is the other, and he scraped in with 21.
The men who arrived with games behind them
The players who turned up with a proper IPL record tell a different tale. Of the 81 with 40 or more games before 33, 53 kept going for 20 or more after it, 65%. The middle group, with 10 to 39 games, landed at 30%.
Roughly two in three of the seasoned men became fixtures. Fewer than one in ten of the newcomers did.
The late starters who stayed
The late starters who did stick around mostly stopped short of 20. Rilee Rossouw managed 17 games after 33, Hashim Amla 16 and Daryl Mitchell 15, and the rest of the list runs down to Samuel Badree on 11. Amla is the shape of the typical late success: a useful stint, then on his way.
That is the group Shai Hope sits in. The sensible expectation for a big late buy is a short stay rather than a long-term place in the side. Tahir keeps the dream alive, and two in 30 is exactly what very few looks like.