True SR and True Eco compare a batter or bowler's performance to what would normally be expected from the exact ball they faced—not a league average, but the expected outcome for that specific delivery.
Expected Runs
Every ball in a T20 innings carries a different expected outcome. Ball 1 of the powerplay scores very differently, on average, than ball 3 of the death overs — and that baseline shifts again from season to season and league to league.
The Formula
For every ball a player faced or bowled, we compare the actual runs to the expected runs at that exact (season, over, ball) position, then sum the difference across their whole sample.
True SR = Σ (Actual − Expected) ÷ Balls × 6
True Eco = Σ (Expected − Actual) ÷ Balls × 6
Interpreting It
IPL and CPL are scored against their own league's expected-runs curve, never against each other's. A batter's True SR always answers "better or worse than the average player in this league, at this exact moment of the innings?" — the charts below show why that matters: the two leagues don't score the same way over by over.
Average runs per over at each stage of the innings, computed separately for each league across every game in our database.
Expected runs from each ball within a specific over, IPL vs CPL.
Here's the problem with normal Strike Rate and Economy: they treat every ball the same. But it's not the same. Runs come way easier in the powerplay and at the death than they do in the middle overs. So a batter who happens to face a lot of balls in those juicy phases is going to look better on paper than someone grinding through the middle, even if they're not actually the better player. True Strike Rate and True Economy try to fix that.
Raw Strike Rate: 163.8 (82nd percentile) → True Strike Rate: -0.62 (45th percentile)
Almost all of Dhoni's batting is in death-overs — 189 of his 218 balls came in the last four overs, where he's striking at 178.3. On the surface that's a top-20% strike rate, exactly what you'd expect from one of cricket's most famous finishers. The problem is, the death overs are also the easiest phase in the game to post a big number — everyone's swinging, the field's spread out, and the league-wide expectation for those overs is high. Measure Dhoni ball-by-ball against what an average batter does in those same situations, though, and his number falls back to basically average. 45th percentile. Raw stat says elite finisher. Adjusted stat says he's keeping pace with a very generous phase, not beating it.
Raw Strike Rate: 139.1 (39th percentile) → True Strike Rate: -0.26 (59th percentile)
Flip it around and you get the opposite story. De Kock opens the batting — 213 of his 384 balls coming in the powerplay. His raw strike rate of 139.1 looks pretty unremarkable next to the league's flashiest hitters, bottom 40%. But powerplay is a harder phase to score in than the death overs, and once you weigh that, his output flips from a below average batter to an above average batter. 59th percentile. The raw number was punishing him for choosing the hard overs. The adjusted one gives that credit back.
Raw Strike Rate: 173.5 (90th percentile) → True Strike Rate: +1.67 (94th percentile)
Not every big number gets knocked down, and Narine's a good reminder of that. He also opens — 303 of his 446 balls are in the powerplay, same window as de Kock — but he's still striking at 168.0 there. Run that through the same adjustment and his percentile actually climbs, 90th up to 94th. This is really the pairing that matters here: True SR isn't built to deflate every big raw number, it's built to tell you which ones are real. Dhoni's collapses under the correction. Narine's holds up, and honestly gets undersold by the raw stat if anything.
The idea of measuring a player against the expected outcome for that exact ball, rather than a flat average, was pioneered by cricket analyst Jarrod Kimber. True SR and True Eco are our implementation of that idea, built on our own ball-by-ball data.
