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          Scenarios: Mumbai and RCB battle to escape mid-table scrum

          Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma share a light moment on the field BCCI
          • S Rajesh, Stats editor, ESPNcricinfo
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              S Rajesh is ESPNcricinfo's stats editor in Bangalore. He did an MBA in marketing, and then worked for a year in advertising, before deciding to chuck it in favour of a job which would combine the pleasures of watching cricket and writing about it. The intense office cricket matches were an added bonus.
          May 8, 2023, 05:54 PM

          Mumbai Indians

          Played 10, Points 10, NRR -0.454
          Remaining matches: RCB (h), GT (h), LSG (a), SRH (h)

          Royal Challengers Bangalore

          Played 10, Points 10, NRR -0.209
          Remaining matches: MI (a), RR (a), SRH (a), GT (h)
          With only 17 games left in the league stage, it's still impossible to separate most of the teams on the IPL points table. Five are locked on 10 points eac, and two on eight each. The overall points distribution makes this one of the closest IPLs ever. The standard deviation, which is a measure of how dispersed or clustered a set of data is around the mean, for the points table this season is 2.366; only once in the previous 15 seasons has it been smaller after 53 games: 1.984 in 2020.

          With five teams on 10 points, every match that pits two of them against each other will have a huge bearing on the fortunes of the teams and the table. Tuesday's match is one such, with Mumbai Indians locking horns with Royal Challengers Bangalore. Both teams are on 10 from 10 games, with net run rates that are quite close as well. Both teams also have games to come against Gujarat Titans and Sunrisers Hyderabad.

          One crucial difference, though, is that Mumbai have three home games to come, compared to just one for Royal Challengers. Both teams have 50-50 win-loss records at home this season, with Mumbai winning two and losing two and RCB winning three and losing three. Towards the business end of the tournament, however, more home games might yet prove to be a crucial advantage for Mumbai Indians.

          Sixteen points is said to be the magic number for qualification, but as things stand, as many as six teams can finish on 16 or more points. That means the winner on Tuesday will still have plenty of work to do, though it will still be a significant step towards qualification.

          On the other hand, if a couple of teams - Gujarat Titans and Chennai Super Kings - break away from the pack with wins in their remaining games, then even 14 might be enough for qualification for two of the remaining teams. For instance, the loser of Tuesday's game can finish on 14 and still qualify even without net run rates coming into play.