How to Play

This guide covers the flagship IPL game. Playing the new red-ball game instead? See the Test Cricket guide.

New to the IPL?

The Indian Premier League (IPL) is the world's biggest Twenty20 (T20) cricket league — the short, explosive format where each team bats for just 20 overs. Founded in 2008, it's played every year by city-based franchises (Mumbai Indians, Chennai Super Kings, Royal Challengers Bengaluru and the rest) that sign the best players on the planet. In the league stage each team plays 14 matches; the top four go through to the playoffs and the final.

The goal

A perfect IPL league season is 14-0-0: all fourteen league games won, with no no-results and no losses. Your job is to draft an eleven that the simulator rates highly enough to go unbeaten. Almost nobody builds the perfect side — see how close you can get.

Step by step

1. Pick a team balance. Batting Heavy, Balanced, or Bowling Heavy. This sets the shape of your XI and the labels for each slot.
2. Choose a mode. Classic shows every player's stats and overall rating. Expert hides them — you pick on name and memory alone.
3. Spin the wheel. It lands on a random franchise + season — for example “Mumbai Indians 2011” or “Rajasthan Royals 2026”.
4. Draft one player from that exact squad, then choose where to put them. The slots they suit light up gold — drop a keeper into the keeper slot, an opener up top, a quick into the attack. Any open slot will accept them, but the highlighted ones are where they'll score best.
5. One of each player. A star can turn up for several different franchise-seasons (Virat Kohli has 19 of them), but you can only draft each person once. Once Kohli's in your XI, he won't appear in any later squad you spin — so no fielding two of the same player. Different players who share a surname (R Sharma and I Sharma, say) are treated as the separate people they are.
6. Set your own batting order. Tap any player you've already placed to move them to another slot, or tap a second player to swap the two around. The order you see is the order your XI bats in.
7. Repeat until all 11 slots are filled. You get 2 re-spins per game if you don't like a franchise-season.
8. Get your verdict. The simulator projects your record and gives you a tier — from Wooden Spoon all the way up to The Immortals.

How your team is rated

Every player-season has an overall rating (OVR) from 40–99, built from their real stats and era-normalised so a dominant 2009 season counts as highly as a dominant 2026 one. But raw OVR isn't everything: position fit matters. A genuine opener batting at the top is worth far more than a specialist bowler shoved into the top order. Your team rating is the average of each player's fit-adjusted score, minus penalties for an unbalanced side (no keeper, too few bowlers, and so on).

The tiers

• 14 wins — The Immortals (S): the perfect, unbeaten season.
• 12–13 — Champions (A): lifting the trophy.
• 10–11 — Contenders (B): in the playoff hunt.
• 7–9 — Mid-Table (C): flattering to deceive.
• 4–6 — Struggling (D): a long season.
• 0–3 — Wooden Spoon (F): back to the drawing board.

Your result: awards & honours

Alongside your tier and record, the result screen hands out a few end-of-season extras based on your XI and its projected record:

• Season Awards — your Player of the Season (your highest-rated pick), Most Runs, and Most Wickets, using each player's real stats from that season.
• Season Honours — what your projected league record would have earned in a real campaign:
  • Playoffs — a top-four finish and a knockout spot (roughly 8+ wins).
  • Final — strong enough to reach the final (roughly 11+ wins).
  • Title — going all the way and lifting the trophy (roughly 12+ wins — the Champions tier).
  A 🏆 means your XI reached that mark; a ✕ means it fell short.
• Projected finish — the league position (1st–10th) your record would translate to.

Play a friend: head-to-head

Once you've got a result, you can put your XI up against someone else's. Tap Challenge a friend on the result screen to copy a link and send it (WhatsApp works best). Whoever opens it sees the team they have to beat, then drafts their own eleven the usual way — spin, pick, place. At the end both teams are scored by the exact same engine and a winner is declared, with a side-by-side comparison of team rating, position fit, and projected wins. The stronger team on the day takes it. You can fire the challenge straight back for a rematch, or send it on to challenge someone new.

Want the finer points first? Learn how player ratings work or read the strategy guides. And when you're ready for the five-day stuff, try the Test Cricket game — draft a 15-man squad of red-ball legends and chase a 13-0-0 World Test Championship cycle.