The statistical analysis (at least in first look) matches very well with it madness on field as very correctly captured by the 'Coefficient of Variation' [ratio of std. and mean] . A CoV of one means a random process (e.g. Poisson Process) and if the CoV is more than one it means that there are clustered events. In any case CoV in runs scored per over and wickets fallen per over in completely is a random process.
However, there is still some hope as there is some pattern in the data generated by IPL 2009.
The top panel in the figure below shows the cross-correlation as color-coded (blue means high negative correlation and red/brown mean high positive correlation), between any two variables e.g Average Runs Scored and Average Wickets Fallen and so on. The significance of correlation is shown in bottom panel. The white boxes are for the auto-correlation (which is One always by definition, so excluded). Both the panels are symmetric along the diagonal.
There is an interesting correlation between Average Runs scored and number of wickets fallen in an over.
Average Runs (RAvg) scored (see second column) is strongly (and significantly) positively correlated with Number of Wickets fallen (Wkts), Average Wickets per over (AWkt).
Correlations should not be confused with causality but the data indicates that Average number of runs scored is related to number of wickets fallen in an over. This is kind of a paradox to me. If a wicket falls in an over it means that there are less balls left to score. I leave it to you guys to make suggestion to resolve the paradox.
right arm over
Arvind
PS: Maybe the incoming batsmen tend to start with big-hits in IPL or in Twenty-Twenty Cricket, if wickets fall early in an over. It is also possible that the wickets fall when the batsmen is going for big-hits that means that most wickets should fall towards the end of the over.
Figure below is on suggestions from Annesh. I left out last three over from the correlation analysis. The correlation between Avg Wickets and Avg. Runs still remains high and significant.
