IPL 2025: Why some teams have home advantage and others don't – thenationalnews.com

Sport
Cricket
March 30, 2025
The Indian Premier League has been around for nearly two decades. So it is surprising that many supporters, and even some teams, are only now emphasising on having a home advantage.
Over the years, one team has had a clear strategy of tackling the IPL’s home and away format.
Chennai Super Kings have the simplest formula for success in the league – turn their home venue into a slow bowler’s paradise, pick bowlers and batters that can excel in those conditions, win at least five of the seven home matches and qualify for the playoffs by winning two or three away matches.
Chennai are more than happy to scrap on a 170 pitch at the Chepauk stadium, rather than go for glory on 240-plus surfaces.
It does not work every time; Chennai were defeated comprehensively by Bengaluru at their home ground on Sunday. But CSK’s overall home record is superb – 51 wins from 73 matches.
The other team that has slowly started to form some kind of home advantage since the last season is Sunrisers Hyderabad, who have gone to the other extreme by filling their squad with gargantuan power hitters who can out-bat any opposition at their Uppal home ground.
Both teams do lose at home and win away, but there is some structure to the way they approach the IPL.
The same can’t be said about two prominent teams this season thus far – Rajasthan Royals and Kolkata Knight Riders.
Rajasthan’s home base is the batting friendly Sawai Man Singh Stadium in Jaipur. However, this year they have started the season by playing their ‘home’ matches in the opposite part of the country – Guwahati.
The Royals have chosen the city in the north east of India as their second base as their team owner and also current stand-in captain (Riyan Parag) hail from that region.
However while last year they played their games there towards the end of the season, Rajasthan have started 2025 from Guwahati, which has not gone according to plan with one defeat there and another loss away in Hyderabad.
In fact, the Royals play their first actual home game in Jaipur on April 13, a good three weeks after the start of the tournament. By that time, they could well find themselves struggling in the points table.
It must be noted that only three teams in this IPL have split their home venues – Rajasthan, Punjab (Mullanpur and Dharamsala) and Delhi (Visakhapatnam).
Then there is Kolkata, whose supposed estranged relations with the local ground staff at the Eden Gardens stadium has come out in the open.
For the last few seasons, some Knight Riders players have alluded to the team not getting the kind of pitches they want at their home. Despite that, Kolkata won the IPL last year.
This year, without star captain Shreyas Iyer, who was shockingly let go, and coach Gautam Gambhir, the team needed all they help they can get. However, the Eden Gardens ground staff are said to be unwilling to make the kind of surfaces the Knight Riders want – reported to be slow surfaces that help spinners.
If true, this is a tricky situation as the tournament and fans would like to see high scoring matches, while the team would want to maximise their strength and ensure as many points as possible in home matches.
So even in a domestic T20 tournament, a distinction is beginning to emerge between home and away games. Smart teams are selecting their squad and retaining players according to the conditions at their home grounds – which sounds easy but difficult to execute amid a complicated player auction structure, injuries to players and availability of appropriate and in-form talent.
A few more high-scoring venues like Delhi, Mumbai and Mullanpur (Punjab) will feature prominently in the IPL over the coming weeks. There, we will get to know if the respective franchises have planned according to their conditions, or for the tournament as a whole.
For some teams, it is easier to cover every base and field top quality power hitters and wicket-taking bowlers, irrespective of conditions.
Those who like to play their percentages, home advantage becomes paramount. Chennai have mastered it over the years, maybe others will start to replicate it soon.
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Graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms arranged like honeycomb.
It was discovered in 2004, when Russian-born Manchester scientists Andrei Geim and Kostya Novoselov were “playing about” with sticky tape and graphite – the material used as “lead” in pencils.
Placing the tape on the graphite and peeling it, they managed to rip off thin flakes of carbon. In the beginning they got flakes consisting of many layers of graphene. But as they repeated the process many times, the flakes got thinner.
By separating the graphite fragments repeatedly, they managed to create flakes that were just one atom thick. Their experiment had led to graphene being isolated for the very first time.
At the time, many believed it was impossible for such thin crystalline materials to be stable. But examined under a microscope, the material remained stable, and when tested was found to have incredible properties.
It is many times times stronger than steel, yet incredibly lightweight and flexible. It is electrically and thermally conductive but also transparent. The world’s first 2D material, it is one million times thinner than the diameter of a single human hair.
But the ‘sticky tape’ method would not work on an industrial scale. Since then, scientists have been working on manufacturing graphene, to make use of its incredible properties.
In 2010, Geim and Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. Their discovery meant physicists could study a new class of two-dimensional materials with unique properties. 
 
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