2013 Indian Premier League

 ( Indian Premier League ) 

The 2013 Indian Premier League season (abbreviated as IPL 6 or Pepsi IPL 2013) was the sixth season of the Indian Premier League, established by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) in 2007. The tournament featured nine teams and was held from 3 April to 26 May 2013. The opening ceremony was held at the Salt Lake Stadium in Kolkata on 2 April 2013. This was the first season with PepsiCo as the title sponsor. The Kolkata Knight Riders were the defending champions, having won the 2012 season. A spot fixing case was revealed by Delhi Police, leading to arrest of three cricketers from Rajasthan Royals and other persons. Mumbai Indians won the tournament for the first time, defeating Chennai Super Kings in the final by 23 runs.

Despite the progress on the restoration of cricketing relations between India and Pakistan after the Pakistan national cricket team toured India in December 2012 and January 2013, no Pakistani players were included in the auction. Several South Africans missed the start of the tournament to play in the knockout stage of the Ram Slam T20 Challenge. Two New Zealand players were released early by their teams to join the New Zealand tour of England. Both players were not performing for their teams. Sri Lanka Cricket made a similar request to allow some of their players to join their preparations for the ICC Champions Trophy.

Shortly before the start of the season, the IPL governing council ruled that Sri Lankan cricketers and match officials will not participate in any matches held in Chennai. This was a result of the growing political tensions in Tamil Nadu concerning the ethnic conflict between the Sinhalese people and Sri Lankan Tamils. The anti-Sinhalaese sentiments from the people of Tamil Nadu raised security concerns for Sri Lankan involvement. The decision was made after Jayalalithaa, the chief minister of Tamil Nadu, wrote to the Prime Minister of India requesting the ban.

Other than the Chennai Super Kings, the franchises were not in support of the decision as they believed it offered Chennai an added advantage in their home matches. Chennai's Sri Lankan players hold secondary positions in their team while some Sri Lankans in other teams play key roles and their absence in those matches would affect their team strategies. Another concern was with how the decision did not follow the precedence of moving the matches to a different venue. However, the playoff matches originally scheduled to be held in Chennai were later relocated to Delhi.

Three-time runners-up the Royal Challengers Bangalore won six of their first eight matches with a six-of-six home record. This was credited to good death-over bowling from Vinay Kumar and prolific and quick run-scoring from captain Virat Kohli, Chris Gayle and AB de Villiers. This included Gayle's score of 175 not out, the highest in Twenty20 cricket. However, their performances were fluctuant. Included was a 130-run victory, two and two other matches involving a tight finish. Two-time champions the Chennai Super Kings were similarly dominant, with good batting from captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Michael Hussey and Suresh Raina and an all-round bowling attack. They came up with an IPL record-equalling seven-match winning streak, which took them to the top of the points table.

The Mumbai Indians, who made playoff-stage appearances in each of the past three years, were inconsistent with both batting and bowling. Good batting performances from Dinesh Karthik, Rohit Sharma and Kieron Pollard put Mumbai at the middle of the points table halfway through the season. The Sunrisers Hyderabad produced results contrary to the poor performance last season by their predecessors the Deccan Chargers. With no stand-out individual batting performances, Hyderabad managed to win five of their first seven matches. Their strength was in their strong and economical bowling from an attack centred around Dale Steyn and Amit Mishra. Mishra got the second hat-trick of the season, becoming the first to achieve three IPL hat-tricks.

Also at the middle of the points table was the Rajasthan Royals. They won matches with cohesive batting and bowling where different players delivered match-winning contributions. Shane Watson produced scores of 101 and 98 not out while James Faulkner was briefly the season's top wicket-taker after taking 5 for 20. The Pune Warriors India and the Kings XI Punjab continue their form from 2012. Pune won two matches from eight with significant contributions coming only from Aaron Finch, Steve Smith and Bhuvneshwar Kumar. Punjab had average performances with poor contributions from their international players and a dependency on their less-accomplished local players.

Bangalore's schedule had them play six consecutive away matches, of which they could only win two due to their bowling attack struggling on away surfaces and repeatedly failures to defend high scores set by Gayle, Kohli and de Villiers. Hyderabad's bowlers continued to perform while their batting was strengthened with the inclusion of Shikhar Dhawan, who returned from injury after scoring the fastest Test-debut hundred two months ago, and Darren Sammy. Bangalore and Hyderabad slowly fell behind Mumbai and Rajasthan in the points table, allowing a chance for other teams.

Delhi and Pune failed to recover from their poor starts to the season and were the first to be eliminated from the tournament, similar to their performances in 2011. Punjab's form deteriorated as they faced teams at the top-half of the points table, with only Shaun Marsh and David Miller making significant batting contributions. Kolkata showed signs of improvement as their bowlers limited the opposition to low scores but this only lifted their position to sixth. Both Punjab and Kolkata needed to win every one of their remaining matches for any chance of qualification.

With ten matches remaining in the group stage, Chennai, Mumbai and Rajasthan were first to earn playoff stage berths while a few losses by Bangalore and Hyderabad gave Kolkata and Punjab a slim chance of competing for the final spot. Kolkata was eliminated after suffering an upset at home by Pune. Punjab, despite finishing their season with three straight wins, failed to catch up. The tie between Bangalore and Hyderabad came down to the final match of the group stage, between Hyderabad and Kolkata. Hyderabad won to place themselves narrowly ahead of Bangalore by one win and qualify.

The leading run-scorer of the tournament wore an orange cap while fielding.
     

The leading wicket-taker of the tournament wore a purple cap while fielding.