# Best and Worst Net Run Rates in 286 Team Seasons

Source: https://cricketin.org/blog/best-and-worst-nrr-seasons

[By Anjali Deshmukh](/authors/cricket-analyst), Cricket Analyst. [Reviewed by Karthik Iyengar](/authors/data-editor), Data Editor. Updated 2 Sep 2026. Editorial policy: https://cricketin.org/editorial-policy

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The ten highest and ten lowest net run rates in our published tables, and why the records nearly all come from the shortest seasons.

We publish 40 complete league tables across eight T20 competitions. That is 286 team seasons, each with a net run rate we calculated ourselves from the ball-by-ball record.

- The highest is Delhi Capitals in the WPL 2022/23, at plus 1.856. The lowest is Multan Sultans in the PSL 2025, at minus 2.449.
- Eighteen of the twenty extremes come from seasons of eight or ten matches per team. Fourteen-match seasons make up 118 of the 286 entries and supply two.
- The single best net run rate in the whole set did not win its title. Delhi Capitals topped the 2022/23 table and lost the final.

## The ten highest net run rates

Net run rate is the run rate a team scored at across a season minus the run rate it conceded. A positive number means the team outscored its opponents per over; the size of it says how heavily.

**Table 1. The ten highest net run rates in our published tables**

| # | Team | Season | NRR | Matches |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Delhi Capitals | WPL 2022/23 | +1.856 | 8 |
| 2 | Oval Invincibles | The Hundred 2025 | +1.786 | 8 |
| 3 | Mumbai Indians | WPL 2022/23 | +1.711 | 8 |
| 4 | Guyana Amazon Warriors | CPL 2019 | +1.686 | 10 |
| 5 | MI Emirates | ILT20 2023/24 | +1.469 | 10 |
| 6 | Quetta Gladiators | PSL 2025 | +1.393 | 10 |
| 7 | Trinbago Knight Riders | CPL 2020 | +1.379 | 10 |
| 8 | Perth Scorchers | BBL 2025/26 | +1.363 | 10 |
| 9 | Mumbai Indians | IPL 2020/21 | +1.292 | 14 |
| 10 | Multan Sultans | PSL 2021/22 | +1.253 | 10 |

Only one entry in that list comes from a fourteen-match season. Two of the top three come from the same competition in the same year, the [first WPL season](/tables/wpl-2022-23), and the leader of that group, [Guyana Amazon Warriors in 2019](/tables/cpl-2019), won all ten of their league matches.

## The ten lowest

**Table 2. The ten lowest net run rates in our published tables**

| # | Team | Season | NRR | Matches |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Multan Sultans | PSL 2025 | −2.449 | 10 |
| 2 | Gujarat Giants | WPL 2022/23 | −2.220 | 8 |
| 3 | St Lucia Stars | CPL 2017 | −1.667 | 10 |
| 4 | Melbourne Renegades | BBL 2020/21 | −1.647 | 14 |
| 5 | Sharjah Warriors | ILT20 2023/24 | −1.608 | 10 |
| 6 | St Kitts and Nevis Patriots | CPL 2020 | −1.498 | 10 |
| 7 | St Kitts and Nevis Patriots | CPL 2024 | −1.479 | 10 |
| 8 | Welsh Fire | The Hundred 2022 | −1.442 | 8 |
| 9 | Jamaica Tallawahs | CPL 2019 | −1.378 | 10 |
| 10 | Birmingham Phoenix | The Hundred 2026 | −1.318 | 8 |

Two entries carry something the number alone does not show. Only two teams in all 286 seasons finished without a win, and both are on this list: [St Lucia Stars in 2017](/tables/cpl-2017), who lost nine and had a tenth match end without a result, and Welsh Fire in 2022, who lost all eight. A winless season is rare enough that it appears twice in forty tables; finishing in the bottom ten for net run rate is far more common, and eight of the ten teams here won matches.

The list also repeats a club: St Kitts and Nevis Patriots appear twice, for 2020 and 2024. Last place, by contrast, is always the same story — in all 40 tables, no team finished bottom of its league with a net run rate above zero.

## Why the records come from short seasons

The pattern in both tables is not about the teams. It is about how many matches they played.

**Table 3. Spread of net run rate by season length, our calculation**

| Matches per team | Team seasons | Lowest | Highest | Spread |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8 | 65 | −2.220 | +1.856 | 4.08 |
| 10 | 94 | −2.449 | +1.686 | 4.13 |
| 14 | 118 | −1.647 | +1.292 | 2.94 |
| 16 | 9 | −1.006 | +0.530 | 1.54 |

The eight- and ten-match seasons cover a range of about 4.1. The fourteen-match seasons cover 2.9, and the only sixteen-match season we hold, [the IPL in 2013](/tables/ipl-2013), covers 1.54 — its best team finished on plus 0.530, a figure that would not reach the top forty in a shorter league.

The mechanism is arithmetic, not merit. Net run rate averages every over a team has played, so one lopsided result moves it by roughly one over the number of matches. A 60-run thrashing shifts an eight-match season nearly twice as far as a fourteen-match one, and there are fewer remaining matches to pull the number back. Short seasons do not produce more dominant teams. They produce less averaging.

This is worth holding on to when leagues are compared. A plus 1.4 in a ten-match competition and a plus 1.4 in the IPL are not the same achievement, and no table anywhere marks the difference.

## One table, both extremes

The clearest illustration sits in a single five-team table. In the WPL 2022/23, Delhi Capitals finished on plus 1.856 — the highest figure in our whole set — and Gujarat Giants on minus 2.220, the second lowest. Both played the same eight matches in the same competition.

**Table 4. WPL 2022/23, the table that holds both ends of the range**

| Pos | Team | Points | NRR |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Delhi Capitals | 12 | +1.856 |
| 2 | Mumbai Indians | 12 | +1.711 |
| 3 | UP Warriorz | 8 | −0.200 |
| 4 | Royal Challengers Bangalore | 4 | −1.137 |
| 5 | Gujarat Giants | 4 | −2.220 |

Five teams, two pairs level on points, and net run rate ordering both of them. It also shows how a small field concentrates the effect: with five teams the strongest and the weakest meet repeatedly, so the runs that lift one are the same runs that sink the other.

## A record rate is not a title

Delhi Capitals led that table on points and on net run rate, and Mumbai Indians won the final. The same thing happened in the CPL in 2019, where Guyana Amazon Warriors went unbeaten with the fourth highest rate in our set and lost the final by 27 runs.

Across all 40 tables, the team that finished top of the group stage went on to win the title 18 times. Our companion piece on [the league leader against the champion](/blog/points-table-leader-vs-champion) takes that apart season by season; the short version is that a big net run rate describes the league stage well and predicts a knockout match poorly, because a knockout match is one match.

## What a big number actually tells you

Three things are safe to read off a high net run rate, and one common reading is not.

It tells you the margin of victory was large, not just that wins were frequent. It tells you the team was rarely on the wrong end of a heavy defeat, since a single one is expensive. And in a tie on points, it tells you who is placed higher, which in a close table is worth an actual playoff spot.

What it does not tell you is form. Net run rate is a season total with no time in it: a team that was thrashed in its first two matches and dominant in its last six carries the same figure as a team that did it in the opposite order. If you want the shape of a season rather than its sum, the form column on each of our [tournament tables](/leagues) is the honest place to look.

## How we count it

Net run rate here is runs scored per over faced across the league stage, minus runs conceded per over bowled, using the overs actually faced except when a side is bowled out, where the full allocation counts. That is the standard calculation, and our guide to [how net run rate works](/guides/how-net-run-rate-works) sets it out with worked numbers.

Only complete seasons are included. If the archive is missing a league match, the table is not published and its teams are not in this ranking, because a partial season produces a rate that looks precise and is not. All 40 tables behind these lists are complete; playoff and final matches are excluded, as they are from every league table.

Team names are given as the archive recorded them in that season, which is why Royal Challengers Bangalore appears rather than the current spelling.

## Where the numbers come from

Every rate on this page was calculated by us from the ball-by-ball match archive at [Cricsheet](https://cricsheet.org/), used under the Open Data Commons Attribution License 1.0, read on 2 September 2026. The figures are ours, not copied from a table elsewhere, and any league that publishes its own official rate may differ in the last decimal.

The tie-break rule that makes net run rate matter is set out in the playing conditions on the league sites, for example [iplt20.com](https://www.iplt20.com/). Independent scorecards for the individual matches behind these seasons are on [ESPNcricinfo](https://www.espncricinfo.com/).

## Questions people ask

### What is the highest net run rate ever recorded?

In our set of 40 complete tables, the highest is plus 1.856, by Delhi Capitals in the WPL 2022/23 over eight matches. We do not claim it as an all-time record: our tables cover eight T20 leagues, not every competition ever played.

### Why is a good net run rate easier in a short tournament?

Because the figure is an average over every over played. With eight matches, one heavy win or loss moves it almost twice as far as it would over fourteen, and there is less cricket left to pull it back.

### Does the best net run rate win the title?

Not reliably. The highest figure in our whole set belongs to a team that lost its final, and across all 40 tables the group-stage leader took the title 18 times.

### Can net run rate be positive for a team that finishes last?

It can, when a side loses close matches and wins big ones. It does not happen in these 40 tables: every last-placed team in our set finished on a negative rate.

### Why do your numbers differ slightly from a league's own table?

We recalculate from the ball-by-ball record rather than copying a published standing, so rounding and the treatment of abandoned matches can move the last decimal. The method is in the section above.

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