Eleven times per draft, the reel spins and stops somewhere you did not choose. Say it stops on Gujarat Titans 2023. On that one board sit the third-highest-rated season in the entire game — Shubman Gill’s 890 runs at a strike rate of 158 — a 28-wicket new-ball year, a 27-wicket death-overs year priced at 0.66 Cr, and Rashid Khan. Whatever your XI is missing at that moment, this board sells it, at three different price points. Some boards arrive already ahead.
Drafters obsess over players — who is elite, who is a trap, who is the one-crore steal. Fair enough; we have rated all 3,197 player-seasons ourselves. But every pick in the game starts one level up, with a franchise-season. So we ranked every board in the draft by how much draftable quality its best eleven names carry. The result is the depth table below — and learning to read it is a skill the game never forces on you, which is exactly why it is an edge.
How to read a board in five seconds
Count seasons, not stars. A famous name is not a deep board. The question is how far down the pool the genuinely draftable years go — a board whose sixth-best season is still worth a pick beats a board with one legend and ten passengers, because you only take one player per spin and the legend may not be the role you need.
Look under one crore. Deep boards carry cheap gold. Gujarat 2023 has a 16-wicket spinner at 0.39 Cr sitting behind the 27-wicket year at 0.66. If the bargain shelf is real, the board lets you save purse here and spend it on the next spin.
Check the roles you still owe. The draft demands a wicketkeeper and punishes a one-paced attack. A board with a real keeper season and wickets at both ends of the innings can rescue a broken draft; a board of six middle-order batters cannot, however deep it rates. In Expert mode, where the stats are hidden, this reading — roles and prices — is all you get.
The fifteen deepest boards in the game
| # | Board | The anchor | What sits beneath |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | GT 2023 | Gill — 890 runs at SR 158 | Four top-100 seasons; wickets at every price |
| 2 | GT 2026 | Rabada — 29 wickets | Gill and Sudharsan, 700-plus runs each |
| 3 | RR 2022 | Buttler — 863 runs, the No. 1 season | Chahal's 27 wickets — from just 13 names |
| 4 | MI 2020 | Bumrah — 27 wickets at eco 6.7 | Boult, Kishan, de Kock, Surya, all under 10 Cr |
| 5 | RCB 2026 | Bhuvneshwar — 28 wickets | Kohli at SR 166, Patidar at SR 193 |
| 6 | MI 2013 | Harbhajan and Johnson — 24 wickets each | An 18-deep title squad, four 16-wicket years |
| 7 | CSK 2013 | Bravo — 32 wickets at 1.7 Cr | Four top-100 seasons from 13 names |
| 8 | GT 2025 | Sudharsan — 759 runs | Prasidh's 25 wickets; Buttler keeps |
| 9 | RCB 2016 | Kohli — 973 runs, the No. 2 season | De Villiers, plus two sub-2 Cr steals — then it thins |
| 10 | RR 2026 | Sooryavanshi — 776 runs at SR 237 | Archer's 25 wickets |
| 11 | KKR 2024 | Chakaravarthy — 21 wickets | Narine, Salt, Russell — a champion's spine |
| 12 | CSK 2023 | Conway — 672 runs at 1.3 Cr | Deshpande and Pathirana: 40 wickets for 0.5 Cr |
| 13 | PBKS 2025 | Iyer — 604 runs at SR 175 | Nineteen names, value in the middle order |
| 14 | MI 2025 | Suryakumar — 717 runs | Boult and Bumrah: 40 wickets between them |
| 15 | RR 2024 | Samson — 531 runs | Five real bowling years, none of them elite |
Three things jump out. First, the table is recent: twelve of the fifteen boards come from 2020 onwards, and only Mumbai Indians 2013, Chennai Super Kings 2013 and Royal Challengers Bangalore 2016 survive from the first decade. Second, three clubs own it — Gujarat, Rajasthan and Mumbai place three boards each. Third, depth travels: Mumbai’s 2013 and 2020 boards and Chennai’s 2023 board all belong to title-winning squads, and Gujarat 2023 carried its team to the final. The same depth that wins a real season wins a simulated one. One smaller pattern worth a smile: Jos Buttler is on four of the fifteen boards.
Read the gold first — it is the ceiling, and it is what separates the very top of this table. Then read how long each row stays filled: that is the floor. Rajasthan 2024 is the strangest row in the game — not one top-100 season, yet eight names worth drafting, the highest floor and lowest ceiling on the list. Bangalore 2016 is its mirror: two gold dots, three navy, and the row goes hollow. And squad size buys none of this — Punjab 2025 and Mumbai 2025 bring the biggest pools on the list, nineteen and twenty names, and rank thirteenth and fourteenth, while Rajasthan 2022 sits third with just thirteen. When a fat board drops, do not mistake the scroll for a feast.
Anatomy of the No. 1 board
Gujarat Titans 2023 is what a perfect board looks like, so here it is, role by role — the anchor, an attack at three price points, and the forced pick already covered.
Shubman Gill
The batting anchor — the third-best season in the entire game opens this board's innings.
Mohammad Shami
A top-ten season in the game at mid-shelf money. The powerplay takes care of itself.
Mohit Sharma
Twenty-seven wickets for less than a crore. No batting season in the database gives this much for this little.
Rashid Khan
The deluxe pick when the purse is fat — and he strikes at 217 when he bats.
Noor Ahmad
Cheap gold hiding behind the headline names — the board's second sub-crore bowling season.
Wriddhiman Saha
The one pick the draft forces on you, covered at small money — this board never breaks a purse on the keeper.
Read those six as one purchase decision. Opener, pace both ends, two spinners, gloves — every role the XI demands has a real season here, and every purse state is served, from 0.39 to 19.7 Cr. Mohit’s year is the same season the bowling market post gave a sentence of its own. On Expert, where the board shows you prices and roles but no stats, this is the pool that feels safe at every purse: whatever you can afford is worth having. No other board in the game does that as completely.
Top-heavy is not deep
The sharpest lesson in the table is ninth place. Royal Challengers Bangalore 2016 owns the two most famous batting seasons in the database — Kohli’s 973 runs, the No. 2 season overall, and AB de Villiers’ 687 at a strike rate of 169 — plus two genuine steals in Yuzvendra Chahal’s 21 wickets at 0.19 Cr and KL Rahul’s keeper year at 1.9. Four extraordinary picks. And the board still ranks ninth, because beneath those four the pool falls away fast — the next-best name is an 18 Cr all-round season, and the tail is passengers.
Now put Chennai 2013 next to it, two places higher with no season in the game’s top twenty. Michael Hussey’s 733 runs at 3.6 Cr, Suresh Raina, MS Dhoni’s 461 at a strike rate of 163, Mohit Sharma’s 20 wickets at 0.38 Cr and Dwayne Bravo’s record 32-wicket year at 1.7 — four top-100 seasons out of just thirteen names, none of them ruinously priced. Bangalore 2016 is a board you visit for one superstar pick. Chennai 2013 is a board that will sell you something real no matter what your draft needs. Depth is the second kind.
The other end of the reel
For balance: the shallowest boards in the game that can still field an XI are Rajasthan Royals 2011, Pune Warriors 2012, Bangalore 2008, Delhi Daredevils 2014 and Kolkata Knight Riders 2009. That Rajasthan board is the bottom row of the depth chart above, and it carries a warning worth framing: Shane Warne and Rahul Dravid are both on it, and between them the board holds exactly one season worth drafting. Names are not seasons. Landing there is not a disaster either — it is what the draft’s swaps exist for. The skill is recognising the thin board quickly enough to spend a swap on it, instead of burning your swaps rescuing a board that was merely average. Knowing the bottom of the depth table is worth as much as knowing the top.
Depth is a draft skill
You cannot choose where the reel stops — and no board, not even Gujarat 2023, drafts itself into a perfect season. Eleven spins mean eleven boards, and the judgment is the same each time: on a deep board, take the season that is scarce everywhere else, not the name you recognise; on a top-heavy board, take the superstar only if the role fits; on a thin board, swap early or take the one real season and move on. If a club’s boards keep pulling you back, its franchise page — from Gujarat Titans to Royal Challengers Bengaluru — lets you spin nothing but that club’s history and build its all-time XI. Otherwise, the reel is waiting on a fresh draft or today’s daily challenge. You now know more about the next board that drops than most drafters ever will.