Play 16-0 rates every player-season from 2008 to 2026 in Indian T20 league history — 3,197 of them — on what that player actually did that year. Not reputation. Not career averages. Just that one season. That single rule produces the most useful and most counter-intuitive lists in the game: legends with dead-weight years, unknowns with monster ones, and a handful of seasons that simply break the draft.
The seasons that break the game
Ranked by the game’s own player rating, these are the ten most overpowered player-seasons in the database. The batting years at the top are the highest-rated in the whole pool — and 2016 Virat Kohli (973 runs at a strike rate of 152) is the single highest-rated batting season the game has ever seen.
| # | Player-season | That season | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jos Buttler — RR 2022 | 863 runs at SR 149 | 13.9 Cr |
| 2 | Virat Kohli — RCB 2016 | 973 runs at SR 152 | 23.7 Cr |
| 3 | Shubman Gill — GT 2023 | 890 runs at SR 158 | 10.5 Cr |
| 4 | Vaibhav Sooryavanshi — RR 2026 | 776 runs at SR 237 | 1.1 Cr |
| 5 | David Warner — SRH 2016 | 848 runs at SR 151 | 10.4 Cr |
| 6 | Kagiso Rabada — DC 2020 | 30 wickets at eco 8.3 | 6.2 Cr |
| 7 | Lasith Malinga — MI 2011 | 28 wickets at eco 6.0 | 27.8 Cr |
| 8 | Mohammad Shami — GT 2023 | 28 wickets at eco 8.0 | 8.2 Cr |
| 9 | AB de Villiers — RCB 2016 | 687 runs at SR 169 | 18.0 Cr |
| 10 | Jasprit Bumrah — MI 2020 | 27 wickets at eco 6.7 | 10.3 Cr |
The hidden gems — elite for almost nothing
The real edge is not picking the names everyone knows. It is finding the seasons that rate near the top but cost almost nothing, so you can afford the megastars elsewhere — which is exactly how the squads that go a perfect 16-0 are built. This is the Moneyball approach to cricket drafting, and the database is full of it. Vaibhav Sooryavanshi’s 2026 is a top-five season in the entire game for barely a crore. A few more:
| Player-season | That season | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Yuzvendra Chahal — RCB 2015 | 23 wickets | 0.2 Cr |
| Ruturaj Gaikwad — CSK 2021 | 635 runs | 0.3 Cr |
| Mohit Sharma — GT 2023 | 27 wickets | 0.7 Cr |
| Vaibhav Sooryavanshi — RR 2026 | 776 runs at SR 237 | 1.1 Cr |
| Imran Tahir — CSK 2019 | 26 wickets at eco 6.7 | 1.5 Cr |
The trap picks — big names, bad value
The most common mistake is drafting the jersey, not the season. Some of the most expensive player-seasons in the game return almost nothing for their cost — a famous name in a year where the numbers simply were not there. Spend on these and you have handcuffed the rest of your XI before you start.
| Player-season | That season | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Andrew Symonds — Deccan 2008 | 161 runs at SR 153 | 33.8 Cr |
| Yuvraj Singh — DC 2015 | 248 runs at SR 118 | 31.8 Cr |
| Sachin Tendulkar — MI 2008 | 188 runs at SR 106 | 28.0 Cr |
| Kevin Pietersen — RCB 2009 | 93 runs | 27.7 Cr |
| Gautam Gambhir — KKR 2014 | 335 runs at SR 114 | 26.0 Cr |
None of these are bad players. They are expensive seasons — and in a salary-capped draft, a 30-crore name that bats like a role player is the worst asset on the board.
Why the ratings are so lopsided
Out of 3,197 player-seasons, only about 8 percent rate as genuinely strong, and barely 3 percent are elite. The vast majority are role-players or worse. That is what makes the draft hard: the gap between a top-50 season and a top-300 season is enormous, and most of the pool sits well below both. Drafting well means knowing which of two famous names had the season that actually rates — and spotting the unknown who out-rates them for a tenth of the price.
Normal vs Expert
In Normal mode every rating and stat is visible — you can see exactly what you are buying, with a 125 Cr cap. In Expert mode the stats are hidden and the cap drops to 100 Cr. The overpowered seasons above are obvious in Normal. In Expert you have to know them from memory — which is where real cricket knowledge separates the field.
The whole database is in the game. 3,197 player-seasons, two decades of history. The traps, the gems and the game-breakers are all in there waiting. Try the daily challenge to put the theory to work on a fixed brief everyone shares.