The Pareto principle in Sports and Economics in view of Runs Scored by Batters in the Indian Premier League

TL;DR

This study uses IPL cricket performance data as a proxy to analyze economic inequality, revealing that sports run distributions mirror real-world income inequality and follow Pareto-like patterns.

Contribution

Introduces a novel proxy-based method using sports data to mimic economic distributions and analyze inequality evolution and limits.

Findings

Run distributions in IPL resemble high income inequality levels.

Cumulative run inequality approaches a limit consistent with global wealth patterns.

Proxy systems can effectively capture features of economic inequality.

Abstract

The analysis of income and wealth inequality is often constrained by the lack of reliable data. In this work, we introduce a proxy-based approach in which sports performance data are used to mimic economic distributions. In particular, the total runs scored by a batter in a single T20 season are treated as an analogue of annual income, while the cumulative runs scored across all seasons are taken to represent individual wealth. Using run distributions from the Indian Premier League (IPL), we explore how inequality evolves and estimate its upper limits in the absence of policy intervention. Our findings indicate that inequality derived from seasonal runs closely resembles the highest levels of income inequality observed in real-world data. In addition, the distribution of cumulative runs evolves over time and gradually approaches a limiting value consistent with global patterns of wealth inequality, in line with the Pareto principle. Overall, this study shows that proxy systems can capture essential features of economic inequality and offer a useful way to understand its inherent limits.