IPL Fantasy 2020: How to set up your team | IPL Fantasy Tips

IPL Fantasy is back with the 2020 edition of the IPL, and many cricketing fans must be busy setting up their teams before the start of the first match on Saturday, 19th September.

The official fantasy game of the IPL will continue to be powered by Dream11 but the format has been changed for this season. IPL Fantasy 2020 has reverted to the format of the daily transfers of IPL Fantasy 2018 and the seasons before that.

This means that players will have to make changes to their fantasy XI before every matchday and will have only a limited amount of transfers (120) to do so.

With plenty of options available to select with a limited budget, new players to the game might find it hard to compete with others.

Here are some basic tips and pointers to remember when setting up your IPL Fantasy team for the 2020 edition of the IPL.

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Setting up Your IPL Fantasy Team

Narine is a great IPL Fantasy option.

1) Position Balance

With the revamp in the format of this season's IPL Fantasy, the points scoring system has been updated as well. This brings more equality in points scored by batsmen and bowlers, and you could even captain a bowler if you want.

To put this into perspective, a bowler picking up two wickets will give you as many points as when a batsman scores fifty runs. With that in mind, try to include as many all-rounders in your side as you can.

With the spin-friendly nature of the UAE pitches, Krunal Pandya (MI) (8.5 Credits), Sunil Narine (KKR) (9.5 Credits), Ravindra Jadeja (CSK) (8.5 Credits) and Mohammad Nabi (SRH) (8.5 Credits) are all great IPL Fantasy options.

Try to include wicket-keepers over batsmen if you can. With a catch providing 8 points and a stumping 12 points, a wicket-keeper can earn up to 40 points from fielding with his keeping alone. Options like Jos Buttler (RR) (11.5 Credits), KL Rahul(KXIP) (12 Credits), and Rishabh Pant(DC) (10 Credits) have added value because of that.

Ideal IPL Fantasy Team Balance:

Wicket-Keepers- 1 or 2

Batsmen- 3

All-Rounders- 3 or 4(depending on the number of keepers)

Bowlers- 3

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2) Team Balance

You can select up to 7 players from the same team in your IPL Fantasy team but it's not recommended that you do that, except maybe for the Final.

The ideal team balance should enable you to get a minimum of four players from the next match within just two transfers. While you can have more than four players from one game, depending on whether you think that it'll be a high-scoring encounter, four is the ideal number for a balanced team.

Therefore, you must have at least one player from each team at all points of IPL 2020 so that before every match, you have at least two players featuring.

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IPL Fantasy tips for the season

1) Never overload your team with players from just one match: This tip is for the newbies in IPL Fantasy. Newcomers tend to misunderstand the nature of the game and often pick all their 11 players from one match. If they do so, they will soon lose all their transfers and will be incapable of making any changes to their team.

An ideal IPL Fantasy team should have between 3-6 players from one match and not more than that.

2) Always make your transfers after the toss: This is one of the most important rules in IPL Fantasy. You always make the transfers to your team after the toss, once the line-ups have been announced.

It helps you look at which side has an advantage based on the toss, and you can pick your captain and vice-captain accordingly. It also helps ascertain if one of the players in your IPL Fantasy XI is playing in the match, and if one of your potential transfers is featuring in the match as well.

If you're in a situation in which you can't make your transfers after the toss and have to do them before, try to get in those players who're sure to play, and not take a punt on just anyone.

3) Never select your team just to fill up the budget or to achieve the maximum quota of overseas players: This is a very common error that IPL Fantasy players make. Yes, it's true that if you have some credits to spend and can upgrade an option to someone better, you should do so. But that should be because you think that the upgrade is worth it.

Many times, IPL Fantasy players move on to expensive options just because they have the funds and subsequently missed out on plenty of points. There is no necessity to fill up the budget because if not for this game, you could use the extra funds to just bring in a more expensive player in the next.

The same goes for overseas players. I'm going into Matchday 1 with just one overseas player in my team and 2.5 credits unspent because I don't know how the different teams will line up and how the players will fare in these conditions.