16-0 Game · Published 8 October 2026
Every draft asks whether to rate players by the season on the card or by their best season anywhere in the game. Across all 3,132 cards, the gap between the two is large.
How big the gap is
The average card sits 7.6 rating points below its player's best season. Only 26% of cards are a player's peak. 49% are within five points of it, and 34% are ten or more points below.
Prime mode closes that gap: every card is valued at the player's best. Season mode keeps it: the year on the card decides the rating.
Whose rating moves the most
Among the 253 players with at least five cards, these have the widest gap between a typical card and their best. Glenn Maxwell is the clearest case: a typical card averages 72.3, but his PBKS 2014 season rates 94. In Prime that is a star card from any season; in Season it usually is not.
| Player | Cards | Typical rating | Best | Best season |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Glenn Maxwell | 13 | 72.3 | 94 | PBKS 2014 |
| Mayank Agarwal | 13 | 67.6 | 88 | PBKS 2020 |
| Mohammed Shami | 16 | 73.0 | 93 | GT 2023 |
| Siddarth Kaul | 7 | 65.3 | 85 | SRH 2018 |
| Umran Malik | 6 | 66.3 | 86 | SRH 2022 |
| Andre Russell | 13 | 77.7 | 96 | KKR 2019 |
| Imran Tahir | 7 | 71.4 | 89 | CSK 2019 |
| Dwayne Bravo | 12 | 77.7 | 95 | CSK 2013 |
| Harshal Patel | 12 | 72.9 | 90 | RCB 2021 |
| Lungi Ngidi | 8 | 64.0 | 81 | CSK 2018 |
Who barely moves
At the other end are players whose cards are almost all strong. If you spin one of their seasons in Season mode, you lose little by taking it.
| Player | Cards | Typical rating | Best |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rashid Khan | 10 | 89.0 | 94 |
| Muttiah Muralitharan | 5 | 79.6 | 85 |
| Gautam Gambhir | 11 | 82.6 | 90 |
| Sai Sudharsan | 5 | 83.6 | 91 |
| Suresh Raina | 11 | 84.5 | 92 |
| Varun Chakravarthy | 7 | 78.3 | 86 |
| Shikhar Dhawan | 17 | 80.2 | 88 |
| Shane Watson | 11 | 83.1 | 91 |
The rarest cards
Only 18 of the 3,132 cards are rated 95 or above. Only Sunil Narine (3) and David Warner (2) hold more than one, so in Prime mode those names carry a 95+ value whichever of their seasons you land on.
| Player | Card | Role | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|
| Virat Kohli | RCB 2016 | BAT | 97 |
| AB de Villiers | RCB 2016 | BAT | 96 |
| Andre Russell | KKR 2019 | AR | 96 |
| Jasprit Bumrah | MI 2020 | PACE | 96 |
| Jos Buttler | RR 2022 | WK | 96 |
| Shane Warne | RR 2008 | SPIN | 95 |
| Chris Gayle | RCB 2011 | BAT | 95 |
| Sunil Narine | KKR 2012 | SPIN | 95 |
| Dwayne Bravo | CSK 2013 | AR | 95 |
| David Warner | SRH 2015 | BAT | 95 |
| David Warner | SRH 2017 | BAT | 95 |
| MS Dhoni | CSK 2018 | WK | 95 |
| Sunil Narine | KKR 2018 | SPIN | 95 |
| Rishabh Pant | DC 2018 | WK | 95 |
| KL Rahul | PBKS 2020 | WK | 95 |
| Shubman Gill | GT 2023 | BAT | 95 |
| Sunil Narine | KKR 2024 | SPIN | 95 |
| Vaibhav Suryavanshi | RR 2026 | BAT | 95 |
Where strong cards are scarce
Batters supply most of the elite cards, so a batting slot is usually the easiest to fill well. All-rounders are the opposite: they average the lowest rating among non-bowlers and hold the fewest 85+ cards, so a good all-rounder is the pick to take when you see one.
| Role | Cards | Average rating | Rated 85+ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Batters | 971 | 71.0 | 107 |
| Wicketkeepers | 339 | 70.3 | 37 |
| All-rounders | 497 | 69.4 | 24 |
| Pace bowlers | 873 | 68.2 | 49 |
| Spinners | 452 | 68.2 | 29 |
What Prime does to a whole squad
We rebuilt every real squad's best XI twice, once with the ratings on the cards and once with each player valued at their peak. Across all 158 squads, the average role-weighted XI rating rises from 75.6 to 83.9, and average title odds from 1.2% to 13.7%.
The number of squads with at least a 10% title chance goes from 1 to 103. Prime is not a small adjustment: it turns ordinary seasons into contenders whenever a squad contains players who peaked elsewhere.
The biggest gains come from squads whose players had their best seasons in other years, so the year on the card undersells the name.
| Squad | Season XI rating | Prime XI rating | Season title odds | Prime title odds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MI 2013 | 77.4 | 90.6 | 0.6% | 37.5% |
| MI 2012 | 73.9 | 89.5 | 0.1% | 32.9% |
| DC 2018 | 74.5 | 89.3 | 0.1% | 32.5% |
| CSK 2019 | 78.0 | 89.9 | 2.5% | 34.4% |
| CSK 2020 | 74.5 | 89.1 | 0.1% | 31.8% |
| CSK 2021 | 79.2 | 88.8 | 1.2% | 29.4% |
| KKR 2014 | 77.3 | 88.7 | 1.5% | 29.3% |
| KKR 2015 | 75.9 | 87.9 | 0.3% | 27.0% |
Choosing a mode
Prime rewards knowing names: a famous player is worth their best season wherever you find them, which is why the top of the public board is built from peak cards. Season rewards knowing seasons: the same name can be a 60 or a 90, so the year on the spin matters as much as the player. If you enjoy recognising great seasons, play Season; if you want the highest possible ratings, play Prime.