World Cup 2015: England

Computer says...

England are obsessed by numbers, although 42.2% of the team insist they are not. In the past it helped them to much success, but that was with a more experienced team that could still think on their feet. In his latest Spin column, Andy Bull, argues that there is no right or wrong answer when it comes to how much to believe the computers.

England's over-reliance on the numbers has become a theme in the coverage of the team, particularly among ex-players. You can hear it when they bemoan, among other things, England's reluctance to bowl yorkers at the stumps. That's a tactic that has worked for years, one that has been honed by hard experience. But England's analysis has told them that slow bouncers and full balls sent wide of off-stump are harder to score off. The thing is, in an age when all teams are using computer analysis, a tactic isn't good or bad because it looks that way, or because it is different to what has been done before. It is simply good if it works and bad if it doesn't.