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Women's Tri-Series (SL) (1)
Women's One-Day Cup (1)
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County DIV2 (4)

It Figures

Spectacular but all too brief

Shane Bond only played 18 Tests, but he still managed to conjure several matchwinning moments for New Zealand

S Rajesh
S Rajesh
25-Feb-2013
And so the body finally gave up on him. After battling injuries almost relentlessly through a decade, Shane Bond has finally decided that Test cricket is too much strain for him, and New Zealand are without a strike bowler yet again.
Bond in full flight was an utterly spectacular sight, which makes it doubly sad that the cricket world has seen so little of him, especially in a form of the game that allows him to attack without fear. It's almost unfair that his decision means he'll continue to play in formats which will curb those attacking instincts and force him to bowl defensive lines to defensive fields with the onus on saving runs.
Full post
Measuring Team Stability

Analysing the stability of the Australian ODI team since 1979

Ric Finlay
25-Feb-2013
Australia's hectic ODI programme this year, involving 32 different players playing in 39 matches, set me wondering if there had ever been a higher "churn" of players for the team. It was easy to establish that the 39 matches was a record high for Australia in a calendar year, beating the 37 matches played in 1999, and never before had Australia fielded as many as 32 players in the same time span; the previous highest was 26 in 1997.
But the high number of matches played creates an expectation of a high number of players; it well may be that the team was more stable in 2009 than in 2008, when only 18 matches were played, but as many as 20 different players were used.
Full post
In search of the balanced allrounder

A detailed stats analyis to classify players as batting allrounders and bowling allrounders

Ric Finlay
25-Feb-2013
The beauty of cricket lies in the variety of different roles players can assume when they play the game. I contend there exists a continuum, with specialist bowlers at one end, specialist batsmen at the other, and a range of different types of allrounder in between. The terms "bowling allrounder" and "batting allrounder" are often used in reference to particular players, and it follows that in between these two categories, there must be a group of players whose allround capabilities are perfectly balanced; that is, they bat equally well as they bowl.
If my continuum does exist, then it should be possible to quantify each player's position along this line, and to determine who the "perfectly balanced" allrounders have been in the game's history.
Concerning myself with just Test cricket, I started with two extremes: the "purest" batsman was surely Brian Lara, who scored 11,953 runs in 131 Tests, but failed to take a wicket, the only scorer of 10,000 runs to do so. At the other end of the scale, we have South Africa's Mfuneko Ngam, who was only trusted with the bat once in his three Tests, scoring 0 not out, but was good enough as a bowler to take 11 wickets.
Full post
A consistency index for batsmen

A stats analysis to measure the consistency of Test batsmen

Ric Finlay
25-Feb-2013
One thing we admire in our cricketers is consistency. Full marks to the gritty player who scores 50 on a minefield, even though he gets out for 50 when well set on a featherbed. But do we admire so much his team-mate who gets a duck in the first instance, but makes amends by crashing an impressive 100 in the second? They have the same average - but do they provide the same value?
Consistency can measured by calculating the standard deviation, which, in simple terms, seeks to measure the average deviation that each score is from the overall mean. The lower the standard deviation, the lower the variation in the scores. We can obviously apply this to cricket scores, but a couple of issues need to be resolved: what to do with "not out" scores, and how can we use it to compare the consistency of players with different averages?
To resolve the first, I elected to add any uncompleted innings to the next innings, so that effectively, I was calculating the standard deviation of the runs made between dismissals. If the last innings was a "red ink", it was ignored.
Full post
Another take at the best Test captains

A stats piece that takes a fresh look at Test captains and results

David Barry
25-Feb-2013
To evaluate how good a captain's results are, you need to know how good they would have been with an average captain. We all know that Ricky Ponting has a stupendously high number of wins as captain, but for much of his captaincy he's had one of the all-time great teams under him. So we should expect that he'd have a lot more wins than losses. The problem is now to quantify what we would expect. Though Ananth has tried to account for differences in team strength in his latest post, I don't think it works well enough.

I've taken each Test and calculated the overall batting average and the overall bowling average for each team. The latter was done by weighting each bowler's average according to the number of balls bowled in each innings. If there were two innings, I took the average of the two innings. That's a bit lazy of me, but it shouldn't make too much difference. (All averages are adjusted using the methods explained in this post.)

Then you take (home bat - away bat - home bowl + away bowl) and you have a measure of the relative strength of the home side to the away side. I calculated this for all Tests, noted the result of each Test, and then saw how the fraction of wins, losses and draws changed as the strength of the home team varies. The results are shown in Figure 1.

The fractions of wins does basically what we'd expect – it starts out flat and very low for teams that are outclassed, before rising steadily before plateauing. There are always going to be some draws (because of rain), so the fraction of wins won't hit zero or one. Even the weakest of home teams can achieve a draw rate of about 30% (well, maybe not Bangladesh), whereas very weak teams away can only draw about 20% of Tests.

The trend in draws is a bit different. It seems to go gently upwards until the teams are evenly matched, and then more sharply downwards as the home team becomes stronger.

Full post
The most efficient strike bowlers in Tests

A stats analysis to identify the most efficient strike bowlers in Test history

Mike Holmans
25-Feb-2013
My usual lair is Different Strokes, but that's a place for (semi-)topical opinion rather than discussion of statistics methodology, and Rajesh has been kind enough to allow me to interlope and put this little study before you.
Although I didn't start out that way, what I've ended up with, I think, is a pretty good cross-era ranking of the most efficient strike bowlers Test cricket has known. I don't claim that it's definitive: what I do claim is that the method I've used is quite interesting, and I'd like to see what other stats mavens make of it.
The first decision I made was to eliminate all minnow matches. Leaving out Bangladesh and Zimbabwe is pretty commonplace but if we're being realistic, only England and Australia did not have a bedding-in period as minnows before they became a team to be at least reckoned with. It seems essential to eliminate minnow matches because otherwise some bowlers are at a distinct disadvantage: a bowler whose career was from 1970-1980 never got a chance to bowl at a minnow team, whereas Fred Trueman had endless fun with weak Asian teams in the 1950s. Since I use Ric Finlay's Tastats, this sort of exclusion is very easily accomplished.
Full post
The optimum age for a cricketer

Analysis performances to determine the optimum age for batsmen and bowlers

Ric Finlay
25-Feb-2013
Our CSW database has the capacity to analyse data by age, so I decided to use it to investigate what age(s), if any, provided significantly better performances.
My sample was Sheffield Shield data since 1977, when the newest state, Tasmania, entered the competition. This provided reasonably homogenous data, with little of the cultural variation that might be obtained using Test match data. The sample thus analysed over nearly 950 matches, involving 800 players.
The results are in the table below:
Full post
Record-holders for most number of Test runs

A summary of the record holders for the most runs in Tests

Ric Finlay
25-Feb-2013
Holders of the record for most Test runs
From Match Number Player Tests Record Held Final Runs Starting Days Record Held
1 C Bannerman 4 239 19/03/1877 1752
5 G Ulyett 11 676 04/01/1882 952
16 WL Murdoch 8 860 13/08/1884 731
24 A Shrewsbury 43 1277 14/08/1886 5641
67 J Darling 1 1293 23/01/1902 26
68 SE Gregory 3 1366 18/02/1902 116
71 AC MacLaren 3 1531 14/06/1902 42
74 C Hill 84 3412 26/07/1902 8374
158 JB Hobbs 102 5410 27/12/1924 4567
260 WR Hammond 414 7249 29/06/1937 12209
674 MC Cowdrey 21 7459 02/12/1970 482
695 GStA Sobers 219 8032 28/03/1972 3562
914 G Boycott 53 8114 28/12/1981 688
967 SM Gavaskar 248 10122 16/11/1983 3392
1215 AR Border 558 11174 28/02/1993 4657
1773 Brian Lara 116 11953 29/11/2005 1057
1889 SR Tendulkar 1 12037 21/10/2008 -
This offering is less an analysis than a useful table to ensure you dominate at quiz nights. Alternatively, you may be able to impress your workmates at a tea break with your far-reaching knowledge. Questions you will now be able to answer include:
  • Who has held the record for the longest time? (Wally Hammond)
  • Who has held the record for the most number of Tests? (Allan Border)
  • Which player held the record for just one Test? (Joe Darling)
  • How many players have held the record? (seventeen)
  • How many players held the record in the 1902 calendar year? (five)
  • Who was the only player to hold the record posthumously? (Hammond)
  • How many currenly-living players have held the record? (six)
  • Which country has provided the most players to hold the record? (England, seven)
Note: The dates used are the dates of the last day of the Test in which the record was achieved, rather than the actual date on which it was achieved.
Full post
Analysing wicketkeepers by byes conceded

Assessing wicket-keeping ability in Tests by analysing the rate of conceding byes

David Barry
25-Feb-2013
Ananth has tried to rate wicketkeepers in his post below, but there are several problems with his analysis, most of them pointed out by commenters. Wicketkeeping is a fundamentally difficult part of cricket to analyse statistically – the usual records that people talk about are dismissals, but these are highly dependent on the bowlers. If Adam Gilchrist comes out as the best pure keeper, it is because he had a great bowling attack which tried to get edges (as opposed to, say, Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis, who often aimed for the pads or stumps).

Nevertheless, we can make a reasonable effort at assessing pure keeping ability by looking at bye rates. To some extent these are also dependent on the bowlers (if they spray the ball down leg a lot then there'll be more byes), but in general the results are much better.

The main stat I'll use here is byes per 600 balls. But this figure needs adjusting to be fair – wicket-keeping is easier in some countries than in others. I applied an adjustment factor by country, based on the overall bye rate of away keepers since World War II. (If you go back much further, you find that bye rates were much higher because keepers stood up to the stumps much more often to fast bowling.)

These were the bye rates per 600 balls for away keepers by country:
Australia: 3.24
Bangladesh: 3.25
England: 3.50
India: 4.96
New Zealand: 3.02
Pakistan: 4.97
South Africa: 2.60
Sri Lanka: 4.27 West Indies: 4.48 Zimbabwe: 1.19

I used as a reference point 3.5 byes per 600 balls. So, if a keeper conceded 2 byes in an innings in India, that would be adjusted to 2 * 3.5 / 4.96 = 1.14 byes.

Here are the results. I've given both the raw byes per 600 balls and the adjusted byes per 600 balls. Qualification: 20 Tests as wicket-keeper:

per 600 balls
name              m   balls   byes  byes  adj
PR Downton        30  29517   84    1.71  1.52
DJ Richardson     42  43222   143   1.99  2.22
APE Knott         95  101704  422   2.49  2.32
NS Tamhane        21  25659   137   3.20  2.37
IDS Smith         63  63672   277   2.61  2.63
Khaled Mashud     44  37099   152   2.46  2.69
SMH Kirmani       88  91761   506   3.31  2.70
KS More           49  54558   280   3.08  2.80
RW Taylor         57  59085   285   2.89  2.81
RD Jacobs         65  69122   294   2.55  2.83

Paul Downton had the good fortune to play some Tests for England in the 1980s, after the introduction of covered wickets and before the modern trend of picking keeper-batsmen. Khaled Mashud is the most surprising name to see here. This list is not perfect, but at least names like Knott and Taylor are near the top. The full list can be seen here.

It will become easier to assess wicket-keepers after some years of club-based Twenty20 cricket. With free player movement between sides, bowlers will bowl with various keepers over the course of a career. Then we'll be able to look at how many dismissals each keeper got off the same bowlers, and so dismissal counts will be a much more useful way of assessing pure keeping ability.

Note: There will be some errors in the byes tallies, because of keepers going off the field and being replaced. Also, I've given the bye rates to two decimal places, but I haven't checked how significant the second decimal place is.

Full post
Bangladesh in retreat

Analysing Bangladesh's progress since they were granted full ODI status

Ric Finlay
25-Feb-2013
I was keen to observe whether or not Bangladesh has made material progress since it won full ODI status ten years ago. To do this, I took the 17 bilateral one-day series of three matches against Test-playing opposition (and excluding Zimbabwe) that it has participated in over that time, and extracted the batting average of Bangladesh and its opponents in those series:
Comparing Bangladesh's batting average with opposition's in ODIs
Season Versus Opp. batting ave Bangla batting ave Batting ratio
2001-02 Pakistan 41.41 23.28 0.56
2002 Sri Lanka 43.31 17.93 0.41
2002-03 South Africa 55.27 15.10 0.27
  West Indies 51.38 20.30 0.40
2003 Australia 50.90 13.13 0.26
  Pakistan 45.03 23.23 0.52
2003-04 England 51.78 15.83 0.31
  West Indies 20.42 15.78 0.77
2004-05 New Zealand 25.92 14.78 0.57
  India 35.09 27.69 0.79
2005-06 Sri Lanka 29.09 22.48 0.77
  Australia 47.75 16.73 0.35
2007 Sri Lanka 27.19 15.27 0.56
2007-08 New Zealand 70.33 18.27 0.26
  South Africa 72.29 16.47 0.23
  Pakistan 47.54 22.84 0.48
2008 Australia 38.00 10.90 0.29
The ratio in the last column is obtained by dividing Bangladesh's batting average by the average of the opposition. It will be noted that all these values are less than 1, indicating that on no occasion has Bangladesh been able to match it with the opposition.
Full post
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