Kartikeya Date
Match-by-match analysis of control data
How much would individual batsmen score if they batted all 20 overs by themselves, and how frequently would they be in control?
Kartikeya Date
22-Jun-2014
In my last piece I discussed ESPNcricinfo's "Control" measure. During commentary, the site's ball-by-ball commentators and data-entry operators record whether or not a batsman is "in control" or "not in control" for each delivery.
The records for the 2011, 2012 and 2013 editions of the IPL show that batsmen are in control about 75% of the time in T20. Batsmen are dismissed once for every five times that they miss or miscue the ball. Over the course of a single IPL season, the highest Control measure recorded by a team is 79% (or 95/120 balls faced).
In this post, I will look at how Control correlates with results on a match-by-match basis. I will also look at individual batsmen in the IPL and the control measures they have achieved. For convenience, I will consistently give the Control measure per 120 balls, for both individual batsmen and teams. Whenever I refer to the IPL in the remainder of this post, I am referring to the 2011, 2012 and 2013 editions of the league.
Full postMining control statistics
What can data based on the control batsmen have over their shots tell you about innings and results?
Kartikeya Date
10-Jun-2014
It used to be that following a Test match without being able to watch it meant listening to radio commentary or live online commentary. These days, games in progress are described using increasingly sophisticated and detailed statistical measures. Many of these are available on TV as well. ESPNcricinfo's record of cricket matches allows us to paint a picture of a game in progress (or a recent game) beyond the edited packages provided by television highlights. While games are in progress, one can look up a wide range of records, from wagon wheels, to over comparisons, to player-v-player records, to partnership records, instead of relying on the largesse of the director of the broadcast and the whims of live commentators.
Recently, ESPNcricinfo expanded the range of statistics it offers for each game. It now records intentions, using the "Control" statistic. Control is basically a measure of whether or not the ball went where the batsman intended it to go. This is determined based on where the ball hit the bat, whether or not it was mistimed, and whether or not the batsman played at the ball*. It is recorded by the reporters who do the live ball-by-ball data entry and is a binary measure. A batsman is either in Control or not in Control for each delivery.
The example below shows this metric for Ravi Bopara's half-century in England's chase against Sri Lanka at Lord's. The measure reveals his troubles against Ajantha Mendis. A look at the commentary for this innings tells us that Bopara aimed sweep shots five times in 13 deliveries against Mendis, connected once, and was dismissed while attempting the shot. It also tells us that Bopara did not have similar troubles with Sri Lanka's other spinner Sachithra Senanayake. All these points lead one to the possibility that Bopara wasn't reading Mendis from the hand. I happened to watch a part of the post-match review by Ian Botham, who said that Bopara was unlucky to be dismissed the way he was. The data suggests that he was perhaps lucky to survive as long as he did, and even connected with a sweep shot once. This isn't as good as watching the game, but if you couldn't watch, this type of reconstruction would be the next best thing.
Full postThe calculus of the batting average
The batting average is a misleading indicator. How about a scale that is more representative of batting performance?
Kartikeya Date
29-May-2014
The batting average in cricket is the number of runs made by a player per dismissal. Not-outs inflate averages. To get a sense of the extent of this problem, compare the records of Brian Lara and Steve Waugh. The former had six not-outs in 232 Test innings. The latter had 46 in 260. Lara batted most frequently at No. 4, and had one not-out in 148 innings at that position. Waugh batted most frequently at No. 5, and had 22 not-outs in 142 innings there. This makes it basically meaningless to compare the batting averages of Waugh and Lara. Yet this is commonly done with Test batsmen.
Full postThe time and space of T20 cricket
Insisting that T20 is simply ODI cricket minus the boring middle overs is disingenuous
Kartikeya Date
15-May-2014
IPL and ODI data is used in this post. Data from the IPL is from the first innings of 395 games from the first six seasons. Data used from ODIs is from 1222 ODIs featuring all Test-playing teams excluding Bangladesh and Zimbabwe. Matches involving Associate teams are excluded as well.
I've been interested in the idea of a balanced contest between bat and ball for a while now. The substantive basis of my argument that T20 is not cricket in any meaningful sense but a different sport altogether is that the balance between bat and ball in a 20-over contest, with ten wickets available to the batting side and nine fielders available to the bowling side, is radically different from that in even a 50-over contest. To some cricket fans, this seems obvious; to others, it appears foreign. It is impossible to escape the conclusion that insisting that T20 is simply the very familiar ODI form minus the boring middle overs is essential to marketing the new form successfully, since the cricketing public is too shrewd to spend good money on some unknown new sport.
Here are some clear differences in the balance between bat and ball in the 20-over game and the 50-over game. I'm using only the first innings of matches. The data from the second innings is less reliable because the game is already set by the time the second innings begins.
Full postAre T20s more exciting than ODIs?
There may be more last-over finishes but weak teams win T20 games more often than they do ODIs
Kartikeya Date
29-Apr-2014
Since the first international T20 game was played on February 17, 2005, runs and wickets have occurred in ODIs at the rate of 242 runs and eight wickets per 50 overs. In international T20 games runs and wickets have occurred at the rate of 146 runs and seven wickets per 20 overs. These figures are based on ODIs involving only the top eight Test-playing nations (excluding Bangladesh, Zimbabwe and the Associate teams).
As a point of comparison, since February 17, 2005, it has taken 107.3 overs on average for ten wickets to fall in a Test, at a cost of 328 runs. Since the first international T20 game, batsmen have been dismissed once every 18 balls in T20, every 37 balls in ODIs, and every 65 balls in Tests. Since all rules except for over quotas and the length of innings are identical across formats, this is a useful baseline.
| Format | Balls faced | Runs | Wickets |
| T20 | 120 | 146.5 | 6.7 |
| ODI | 300 | 241.5 | 8.2 |
| Tests | 645 | 327.6 | 10.0 |
A measure for batting and bowling effectiveness in T20
Strike rates and economy rates do not quite tell the whole story. Introducing a new, two-dimensional method of assessing players in T20
Kartikeya Date
16-Apr-2014
The data used in this post is from all the games in the six seasons of the IPL. A player v player chart is available for each IPL game, and so is the number of dot balls, singles, twos, threes, fours, sixes and dismissals for each batsman and each bowler, and for each batsman-bowler pair is available. My thanks to S Rajesh for help with this data set.
Traditionally, batting in cricket occurs in innings, while bowling occurs in spells. Innings and spells have their own rhythms, their own specific phases. The disfiguring compression brought about by the 20-over contest renders spells and innings moot. Every ball counts. Dot balls are considered vital. The batting average, which tells us the number of runs a batsman makes per dismissal, is not necessarily important in T20; neither is the bowling average. Batting strike rates are deceptive, given the small number of deliveries in most single innings.
For example, a batsman could hit three sixes in an innings and still score 21 off 20 balls. Another batsman could score 21 off 20 with a single boundary. The overall effect of either on a team's fortunes could be very different from the other. In the latter innings, the strike would keep being rotated, and runs would also be scored at the other end. In the former, the batsman would probably play a lot of scoreless deliveries and use up overs valuable.
Full postThe problem with low catches
The cricket cognoscenti is largely eager to give the fielder the benefit of the doubt when a catch is referred. This should not be the case
Kartikeya Date
10-Apr-2014
Mahela Jayawardene was spectacularly caught at square cover by Michael Lumb in the World T20 game between England and Sri Lanka on March 27, only to have the decision reversed by TV umpire Steve Davis upon review. Davis was universally condemned. "Absolute Shocker!!!" tweeted England Test wicketkeeper Matthew Prior. In the Cricketer's view Jayawardene "should have been caught - in fact he was caught". On the BBC the commentator Jonathan Agnew and former Sri Lanka batsman Russel Arnold were in agreement that the catch was clean. Andrew McGlashan summarised the matter when he wrote: "Steve Davis ruled there was doubt, as is so often the case with TV pictures, but on this occasion few who viewed the images could quite fathom the decision."
After the ICC released the exact footage used by Davis to make his decision, most publications shared this new information with fans without comment, but the great New Zealand batsman Martin Crowe stood his ground about the catch having been legitimate. In doing so, he touched on a deeper truth about how we watch cricket and how we view evidence in it. Before the clarifying picture became available, the episode was seen as yet another in a long list of perfectly legitimate catches denied because the video replay inserted doubt where there ought to have been none.
I was not convinced that Davis was wrong. First, I have for long been a supporter of the TV review being used extensively for low catches. Given what the current law states (Law 32 and Law 19 are both essential to fully define a catch), given that cricket is not played on astroturf, given the comparative size of the cricket ball and the adult human hand (specifically the fingers), basic geometry and physics suggest that low catches should be legally completed very rarely. It is impossible to say with confidence, unless the fingers are all together and the ball is deep in the palm, that a ball lying in two hands that are resting on a grass outfield does not touch the grass at all. For this is what the law requires in a fair catch.
Full postWhy T20 is a disfigured caricature of cricket
Scaling the contest down to 20 overs without changing the rules only leads to a grotesque imbalance between bat and ball
Kartikeya Date
24-Mar-2014
I have previously argued that T20 is not really cricket. That was based, in part, on the simple observation that giving teams ten wickets to play with over 20 overs against nine fielders and five bowlers (each limited to four overs each) skews the contest hopelessly in favour of the bat. I used the example of Chris Martin (Test average 2.36), who was arguably the worst batsman of his generation. Martin was dismissed 52 times in 615 deliveries in 104 Test innings. He faced 11.8 deliveries per dismissal. Eleven Chris Martins would have fallen two balls short of surviving 20 overs on average.
Typically, the counterpoint to this view has been to simply say that T20 is "different". The more obvious differences lie in the creation of the World Twenty20, played twice as often as the 50-over World Cup; and the purchase of the biggest players and the biggest commentators, and the presence of the biggest sponsors, in the IPL. These aspects of T20 are supposed to grant it the legitimacy of being cricket.
Today, when most people watch T20, I'd wager that they think they are watching cricket. The more sophisticated T20 aficionados may concede that T20 is cricket in miniature. This is at least an attempt to affirmatively describe how it is different. These arguments also come with the usual questioning of motives and suggestions to the effect that one is free to stay away if one doesn't like T20. Let's set that nonsense aside, because cricket is important and wonderful.
Full postWhat can speed guns tell us?
They may provide objective information about the pace of the bowling, but the complete picture is provided by also considering the way batsmen respond to pace
Kartikeya Date
16-Mar-2014
"To be objective," wrote the historians of science Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, "is to aspire to knowledge that bears no trace of the knower - knowledge unmarked by prejudice or skill, fantasy or judgement, wishing or striving. Objectivity is blind sight, seeing without inference, interpretation or intelligence."
We love objective information precisely because it appears to be indisputably true - true beyond the reach of argument. The speed of the ball is an "objective" measure provided by the ball-tracking package used to enhance the quality of the broadcast. The trajectory of the ball, where it was released from, where it pitched in relation to the stumps, where it was headed, where it was met by the bat, where it might have crossed the plane of the stumps, whether or not it bounced normally - all this information is available too. The data provided by all this technology is systematically verifiable. If you used the same apparatus in the same way, you will get the same readings for a particular delivery.
Speed guns are lethal ammunition for the casual cricket fan. How often have you heard the lament that a bowler is down to the mid-70s? The conclusion from this finding is often of the deadliest kind - the bowler isn't trying hard enough. But quite apart from such simplistic crudeness, speed guns can also be bewildering.
Full postRunning the rule over modern English batsmen
Why Atherton, Thorpe and other batsmen from the 1980s and 1990s were no worse than the current crop
Kartikeya Date
01-Mar-2014
Despite the fact that England play more Test cricket than any other Test team, no English player has scored 9000 Test runs or more. Alastair Cook will almost certainly change that in the near future. My last post, in which I considered only those 11 batsmen who have scored at least 10,000 career Test runs, did not include any Englishmen. In this post, I consider 15 recent and contemporary English batsmen. They cover three distinct English teams from the 1980s, the 1990s and the 2000s. Conventional wisdom suggests that recent English teams under Michael Vaughan, Andrew Strauss and Cook have been better than teams of the 1980s and 1990s. Ashes success has something to do with this view. Current English batsmen also have healthier averages than their predecessors.
I think this view is wrong. The record shows that English batsmen from the 1980s and 1990s were no worse than English batsmen today. What has been different in recent years is that the bowling attacks available to Vaughan, Strauss and Cook have been better than other attacks of the day, while attacks available to earlier English captains were not. Mike Atherton, who ended his career with a Test average of 37, opened the batting for England, against the likes of Walsh and Ambrose; Wasim, Waqar and later Shoaib; McGrath, Gillespie, McDermott and Lee; and Donald and Pollock.
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