England's ODI woes, and lefties at the slog

India went into the ODI series against England as clear favourites, but even they wouldn't have anticipated the rout that has happened over the last couple of weeks. Unlike Ricky Ponting, who was unlucky with the toss in the Tests versus India earlier in the season, Kevin Pietersen has had the coin roll his way three times in five games, and England have chased on three occasions and set the target twice. Despite the different permutations, the results were the same - victory for the home team (though Pietersen can genuinely claim that the weather hurt England's cause a couple of times).

The defeat in Cuttack was England's 11th in their last 12 ODIs against India in India, and while most teams struggle in these conditions against the home team's powerful batting line-up, the case has been a trifle more desperate for England. Since 2000 they've won five out of 20 ODIs in this country (four against India, and one versus West Indies in the Champions Trophy in 2006). The win-loss ratio of 0.33 ranks below that of all teams except Zimbabwe, who beat India three times in eight games between 2000 and 2002, but have since lost their way completely.

As the table below indicates, England's problem has more often than not been the inability of their bowlers to stem the runs: their batsmen have done a reasonable job, averaging 5.12 runs per over, but the bowlers leak nearly five-and-a-half - only Zimbabwe and Pakistan have been more profligate.

Breaking up the numbers further, it turns out that England have fallen behind the eight-ball in each of the three phases that an ODI can conveniently be broken into - the first 15 overs, the middle period, and the slog overs. In each of the three periods, England's bowlers concede more runs per over than their batsmen score, with the difference being most pronounced towards the end of the innings. This has been the case during these five matches as well: in the first 15 overs of this series, England scored at 5.62 and conceded 5.48; in the next 25 they managed 5.22 with the bat but conceded 6.25 with the ball; and in the slog overs the difference was the largest - they scored at 7.24 and conceded 9.97. England haven't been helped by their inability to take wickets either: in the first 15 the Indian batsmen averaged 68.50 per wicket to England's 38.36, while in the next 25 the corresponding numbers were 44.60 for India and 24.86 for England.

England's lack of a high-quality spinner is an obvious shortcoming, but the numbers suggest that isn't such an important reason for the dismal results: spinners have done little of note for Pakistan and West Indies when they've played in India, but that hasn't stopped those teams from achieving some significant wins.

Are left-handers better at the slog?
"It's generally the left-handers who launch a successful assault in the slog overs, for I feel the right-handers have been sorted out. Bowlers are pretty accurate with their yorkers and low full-tosses against the right-handers, but they normally struggle to get it right against the left-handers." Those were Mahendra Singh Dhoni's words in the aftermath of Yuvraj Singh's whirlwind second successive hundred in the ODI series against England. Yuvraj was in a league of his own over those two days, but Dhoni probably got carried away into making those remarks about right-handers, for the stats show that they have been no less destructive in the end overs of ODIs. Think the two Andrews (Flintoff and Symonds), Abdul Razzaq, and Justin Kemp, just to mention a few, and you get the picture.

The table below lists the top ten batsmen in terms of scoring-rate after the 40th over of ODIs; eight of them are right-handers. Yuvraj and Jacob Oram are the only lefties who make the cut. Dhoni himself is at the top in terms of runs scored in the last ten overs - 1368 - but he only got them at 7.60 to the over. Overall, too, right-handers compare rather favourably, scoring at exactly the same rate as the lefties.