The keepers lead: an unconventional look at players on field
A detailed analysis of the time spent by players on the field through their career
Mark Boucher: most time spent by a wicket-keeper on field • AFP
Abhi had a very unusual request. He wanted me to find a way of determining the number of hours Tendulkar was on field during his international career. This was such an unconventional request that it intrigued me a lot. I set about the methodology, which turned out to be quite a bit tricky. Then, as I am wont to do, I decided to expand the scope of the exercise to all the players. That complicated the exercise further. But the results are fascinating.
I decided to use the balls faced, bowled, kept wicket or fielded as the base for all calculations. This is the most consistent measure and is available completely for most recent matches. I had to do some extrapolating for earlier matches, especially for the balls faced by the batsmen. The bowler balls and the fielder balls are, however, always available.
I decided to split the information into broadly two categories. One is the Active Balls, during which time the player has to be 100% aware and involved all the time and the other is the Passive Balls, during which the player is not at the centre of action. The bowler, batsman, batsman at the non-striker end and the wicket-keeper are always at the centre of action.
Active Balls refer to the following types of activities and can be added with reasonable amount of conviction..
- Batsman facing the bowling directly,
- Batsman at the non-striker end,
- Bowler delivering the ball and
- Wicket-keeper engaged in keeping.
Passive Balls refer to the following type of activities.
- Player fielding.
A few footnotes.
1. It is accepted that the two Batsman-related activities are not necessarily equivalent. In one, the batsman faces the ball, plays the same and then runs, if required. In the other, the player only runs, if required. However these are quite integrated activities and I did not want to affix an ad-hoc % of involvement level. Instead consider this as two sides of one activity, one requiring 120% effort and the other, 80% effort. Since the two numbers are almost the same for most players, this works out very well.
2. The bowler effort is split further into the fast bowler effort, requiring more effort and the spinner deliveries, requiring lesser effort. This takes care of the additional run-up required.
3. The wicket-keeper effort is valued as equivalent to the batsman-at-crease effort in view of the intense effort that is required before, during and after the delivery.
4. The Fielder effort will be taken in terms of time the same as wicket-keeper effort but will be given in a separate table since this represents much less taxing and lighter work-load. No way can we split this as close to the stumps or outfield because of the non-availability of data. Anyhow the close fielders might have to concentrate more but the outfielders would be running more. So this would about cancel out. Let us also ignore the few minutes players take off to get to the pavilion to have one or more breaks. There is no data on that. In all these cases I have avoided any ad-hoc weights.
So it is clear that there is present a certain amount of guesswork and approximation. However the idea is not to strive for unnecessary accuracy but move forward on the uncharted seas.
I will convert each delivery into time by using 42.5 seconds per delivery. This works out well across the years. Maybe they bowled more overs during the early years. But this works to nearly six and half playing hours per day which is the norm. I am not going to sit here and worry about the West Indian pace bowlers, or for that matter, the recent Indian teams, bowling at 12 overs per hour. They stay longer on the field, by choice.
There will be a slight tweaking for bowlers. The pace bowlers' deliveries would be clocked at 45 seconds and the spinners at 40 seconds. This will even out to the magical 42.5 seconds over the millions of deliveries bowled. It is possible that the fast bowlers expend more effort during their bowling efforts than the spinners. However I have decided that the additional seconds assigned will compensate for this partly. I do not want to assign any arbitrary effort related weight. The keepers remain at 42.5 seconds which evens out to their keeping for both types of bowlers.
I will do three tables. The first will be one on the batting and bowling times of players, other than wicket-keepers (who have kept wicket for a minimum of 10000 balls). The second will be on the fielding hours spent by these players. The third will be a special one for wicket-keepers on their keeping and batting duties. All the tables will cover players who have played in 25 or more Test matches or 40 ODI matches. These are long lists with around 500 players. Hence only the top-20 will be shown in the article.
Tests: Non-keeper Player - Batting/Bowling hours table
Player (Bat/Bow) Team Mats <--Total--> <-Bat:Act-> <-Bat:Pas-> <-Bowling-> Hours Hrs/M Balls Hours Balls Hours Balls Hours
The top-3 players based on the hours/match value are given below.
T.W Goddard (Saf) : 6.99 G.S.A Sobers (Win) : 6.87 V.M,Mankad (Ind) : 6.84
Tests: Wicket keepers - Keeping/Batting hours table
Player (Keeper) Team Mats <--Total--> <-Keeping-> <-Bat:Act-> <-Bat:Pas-> Hours Hrs/M Balls Hours Balls Hours Balls Hours
The top-3 players based on the hours/match value are given below.
J.H,B,Waite (Saf) : 16.94 F.M.Engineer (Ind) : 16.65 F.C.M.Alexander (Win): 15.57
Tests: Non-keeper Player Fielding hours table
Player (Bat/Bow) Team Mats <-Fld Tot--> Fielding Hours Hrs/Mat Balls
The top-3 players based on the hours/match value are given below.
E.Weekes (Win) : 15.12 J.B.Stollymeyer (Win): 14.59 A.P.Sheahan (Aus) : 14.43
ODIs: Non-keeper Player - Batting/Bowling hours table
Player (Bat/Bow) Team Mats <--Total--> <-Bat:Act-> <-Bat:Pas-> <-Bowling-> Hours Hrs/M Balls Hours Balls Hours Balls Hours
The top-3 players based on the hours/match value are given below.
G.R.Marsh (Aus) : 1.55 J.H.Kallis (Saf) : 1.53 N.C.Johnson (Zim): 1.52
ODIs: Wicket keepers - Keeping/Batting hours table
Player (Keeper) Team Mats <--Total--> <-Keeping-> <-Bat:Act-> <-Bat:Pas-> Hours Hrs/M Balls Hours Balls Hours Balls Hours
The top-3 players based on the hours/match value are given below.
M.S.Dhoni (Ind) : 3.96 A.C.Gilchrist (Aus) : 3.91 A.Bagai (Can) : 3.85
ODIs: Non-keeper Player Fielding hours table
Player (Bat/Bow) Team Mats <-Fld Tot--> Fielding Hours Hrs/Mat Balls
The top-4 players based on the hours/match value are given below.
D.I.Gower (Eng) : 3.41 M.A.Atherton (Eng) : 3.41 A.J.Lamb (Eng) : 3.39 Fairbrother (Eng) : 3.39
A final compilation. I have added the Active time spent by players across the two formats and have given below the top 5 players in two classifications. One is the table for non-keepers, based on their batting and bowling times. The other is the table on Wicket-keepers based on their keeping and batting times. Let me add that I might have added different varieties of the fruit, but these are all apples.
Batting/Bowling
This list would not surprise anyone. Kallis is the supreme all-rounder, having scored 22949 runs and captured 529 wickets. Tendulkar, who, until couple of years back, could be called an all-rounder in ODIs, has scored 32290 runs and captured 199 wickets. Dravid (22828 runs and 5 wickets) is here only because of the 18800+ balls he kept wicket for. Steve Waugh (18496 runs and 287 wickets) and Jayasuriya (20401 runs and 420 wickets) are close to being called all-rounders, at least in ODIs.
WicketKeeping/Batting
This list has three of the greatest keeper-batsmen of all times at the top. Boucher, still counting, with his tally of 437 matches is way ahead of Gilchrist who had played 383 matches. Stewart and Sangakkara have relinquished their keeping duties often but have kept wicket for tens of thousands of balls. This is a recognition of the most demanding task on the field. The keepers are unheralded if they are not the high profile ones like Dhoni and Gilchrist.
And the last table. I have added the Passive times from the Test and ODI tables and given the top-5 here. These timings might vary, fielders fielding in the slips, point, mid-on or long-off might have varying levels of activity. At least they would be different varieties of bananas to justify the addition. First slip might not be Passive, but nothing can be done about it. The time spent off filed is also ignored. No data is available. Kallis might have spent time off the field but so would the other players. The following table represents the total fielding time spent on field. I am not going to add the Active and Passive times. The readers can do that after applying a factor to the passive times.
Fielding times for non-keepers
Tests: Non-keeper player - Batting/Bowling times table, please click/right-click here.
Tests: Wicket-keeper - Keeping/Batting times table, please click/right-click here.
Tests: Non-keeper player - Fielding times table, please click/right-click here.
ODIs: Non-keeper player - Batting/Bowling times table, please click/right-click here.
ODIs: Wicket-keeper - Keeping/Batting times table, please click/right-click here.
ODIs: Non-keeper player - Fielding times table, please click/right-click here.
Anantha Narayanan has written for ESPNcricinfo and CastrolCricket and worked with a number of companies on their cricket performance ratings-related systems