Kridaya Cricket Blog

The most recent innovation in one-day cricket has turned matches upside down. I am referring to the new Batting Powerplays which can be taken by the batting team at any time they want. Before that, as we all know, the bowling team decided when they wanted to take the 5-over fielding-restricted segments. We saw the new rule causing a lot of headaches for the fielding team in the recent SA-Australia matches.

The main effect of this rule comes in the 2nd innings when the batting team is chasing a consequential total. Just when the bowling team may think that they have the run rate under control, the batting team takes the Powerplay and takes enough off them to reduce the run rate to a pressureless 4-5 runs per over. Since the fielding team does not know when the Powerplay will be taken, they are sometimes forced to bowl out some bowlers (such as spin bowlers) to avoid disaster in the Powerplay. Previously, some spinners (Saqlain Mushtaq, Anil Kumble) would be held back even for the final over.

In the long term, this could also play the opposite way too. Once batting teams understand that they could make a lot more off the Powerplay, they may decide to take it easy during the regular overs and bet huge on the batting Powerplay. But in between, they could lose good wickets and when the Powerplay comes, they don’t have good batsmen to take advantage of the Powerplay.

Secondly, the need for making maximum use of Powerplay may result in some injudicious slogging resulting in lost wickets and missed run-making opportunities because of mindless swings. And finally, while the batting team may get a lot of runs off the Powerplay, they may not get enough to get them out of the hole they are in. As an example, consider the just-concluded match between India and Sri Lanka.

In the first innings, the timing of the Powerplay can be challenging. Ideally, you want two genuine batsmen already set, but not too tired, who are capable of piercing the inner fielding circle and finding the gaps in the boundary. The problem is that if you wait too long, there is a greater chance that you would lose many wickets and your lower order is left to make sense of the Powerplay. If you do it too soon, the batsmen may not feel ready to take big risks, especially if they are already 3 or 4 wickets down. Sometime between the 35th and 45th over seems to be a good time from a logical standpoint, but we will have to  see how this works in practice after seeing this in action in more matches.

You don’t get a lot of games when the team you have been supporting for the entire match wins, but suddenly you don’t feel like cheering for them anymore. The 1992 World Cup semifinal between England and South Africa was one such experience for me. I was rooting for England to win the match and they seemed to have a good chance of closing out the match when South Africa needed 22 runs off 13 balls for victory.

Suddenly rain intervened in the match and the officials, instead of doing the common sense thing in a big match, lopped off 2 overs for South Africa, resulting in a farcical, absurd target of 22 runs off a single ball. The two SA batsmen, Brian McMillan and Dave Richardson, were shattered and disgusted. The World Cup has always been a bucket of sorrows for South Africa, but nothing (even the 1999 semifinal with Australia) can compare with the way they were robbed of a place in the final.

It had been a crazy World Cup, with the favorites Australia not even reaching the semi-finals. Pakistan, making a return from the dead after a poor start to their campaign, squeezed into the semi-final and then, in an unforgettable semi-final, riding on a stunning batting display by the then-youngster Inzamam-ul-Haq, eliminated New Zealand, who had defeated everyone else in the tournament. Pakistan would go on to defeat England in another enthralling match, thus landing the World Cup and preventing it from falling into the hands of a team which was stained by its rain-rule-assisted victory.

Book cricket was a form of cricket that was very popular for a time in the Indian sub-continent, mainly the main Test playing nations of India and Pakistan. As Krish Ashok explains,

The classic version of this game a involved large, voluminous book (hereinafter referred to as The Book) being randomly opened and the last digit of the page number being scrutinized like Dickie Bird pondering over a leg-before decision. 2, 4 and 6 counted as they were, and 8 counted as 1 run. A page number ending in 0 was of course out. [...]

There were the Openers (the ones who opened The Book first) and the Middle-Order (players who preferred opening The Book right down the middle, as if it had magical powers that kept the dreaded zero-ending page numbers away) and the annoying Accumulators (who would fold certain pages that end in a 6 and keep opening that very page till somebody realized that something was rotten in the state of CBSE pass mark). Games lasted 2 innings and the final innings was usually a spine tingling affair, and often some idiot would get over-excited and attract the attention of the teacher [...]

Pinastro describes one form of book cricket, which that he created and called “Ludo Cricket”

I used to play a very different form of book cricket indigenously developed by Pinasto and his Sister.It had all the elements of Modern day T20 Cricket. Quick Scores , Quick Wickets and Massive Entertainement.The game was basically a cross breed of two timeless masterpieces of Time-Pass games ; LUDO and BOOK-CRICKET.

I named it LUDO Cricket.Me and My sister used to play this Weird Form of Cricket for hours and sometimes days.The plus point was it recreated the same thrill generated out of all the action on the field like , the Commentator’s excited commentary over the huge six that goes out of the park,The crucial Third Umpire decisions,The batsman hit on the Grill, Batsman being Run out by just a few inches from the crease, the sledging wars between the players,Catch being dropped by the fielder in the Slip,No Ball, Wide,Stunning Catch by the Wicket Keeper and almost everything that used to happen during the 1990’s to 2000 in the world of cricket.

Take a peek at his post. He has some very interesting pictures of the game like this excerpt of a picture:

Zapak.com seems to have an online version of the game. I don’t have much idea of how much it is similar to the dead-tree version.

A mini-resurgence by Australia in the T20 matches turned out to be a mirage, as South Africa wins the ODI series with one match still to go. Echoes of how they won the Test series by the second match itself. This time, South Africa do not have their regular captain, Graeme Smith, either. So it is not just good leadership behind SA victories.

If things continue at this rate, Australia are faced with some unpleasant times ahead, with many questions still to be answered. Their return series against South Africa does not promise to be any different. It would be hard to avoid a whitewash in their current form. As we noted before, Ricky Ponting is very unlucky to be the skipper in the midst of a team makeover. Like Sachin Tendulkar, who received the captaincy during some rough times, Ponting is likely to go down in history as a great batsman, but an average captain whose initial good fortune was bolstered by extraordinary talent within the team.

This was not the intended script: Last year, the Australians were on a roll, equalling the Test record for most wins in a row. But like in 2001, India stopped them again with an unexpected victory. But unlike in 2001, it was a real defeat rather than a miracle and portended their slide from the top. There has always been talk of Australian slides, most notably after the 2005 Ashes, but also after a 3-0 whitewash in New Zealand just before the last World Cup. But this time, it seems to be real and will take some time to heal.

But be aware: A weak Australian team does not mean that it is going to lose to Bangladesh tomorrow. All it means is that the matches between the top 4 teams (Australia, SA, India and England) will be more competitive than usual. This is good for cricket all around. But the others (especially Sri Lanka outside home) will have to raise their game considerably to match Australia.

Australia have some breathing space before the SA tour. They are playing five one-dayers and a T20 against New Zealand, which will end by the 15th of February, before flying to South Africa for the tour that will last till April. The first Test starts on February 26.

Michael Bevan was one of the best ODI batsmen ever. During his career, he repeatedly pulled Australia out of the fire, sometimes playing with the tailenders, and dragging them over the finish line. Bevan ended up with almost 7000 runs from 232 matches with a phenomenal average of 53.58. One of the reasons for his high average was that it was really difficult to get him out – he was unbeaten 67 times in the 196 innings that he played. That is 34% of the time. Even a solid middle-order batsman like Steve Waugh has been not out only 20% of the time.

It is illuminating to look at the two players who have similar averages as Bevan. Mike Hussey’s current stats are very similar to Bevan. Hussey has an average of 53.85 (just above Bevan) and has been not out 28 times out of 75 innings (37% of the time). Both Hussey and Bevan have done well at No. 4 (56.87 vs. 59.60); This position was Bevan’s best position and Hussey’s 2nd best, Hussey having an enormous average of 117.66 at No. 7. Kevin Pietersen with an average of 48.36 has been not out 19% of the time. He has actually performed better down the order than at No. 3 and No. 4. Although Hussey and Pietersen have played similar number of innings, Kevin has more runs (3047 vs. 2531) and more consequential innings (27 vs. 18 innings over 50).

Is it useful to have a batsman who remains unbeaten? In Tests, it may be useful when such a batsman is paired with a more free-flowing batsman. Bowlers would be demoralized by a stonewall on one end and punishment on the other. If the anchoring batsman can rotate the strike, then you can have huge innings totals. Such a batsman is also invaluable in a 4th innings chase, or a batting collapse when you just want to shut out the opposition bowlers for some time. However, Bevan was never able to replicate his ODI success in Tests (a poor average of 29.07). Perhaps someone like Chanderpaul (in his recent form) would be more appropriate for a debate on the subject.

But we are talking about ODI’s, so is this useful? Bevan was able to anchor Australia to many victories, but they definitely were the ascendant team during those times. Bevan’s batting strike rate is a poor 74 runs per 100 balls. So in many cases, Australia could have made a larger score when batting first, or succeeded in the chase because their bowlers had limited the target that they had to chase. Most of Bevan’s big scores were not quick scoring innings. It can be debated whether a more aggressive batsman could have ended the match sooner during the chase.

The batting team’s Powerplay may mean that an anchoring batsman like Bevan finds no place in an ODI team. The batting team has to make tons of runs at the end, because larger targets are becoming easier to chase down. Having a batsman who is more interested in playing safe shots to preserve his wicket is less useful than someone with the more risky and unorthodox shots that has the potential to fetch 20 runs in an over.

The “unbeatable” batsman also has the danger of be hyped up over his average. This may cause two problems. One is that they keep trying to maintain their average by playing safer instead of taking calculated risks – this will have a heavy tax on the team when they are batting first in an ODI. Second is that the pressure of inflated expectations could weigh on them, so when they are in a slump, they try to hit large scores to get back into form, instead of slowing working themselves back into form. Hussey seems to suffer from that, Pietersen less so.

Weaker or improving teams have typically relied on such a batsman, because they need someone who can be there till the end. Essentially, what that means is other batsmen are not capable or ready to take responsibility for the team’s failures. For a long time, Tendulkar played this role for India, so that when he was out, the Indian batting order collapsed if the remaining task was too steep. When that changed, India started winning more.

Continuing on our posts on irregular cricket (tennis ball cricket and street cricket), we explore a specialty of such games: In many games, only one batsman will be playing and there will not be any runner at the other end. The reason, of course, is the lack of enough players for a full-fledged game. But here is where the fun starts:

1. Although this may seem to reduce confusion caused by miscommunication between two batsmen, it creates more difficulties for the batsman for taking runs hit to an area behind the wicket. The batsman has to look backwards and then figure out if he should run. A runner would already have started down the pitch asking the batsman to go for a run.
2. All the fielders have to just look at one batsman to run out. It is much easier to figure out who to throw the ball to, as you can easily see if the batsman will make his ground. In most games, it is understood that you need to run out the batsman at the end that he is running to, but sometimes you are allowed to run out the batsman at either end. The latter can be confusing because it can be tricky to note when a wicket is broken at one end and what ground the batsman has covered at the other end.
3. Fielders do not need to change their fielding positions after each ball, like they would have to with different batsmen (especially a combination of left and right hand batsmen) at either end. Bowlers also have it simple. They don’t need to change bowling styles drastically.
4. The batsman gets more tired quickly as they have to face every ball, instead of being able to rotate the strike and relieve the pressure.

So, you thought batting on the streets was too easy. Well, as you can see from the above, it is not quite so simple!

The difference between the top teams and the rest is how many passengers they have. Some teams have genuine match-winners, but because they don’t have enough quality throughout the team, they do not sustain any winning form. West Indies and Sri Lanka are two excellent examples. The West Indians have Chris Gayle and Shivnarine Chanderpaul, but no one else to support them. So when they fail, the rest of the team falls along with them and they have some disastrous and embarrassing moments.

The Sri Lankans have Murali, Sangakkara, Jayawardene and now Mendis. But for years now of being a top team in one-day internationals, they still haven’t broken into the top tiers of cricket teams. As we noted before, Sri Lanka has just won 4 series against the top 7 cricket playing nations, all at home. Their record abroad has been improving, but not by much. The Lankan team promises much on paper, but delivers little.

To a large extent, this is because they have many players who are simply non-performers when it matters the most. Sri Lanka, as we have mentioned several times in the past, have played too many tests against the bottom tier countries like Bangladesh and West Indies. This has resulted in inflated batting and spectacular bowling averages that mean nothing.

Consider the Test records of the Sri Lanka team:

Warnapura:      9 Tests,  654 at 46.71
Sangakkara:    78 Tests, 6525 at 54.37
Jayawardene:  100 Tests, 7959 at 52.36
Samaraweera:   47 Tests, 2800 at 45.16
Kapugedera:     7 Tests,  376 at 34.18
Dilshan:       50 Tests, 2899 at 41.41

At first sight, this doesn’t look too bad. You have 2 batsmen with 50+ averages and another 3 batsmen with 40+ averages. However, let’s examine the record by removing Bangladesh, and Zimbabwe.

Warnapura:      5 Tests,  460 at 57.50
Sangakkara:    62 Tests, 5113 at 50.13
Jayawardene:   81 Tests, 6679 at 50.60
Samaraweera:   34 Tests, 1946 at 38.92
Kapugedera:     6 Tests,  221 at 22.10
Dilshan:       36 Tests, 1909 at 34.09

Except for Warnapura, who astonishingly had a poor series against the hapless Bangladeshis, the averages of the rest of the Sri Lankan team go down. Sangakkara and Jayawardene continue hold up, but Jayawardene mostly on his home soil performances. Kapugedera has an average that would be embarrassing for an ODI batsman.

As for Samaraweera and Dilshan, their averages fall by 7 points if you discount their performances against the minnows. Both of them have been in the team for nearly 50 Tests each and they have only hit a solitary century each outside the Indian subcontinent. Imagine how many other Sri Lankan first-class batsmen have lost their chances for playing international cricket, because each time the selectors come close to dropping these batsmen, they come to form against bottom-of-the-barrel teams.

Today, Dilshan hit an unbeaten 137 against Pakistan. So for the time being, his place is not under danger. But unfortunately, this is the cycle with these below-average players. They just make enough to stay in the team, and keep promising youngsters out.

All this goes to show how short-sighted the Sri Lankan Board is. If they do not insist on consistent excellence and do not place importance on results outside Sri Lanka against worthy opposition, mediocrity is what they deserve and what they will get. It reminds us of the old ways of the Indian team, when they would make under-prepared pitches at home for spinners. India would never be beaten at home, but needless to say, they never won anything away, either. Only in this decade, has the appetite to win everywhere shown up in the Indian team.

Statistics are the bread-and-butter of sportswriters. Sports fans love how we can analyze the best players and teams in different conditions and times. Games like soccer provide very limited opportunities for statistical analysis. But cricket with its ball-by-ball action has inexhaustible possibilities for data mining. I don’t mean in any sense to demean this activity. It is part of the fun of being a cricket enthusiast. Numerical data also provides us guidance in expectations for team performance and improvement.

However, in the realm of one-day cricket, statistical analysis for many aspects of the game is becoming worse than useless. Analysis only makes sense when you are comparing performances that take place in constant conditions. Let me start with the caveat that every cricket match is different: grounds, pitches, teams, etc. But you could make an argument that over a long period, such an entire career, many of these variables iron themselves out and so you may be able to do some comparisons. But that argument falls flat on the many changes to the rules of one-day internationals as well as the strategies used in the games.

Consider the following:

1. There have been different rain rules until the Duckworth-Lewis method came into being. With a run-rate based rain rule, the team batting second had an unfair advantage, while the best-scoring overs gave it a distinct disadvantage. Teams and players had to play differently according to those circumstances. Nowadays, when there is a chance of rain, teams have to be very careful not to lose wickets and can sometimes afford to play out a few overs if they happen to be ahead on runs.
    
2. The idea of openers hitting sixers from the first ball only originated in the 1992 World Cup (20 years after the first ODI), and the idea of BOTH openers doing it came from the Sri Lankan team just before the 1996 World Cup. Comparing openers before and after this period is meaningless. For example, the Indian opener Sunil Gavaskar had a solitary ODI hundred, because the idea of openers batting faster was not in vogue then.
    
3. Runs from wides and no-balls are now treated differently than before. We also have free hits that didn’t exist before. Players add easy runs to their record without even the risk of being out.
    
4. Advancements in technology reduces mistakes made by umpires. Starting with run-out decisions, we now have third umpires for deciding on clean catches and providing guidance on LBW’s and so on. This is also an issue with Test stats. Technology has also reduced the risk to batsmen from dangerous fast bowlers and provided improved bats that carry enormous power for them to hit freely. Even mishits end up as sixers behind the wicketkeeper. 
    
5. Once upon a time, the first 15 overs had fielding restrictions. Now it is 10 + 5 + 5, allowing teams to post bigger scores. The most recent innovation is that the batting team can decide when to take a 5-over Powerplay, which they will do only at the most opportune time. 

In short, this is not your father’s ODI. It is not even your elder brother’s ODI match. The pace of change has picked up with the ICC trying to popularize the game and make it more appealing to the crowds. The huge success of T20 is putting pressure on ODI to change or die. Until we reach some stability, comparing batsmen, bowlers and teams from different ODI periods (even though they are a fraction of the Test match era) is essentially an exercise in futility.

[photo licensed from Talisen]

As a follow-up to my post on street cricket, let me elaborate a bit on tennis ball cricket. As you would guess from the name, it is played exactly like cricket except that a tennis ball is used instead of a hard leather ball. Tennis ball cricket is very popular among young cricketers as well as social cricketers, i.e., those who are just having some fun instead of aspiring to become a professional. Many non-profit organizations organize tennis ball cricket tournaments so that they can maximize participation.

So what’s different about tennis ball cricket?

There is less danger of serious or life-threatening injuries (like what happened to Raman Lamba). Of course, a fast moving tennis ball hitting softer parts of your body can be painful, but that is not a big concern. You obviously do not need the heavy equipment (gloves, pads, helmets, etc.) that regular cricketers need. Wicketkeepers seldom use gloves, unless harder tennis balls are used.

Because of the low danger of injury, batsman (even lower order) are free to attempt dangerous shots (hook, pull) that would normally be done by more experienced players. Of course, T20, heavy bats and modern protection has changed our perceptions of what can be done. So even traditional cricket is not that traditional anymore.

Bowling can be very tricky. With leather balls, even a poor bowler can sometimes manage to get in an over without too much damage. Tennis balls are more difficult to control and you need heavy practice to ensure proper line and length. If you are not in the flow, you will be serving a dish of wides and long hops. On the other hand, tennis balls can afford more variation to experienced bowlers, because you can control the spin, bounce and dip with practice.

Slips are usually unnecessary and a luxury because edges are either too thin, carrying through to the wicketkeeper, or too thick, going to the third man. Silly mid-off and silly mid-on positions are perhaps more important to get miscued defensive shots from fast bowlers.

Catching can be tricky. Although it is less painful than regular cricket, tennis balls bounce. So even though the fielder may have done everything right to be in the right position, quite often, you see the embarrassing case of the ball bouncing out from the cupped hands of the fielder. As for diving catches, they are better taken with the fingers than the palm.

Tennis ball cricket affords a great convenience for cricket lovers to play cricket in spots when they don’t have the equipment or a dedicated ground. In many poor cricketing countries, grounds are frequently occupied by many teams playing at the same time, each taking a small part of the ground. Playing with a cricket ball can be dangerous in such situations because a lofted six could injure someone. Also, not many people go on to be professionals. Tennis ball cricket allows them to be participants without the dangers and difficulties of normal cricket. Even if you don’t treat it as real cricket, it serves a useful purpose.

Last year, we saw a slew of retirements: Sourav Ganguly, Anil Kumble, Adam Gilchrist, Matthew Hayden, Brad Hogg, to name a few. India was able to handle the retirements well as they were already winning matches without the contributions of the retiring players. Kumble did a good job in transitioning from Dravid to Dhoni, but his form was dropping alarmingly towards the end, even if his passion was still high as ever. Australia made a hash of it, but you cannot blame the quality of players they had. It was more the lack of teamwork: no batting  partnerships that turned matches and no sustained spell of hostile bowling.

Back to the present: What about this year? Which teams have candidates for retirement:

Australia: Australia already has a lot of new faces. The only persons even in the vicinity of retirement are Ricky Ponting and Michael Hussey, but they probably have another 4-5 years in them. It will be an interesting competition between Ponting and Tendulkar to see who will retire with the most runs and centuries. Ponting is behind, but younger than Tendulkar by around 18 months. The number of Tests and their respective form will decide who will be on top of the Mount Everest of Test batting when they retire. Hussey is unfortunate to have been selected for Test cricket very late in his career. He has tried to make amends with a gigantic average, but it is not going to be enough.

South Africa: Kallis, perhaps? He hasn’t had a great year. Boucher, maybe? Ntini, could be, after all, fast bowlers get injured faster. When your team is on a roll, the passengers in the team get a pass (sorry for the pun!) If South Africa hit some bad patch, then we will probably see some people being eased out.

India: The most likely player to retire could be Rahul Dravid who has had a horrid run recently. Even though he hit a century in his last match, it was not too inspiring and he followed that up with a 19-ball duck. Sachin Tendulkar is not that much younger (in fact, just 3 months younger) than Dravid. The difference is that Sachin is in form and Dravid is not. India may be more tolerant of Sachin having a bad run of form, and it is very likely that Sachin may even want to play in the next World Cup. It remains to be seen which form (ODI or Test) would Sachin retire from first, or would he do both at the same time. Laxman brings up the rear – his position is more precarious than either Rahul or Sachin.

England: Michael Vaughan, who is presently out of the team, is the hands-on favorite to retire. Too many injuries. Too little form. The superb captaincy that lead to an amazing Ashes win is out of his grasp, when South Africa trounced England at home. The rest of the English lineup is young – they have a greater chance of being dropped than retiring.

Pakistan: It is difficult to predict what any member of this team would do. While one person (Afridi) retires and then comes back, another decides to put his career on hold by playing for the ICL. A would-be captain doesn’t want the captaincy, except that he is more than willing to step in during a game if the captain is injured. Just don’t give him the captaincy title. The Pakistani team is filled with superbly talent individuals who are seriously unserious about anything.

Sri Lanka: This should be Murali’s year, even though he is still taking wickets by the bucketload. He has already passed Warne and there is hardly anyone in striking distance. Sri Lanka has found an even more dangerous bowler in Mendis to take over his work. And frankly, isn’t it really boring to bowl against Bangladesh and Zimbabwe yet again? The Sri Lankan schedule also seems barren. A few ODI’s scheduled. No Tests yet. Maybe they may play against Pakistan.

New Zealand: Nobody seems likely to retire, unless they decide to play in the ICL.

West Indies: The misfortune that West Indies is faced with is that they have no youngsters playing well and their main star is the aging Chanderpaul. In his current form, Chanderpaul is unlikely to quit, but who knows what wil happen this year. One good thing about the IPL and other T20 tournaments is that it is bringing a lot of money into the game. So Carribean sportspersons, who are increasingly taking up basketball and athletics, may come back to cricket.

Bangladesh: They have a young team, but, even otherwise, before we start talking about retirements, they need to have a solid team that produces results, or at least hold their own against opposition.