Tag Archives: statistics

Surprising Fact of the Day

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From Cricinfo:

Among captains who have led in at least 25 Tests, Dhoni has the best win-loss ratio (5.00) followed by Steve Waugh (4.55) and Mike Brearley (4.50).

I didn’t realize that this was the case. Also, if you look at the table, while there are some (Waugh, Ricky Ponting, Clive Lloyd and Viv Richards) who have captained many more Tests, the others are very close to Dhoni (27 Tests) in number of Tests: Brearley (31), Andrew Strauss (35), Richie Benaud (28) and Ian Chappell (30).

The list of unbeaten series are:

  • Two series against Australia in India
  • England in India
  • New Zealand away and at home
  • Sri Lanka away and at home
  • South Africa away and at home
  • Bangladesh in Bangladesh (not as easy as Bangladesh in India)
  • West Indies in West Indies

So none of the series were easy pickings. India could have had an even better record, but they have drawn a few matches that they could have won with more favorable weather and luck. There are a few difficult challenges ahead. The England tour is going to be a major one with the England team coming off some good wins. Then later in the year a tour to Australia – that is the one to watch.

Anyway, the Dhoni Midas Touch continues. It could have been even better, but I will take this for now.

Sachin Tendulkar and Ricky Ponting

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Sometime back, I tried to analyze whether Ricky Ponting could overtake Sachin Tendulkar in Tests. At that time, the stats stood at

Player Tests Runs Avg 100s Age Comparison
Tendulkar 157 12499 54.58 41 - 4 tons ahead
Ponting 131 10948 56.43 37 -1y 8m 1551 runs behind

Today, it stands at

Player Tests Runs Avg 100s Age Comparison
Tendulkar 166 13447 55.56 47 - 8 tons ahead
Ponting 142 11859 55.67 39 -1y 8m 1588 runs behind

Ponting still looks in striking distance of Tendulkar’s total run aggregate. Assuming that he plays for two years after Tendulkar retires, he only has to get some 800-odd runs a year. Since Australia plays more Tests than the average nation, this is somewhat easy. Consider that in 2009, Ponting only scored at a poor average of 38.77, but because Australia played 13 Tests, he ended up scoring 853 runs for the year. You will also notice that Ponting has played two more Tests than Tendulkar in the same period. But if Ponting overtakes Tendulkar, it is also likely that Kallis will overtake Ponting very quickly. So it would probably be a very short reign at the top.

Overtaking the number of centuries Tendulkar scored looks more iffy. Since the beginning of 2007, Ponting has only scored 6 centuries. On the other hand, no one expected Tendulkar to go on a ton-hitting spree at age 36. So Ponting may be able to tap something similar. Also, India’s Test calendar looks barren at this point while Australia have Test matches lined up against New Zealand, Pakistan and England for this year, so that 8-ton deficit could see some reduction. All the other contenders are way behind at this point.

On the ODI side, there is simply no comparison. Tendulkar is so far ahead that there is no credible rival for the top spot (runs, centuries) for the near future.

Fun with Statistics

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From the “Ask Steven” page of Cricinfo:

Sachin Tendulkar had scored 31,055 runs in international cricket (13,447 in Tests, 17,598 in ODIs, and 10 in Twenty20 internationals). Of those, 16,140 have come in boundaries (3675 fours and 240 sixes), so he has had to run 14,915 of his own runs in singles, twos and threes, which adds up to 328,130 yards or over 186 miles (300 kilometres). He will also have covered a similar distance for his partners while non-striker – not quite so many runs, perhaps, but a significant number nonetheless. If we allow his batting partners 75% of Tendulkar’s output, that’s another 12,105 runs, or 266,310 yards, or 151 miles (243km). That makes a total of around 337 miles (543km).

Wish someone can do the math for the miles run by the fast bowlers to the bowling crease!

[On a side note, for those who were wondering where Kridaya went in the last few months, I was busy with the birth of my son. Regular blogging will now resume with this post, though at a more leisurely pace than before.]

Most Unnecessary Statistic in Twenty20

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And that is

The minutes taken by a batsman in a Twenty20 innings.

Cricinfo has this against many of the Twenty20 innings. This is as useless as it gets. It may be helpful in Tests to understand the endurance of a batsman, but that is about it. You cannot even compare the minutes taken by two different batsmen in Twenty20 because of all the other time-affecting factors like injury, state of the match, weather conditions.

The Graveyard of T20 and IPL Predictions

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I sincerely feel sorry for Ron over at cricketanalysis.com. He has been trying very hard to get his predictions for the Indian Premier League matches correct by tweaking the necessary parameters, but he seems to have hit a dead end, one reason being the illogical decisions that teams make. As he says,

I have learned quite a lot from doing the predictions over the first 11 games, even though my record is pretty dismal. The first thing is to never assume that teams will play their best lineups, by “best” meaning the lineup that I think is best, or the lineup that I think common sense would dictate. [...]

Another thing I have learned is that teams will never stick to five bowlers only if they have other people in the lineup that can bowl, no matter how much better or worse their part-timers are than their regular bowlers.

UPDATE: Apparently, he quit making IPL predictions around the same time I was writing this post – I noticed this after I put up this post. Here he goes:

No more predictions for IPL games. [...] Probably I will go 10-0 from now but whatever. Actually if things keep going against the model so accurately, it might have some value for fade purposes. [...]

One big problem I have is that fielding isn’t measured well by stats. For international cricket this isn’t a problem, because bowlers bowl with their international team consistently and so the collective fielding abilities of the side are incorporated into the bowling statistics. But the IPL is much different obviously. Maybe I will look at a way to measure fielding. I have some ideas.

In any case, Twenty20 is incredibly difficult to predict, primarily because there are not enough overs which prevent us from applying standard cricket ideas. T20 is evolving right in front of eyes and even the players and captains are making their best effort to understand what strategies and tactics work.

tragedy-v-statistics

In T20, one over can change the entire complexion of the game. We saw this in clear terms during the Rajasthan-Kolkata match. Rajasthan was easily in front when Munaf Patel effectively gave away 13 runs in one ball. Kolkata should have won the match in the final over, but Kamran Khan bowled a tight over against the flow of events and took Rajasthan to the Super Over where they won. In 50-over matches, a bad over is not necessarily a cause for surrender. Teams have easily recovered from the depths because of the large number of overs.

The smaller number of T20 overs means that wickets have an additional significance in terms of balls lost. If a team loses 10 wickets, that is almost 2 overs lost. It could mean the difference between a tough score of 180+ and an achievable 160-odd. This means that wickets in the last quarter of an innings can effectively kill a team’s ability to post a challenging target.

Finally, don’t understimate the effect of the “tactical” timeout in the middle of the innings. In quite a few matches, it has made a tremendous difference in the final score. What we have seen repeatedly is that big starts do not seem to materialize into huge totals.

Nice to know that Ron is a fan of Baseball Prospectus which uses statistical analysis techniques. I would like to see more of that to cricket, but I believe that Twenty20 is not mature enough to allow that possibility. Test and ODI cricket are much better avenues for predictions.

[Photo licensed from disrupsean]

England Team Keeps Fans Confused

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antigua

England have bounced back from their spectacular low of 51 all out in the first Test against the West Indies with a monumental total of 566. With almost all the England players cashing in with 2 centuries and 3 fifties, this was a team effort and everyone deserves credit from being able to exorcise the ghosts of the Sabina Park debacle.

When a team makes a score ten times higher than their previous outing, we have to look closely at their patterns of performance. So, we took a look at the recent performances of England and compared it with the West Indies. To no one’s surprise, England is much stronger on its batting performances than the West Indies. The English team has an average of 36 runs per wicket in its last 13 Test matches (including the Jamaica Test), while the West Indies have an average of 31.68 per wicket. That is almost 43 runs per innings.

However, England’s scores have a standard deviation of 18 runs per innings, which means that they are as likely to score 180 as they are to score 540. WI have a standard deviation of 11 runs, which means their capability is more between 200 and 420. Obviously, teams change in composition (with players retiring or dropped) and they play against different countries, but it is still very striking. The West Indians, while performing poorly, are performing consistently. England, on the other hand, can put up huge scores, but are also prone to collective failures.

Even without the help of statistics, we see England running the gamut from an imperious 593/8 declared against an opponent no less than the South Africans, but also slumping to 110 all out against the Kiwis. The lowest score for West Indies was 139 and their highest score was 408, significantly lower than what England could achieve as a team. In fact, if they overhaul England’s first innings in the current Test, that would be a statistical outlier, almost 50% more than their high score in more than a year.

England should not have to bat again in this match, but the West Indians are pretty good at sticking around. And if the weather plays a part, they may still escape unscathed.

[Photo licensed from z_dead]

Lankan Passenger Hits Some Rare Form

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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.

2008 Match Result Analysis

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Analysis of results in cricket tests in 2008

Analysis of results in cricket tests in 2008

There were 47 matches in 2008. As you can see from the graph above, about 77% of matches ended in a result. A significantly large number of matches (9) ended in innings wins by the victorious team. While most of them involved the bottom three Test teams (NZ, WI & Bangladesh), we also have India surprisingly losing two Tests by an innings including even one at home. (What does Rediff have to say about that!) The innings victories were very crushing – teams won by an average of an innings and 113 runs, with the smallest margin by New Zealand’s tailenders failing to secure 9 more runs to avoid an innings loss against England.

The teams batting in the fourth innings had mixed fortunes in chasing targets – they won just one more than they lost. However, some of those chases were very good: SA chasing down Australia and England, India chasing down England. The winning chases were accomplished mostly very comfortably, an average of 6.7 wickets in hand and, only in a single instance, less than 5 wickets in hand. On the other hand, the losses were also large losses – an average of losing by 142 runs and the lowest loss was a 72 run loss by Australia against India in Perth. 

Many draws in 2008 – India, Australia and NZ leading the pack with more than 3 apiece. Bangladesh managed to salvage one draw against NZ after there was no play on the first three days. At one point, they were 6/44 before the tailenders helped avoid a follow-on.

Statistics – Home Series Success %age

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The following table shows the success %age of the Test nations in the most recent home series against other nations. Bangladesh is not included in this chart.

Until the recent Australia-SA series, Australia had a 100% success rate, but they are now level with India who is the only team to have not lost a series at home. All teams, except NZ and WI, are strong with home with England, Pakistan and Sri Lanka having similar records. West Indies remain the only team not to have won a single series at home in recent times, a far cry from their dominance in the 80′s. 

 

Home Series Success Percentages of Cricket Test Teams in 2008

Home Series Success Percentages of Cricket Test Teams in 2008

 

             Wins   Draws  Losses    Success %
Australia       6       0       1       85.71%
India           5       2       0       85.71%
South Africa    5       0       2       71.43%
England         4       1       2       64.29%
Pakistan        4       1       2       64.29%
Sri Lanka       4       1       2       64.29%
New Zealand     1       3       3       35.71%
West Indies     0       2       5       14.29%