Kartikeya Date
Is Test cricket in better health than ever before?
We tend to believe the game was better and more competitive in the past. But the truth as seen through the numbers is more complicated
Kartikeya Date
19-Oct-2013
How has Test cricket evolved over the past 80 years or so? Where does it stand today? There are a number of opinions about this. Many of these views have acquired the status of truisms. Contemporary fast bowling is not as good as the fast bowling in the '70s, '80s and even '90s. Batting techniques have declined. The quality of cricket is not what it used to be in Tests. Fielding has improved out of sight. Tailenders bat better these days compared to earlier eras. Test cricket is dying because wickets are consistently dead and boring. You hear all these points and more from pundits, partisans and pressmen alike. To the trained ear, they contain familiar amounts of nostalgia - the tendency to view the past only in terms of its highs, setting aside its lows.
The figures suggest a more complicated picture of the evolution of the contest between bat and ball.
A close look down the list of Test cricket's most successful bowlers at their respective peaks suggests that a certain type of bowler does not exist these days in the game's foremost format. This bowler took a Test wicket once every ten or 11 overs (that is, a strike rate of 60-66), but conceded less than 25 runs for each of these wickets. This was not a shock bowler like Malcolm Marshall or Waqar Younis or Fred Trueman, all of whom took their wickets at the rate of one every seven to eight overs. The art of this type of bowler was to keep the runs down, to give the fielding captain control on good wickets.
Full postHow do openers affect No. 3 batsmen?
The success or failure of openers shifts the average of No. 3 batsmen by about ten runs
Kartikeya Date
05-Oct-2013
No. 3: the best batsman in a Test team bats there. A list of most prolific No. 3 batsmen in Test history will confirm this. Donald Bradman, Wally Hammond, Viv Richards, Brian Lara, Ricky Ponting, Jacques Kallis, Kumar Sangakkara, Hashim Amla, Rohan Kanhai, Neil Harvey, Richie Richardson, Rahul Dravid. The list goes on. Both VVS Laxman and Dravid wanted to bat there. Dravid won that argument and VVS had to concede the point after a lean spell in the early 2000s.
Ian Chappell has argued that No. 3 batsmen set up Test matches. At No. 3, the contest between bat and ball has not yet been defined for the innings. No. 3 is a peculiar position - sandwiched between the middle order and the openers - where a batsman has to be prepared to walk in to face the second ball of the innings.
The history of Test cricket reveals that the success or failure of openers affect the average of the No. 3 batsman by about ten runs. The table below provides some figures. I looked at a number of conditions, and finally chose six to present here.
Full postThe Barnes standard
Many consider Sydney Barnes the best bowler in Test history. Which bowlers match him?
Kartikeya Date
16-Sep-2013
If Don Bradman is the best batsman in Test history, Sydney Barnes, it is frequently argued, is the best bowler. In 27 Tests, Barnes took 189 wickets at 16.43, one every 41.6 balls. Barnes' claim is not as strong as Bradman's, but until 1990, Barnes was unmatched by any other bowler. He has the highest rating for a bowler in the ICC's ratings for Test bowlers, just as Bradman has the highest rating for batsmen. Therefore, I propose a Barnes standard for Test bowlers to complement the Bradman standard for Test batsmen.
The most successful bowler is one who takes the most wickets, while conceding the fewest runs, in the fewest deliveries. Put another way, the most successful bowler takes the most wickets, most cheaply and most frequently. Using such a rule, we get a Barnes standard measure: wickets taken divided by the product of bowling average and strike rate. Barnes' measure is 0.276 over the length of his career.
Among bowlers with a career haul of at least 100 Test wickets, only George Lohmann, a 19th century Englishman, and Dale Steyn have strike rates better than Barnes. Steyn's wickets cost about six runs more than each of Barnes' did. No bowler, not even Lohmann, has matched Barnes' average of seven wickets per Test.
Full postThe Bradman standard
The Don is head and shoulders above the rest, but which batsmen come closest?
Kartikeya Date
04-Sep-2013
Had he still been alive, Sir Donald Bradman would have turned 105 on August 27. Since his death in 2001, there has been something of a golden age of Test batting, and Test cricket. More Tests have been played, with more outright results, during these 12 years than in any other 12-year period in the 136-year history of Test cricket.
Some of the greatest batsmen since Bradman's retirement 65 years ago have played their best cricket in these 12 years. I think Bradman would have enjoyed watching the varied talents of Virender Sehwag, Hashim Amla, Mohammad Yousuf, Ricky Ponting, Rahul Dravid and Jacques Kallis. And he would have keenly watched Sachin Tendulkar's second wind.
Yet, for all this batting brilliance, no batsman has come close to matching the great Australian master. In 80 visits to a Test match crease, Bradman was dismissed 70 times. Those 70 dismissals cost bowlers 6996 runs, giving Bradman a batting average that was one boundary shy of an even century. He made 29 hundreds in those 80 visits and set the standard for Test batting. It is hard to think of another sportsperson who remains so far ahead of the best players in his or her sport 65 years after retirement. Bradman remains the benchmark by which all other batsmen should be judged.
Full postA measure for the strength of a Test team
Introducing a method of boiling a team's prowess down to a numerical value
Kartikeya Date
09-Aug-2013
Cricket is notoriously conservative when it comes to measuring performance. Batting average, bowling average, and less frequently bowling strike rate, are possibly the only commonly used measures of cricketing performance. In this post, I describe a measure of team strength in Test cricket. I will describe the basic structure of this measure but hope you will see that more specialised measures can be derived using this basic idea. I have calculated these proposed strength measures for all Test matches since 1877. After describing these measures, I look at how these strength measures perform as predictors of results. I hope this basic idea will help some of you to develop better measures, either by building on this, or by using this as an example of what not to do!
The strength of a Test team is given by batting strength divided by bowling strength. The batting strength is the total that a given XI is expected to score based on their career batting averages at the start of the game. The bowling strength is the total an XI is expected to concede based on two things - the bowlers' career records at the start of the game, and the share of the bowling of individual bowlers in that game. Higher batting strength is better, while lower bowling strength is better.
I will start with an example. India's XI for its recent Test against Australia in Mohali was: Shikhar Dhawan, M Vijay, Cheteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli, MS Dhoni, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Ravindra Jadeja, Sachin Tendulkar, R Ashwin, Pragyan Ojha and Ishant Sharma.
Full postThe DRS problem: it's not the humans
It's the flaws in the system, and not the shortcomings of those who use it, that are to blame
Kartikeya Date
26-Jul-2013
The DRS is a system in which umpiring decisions can be reviewed by players. Events on the field can also be reviewed by umpires in some circumstances before a decision is made. A widely held view about recent problems with the system is that while the DRS is fine, the way it is used by players, and on occasion by umpires, has caused difficulties.
I hold the view that the problem, if there is one, is with the system, not with the way it is used. The way the system is defined strictly determines the way it is used.
The DRS system I refer to is described in detail by the ICC in its Playing Handbook (pdf). It is worth clearing up a few misconceptions at the outset.
Full post
Terms of Use|Privacy Policy|Your US State Privacy Rights|Children's Online Privacy Policy|Interest - Based Ads|Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information|Feedback
© 2024 ESPN Sports Media Ltd. All rights reserved