Crucket

Congratulations to Australia, who are easy winners of the Aus–NZ–Pak test tri-series. And congratulations to NZ, who take second place due to alphabetical ordering.

Pakistan’s maddening 0-3 capitulation to Australia has knocked them out of the running in the NZ–Aus–Pak test tri-series. And Australia has shot to the top. It is now all to be decided by the NZ– Aus rubber, with NZ needing a win and Aus needing anything but a loss.

I think I am entirely justified in claiming a moral victory in the last test, given that we were so clearly on target to win when the rain came. So that gives us a moral victory in the series. Unfortunately, the records will show that the series was tied 1-1.

So the first leg of the NZ-Pak-Aus tri series has been indecisive. The second leg (Aus-Pak) is due to kick off on Boxing Day.

At 90/0 chasing 208 off 43 overs, New Zealand were miles ahead of their Duckworth–Lewis target. Par score at that stage was 62.

Dammit dammit dammit dammit!

Dammit that the test had to finish like this.

Dammit that nearly five days of cricket, including O’Brien’s spell of awesome, Vettori’s century, Tuffey’s out of the blue 80, Pakistan’s fight-back, Guptill’s fight-back-back, was washed away by a scant hour of rain. In fact, that trivial shower of rain in the deciding hour of the deciding test of the series has made irrelevant the two tests that preceded it.

Dammit!

Daniel Vettori has just now been dismissed for 134. That is a stunning return on the decision to promote him. And it’s not just his own score of 134 that is worth celebrating. Vettori came in with the score at 136/4, with a first-innings lead in the balance, and departed with the score at 408 and a humongous first innings lead of 185. At 6 he can not only save an innings, he can also build big innings. This also allows Tuffey to fill the roll shepherding the lower order.

This 134, by the way, has pushed Vettori’s average over 30 for the first time (excepting his first few matches). It also pushes his average in the no. 6 spot up to above 40.

An average in the 30s is great for a bowler, good for an all-rounder, but pretty average for a batsman. So it is disheartening to note that 4 of the 5 batsmen that bat above Vettori have averages in the 20s. (Taylor, currently the world’s 9th best batsman, is the exception).

Of course, all of the junior batsmen have played so few tests that their averages are pretty volatile. Daniel Flynn for example has only dropped below 30 in this series and would be back up again if he scored a century in the next innings. Though the more innings they have, the more confident we can be that their average reflects their ability.

There is a statistical value that can measure how confident we can be about an average, called the standard error of the mean. The larger the sample size (in this case, the number of innings), the more accurate the mean (batting average in this case). The standard error of the mean is calculated (assuming several things about the statistical distribution) by dividing the mean by the square root of the sample size. So we should be able to get a measure of the reliability of a batsman’s average by dividing it by the square root of the number of innings played.

So Daniel Flynn’s average of 28.7 off 29 innings has a standard error of about 5.3. My very rudimentary and rather naive interpretation of this sort of standard error is that we can be only 63% certain that he is not batting at an average of 30 or higher and has just been unlucky.

For Guptill (avg. 23.5, 14 innings) we can be only 93% certain that his average shouldn’t be 30. Whereas for McIntosh, we can be only 79% certain that he is not hiding an average of 30 behind his current average of 26.41 off 18 innings.

Now, B-J Watling, this test’s debutante, has scored a mere 18 runs, giving him a disappointing average of 18. However, the standard error of this average is itself 18. This means that even with this poor start to his career, we can only suggest with 83% certainty that he won’t score 30 runs in every innings here on in.

(Any of this make sense?)

By the way, we can be 99.8% certain Flynn shouldn’t be averaging 40, but only 96% certain for Watling. Two ways of saying “definitely” I suppose.

You may have heard that Daniel Vettori is the best ever no. 8 batsman. He has scored 2072 runs in that position, which beats everyone including Shane Warne and his 2005 runs.  His average of 42.28 is handsomely superior to anyone else who has played at least 20 innings in that position.

So what do we do with this marvel of the lower order? We move him to the middle order. No. 6. Where he has an average of 18.25. That puts him a long, long way down the list of no. 6s. If he is going to move up high on the list of successful no. 6s he is going to have to push that average up. If he doubles it, he’ll get into the top 40. But to get to the top, he is going to have to leapfrog such names as Inzamam-ul-Haq, Jeremy Coney, Garfield Sobers and Shivnarine Chanderpaul, currently topping the list at 65.73.

Though the weather is shite here in Wellington, it looks like it could be a cracker of a day in Napier. So we can now all get excited about the deciding test. And if we are to believe the pre-test reports, a result is far more likely than in previous years in Napier.

New Zealand of course are coming into this test from a 141-run loss. Which is quite discouraging compared the 32-run margin in the first test.

I don’t think it is quite as bad as that though. I went to the last day of the Basin test, knowing that a loss was inevitable, but hoping for a fourth-innings total that wasn’t embarrassing. I went in hoping audaciously that we might get 300. I had to quickly lower my expectations when Fulton and Elliot went early,  now merely hoping that we got the highest innings total of the test. I then lowered my expectations again when Taylor and McCullum fell close together, hoping now that we wouldn’t get both of the test’s two lowest innings. So I was pleasantly surprised with the final total of 263.

In the final analysis, we at least held our own in 3 of the 4 innings. We dismissed Pakistan fairly cheaply twice and got a decent 4th innings total. It was just that 2nd innings where things crapped out.

It wasn’t really the New Zealand batsmen’s fault. They were hit by the steamroller of fate. You cannot have Virender Sehwag scoring 293 off 254 balls without someone else somewhere copping it. The laws of crickarma are cruel in that way.

I feel I was far too pessimistic in my last post so I’m going to look on the bright side as the kick off for the 2nd test approaches.

Losing Shane Bond was a big blow, no doubt, but the bowling attack that we’ll take into the Basin test, Martin, O’Brien, Tuffey and Vettori most likely,  is still strong. The strongest in the country excepting Bond. There shouldn’t be much doubt they can take 20 wickets, particularly at the Basin. So if they get 700 runs or so out of the batsmen across the match, we’ll be in with a good chance.