Crucket

Seemingly at odds with my pessimistic previous post, the sports desk at 3news have analysed the stats and have discovered that NZ is actually the best team at the World Cup.

Whether or not you can accept this bald fact at face value, it does show that NZ is in fact a damn good ODI team. We’ve just fallen off the pace something desperate of late.

We’re currently ranked 7th in the world by the ICC ranking. However, this time last year we were 4th, a position we held pretty consistently since the last World Cup. There have been no major changes to the side (once Fleming stepped aside as captain) in that time. There’s no reason we can’t regain our winning form against big teams.

Average batsman’s score in the Subcontinent in tests in the last 3 years: 39.72

Average outside the Subcontinent: 34.08

Pity about the result, but another cracker of a game between Australia and New Zealand on Saturday.

The Chappell–Hadlee is the best one-day trophy competition. No question.

The tally of series wins currently stands at 2 Aus wins, 1 NZ win and 2 ties (the second of which should have been an NZ win but for that pesky Queensland rain), with a total of 8 games apiece. It is a very closely fought trophy.

A look at the individual results shows just how close. Apart from a few exceptions (such as the whole of the 07/08 series), victory comes down to the last 20 or so runs or the last 10 or so balls. And the results summary just doesn’t do justice to the drama and record breaking feats that have gone into those victories.

Cricinfo’s statisticians have found out why the trophy is so good – New Zealand seriously lifts for Chappell–Hadlee matches. Compared with non-C–H matches against Australia since the beginning of 2004 (the year the C–H trophy kicked off), NZ batsmen’s averages have been about 7 runs higher. Whereas the Australian averages are down by about the same amount, largely accounted for by the improvement in the NZ bowlers’ averages.

There is something special about this trophy.

(The Cricinfo article also reveals a sorry fact, that apart from the 8 against 8 wins in the C–H, NZ has had no further wins against Aus since the start of 2004.)

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.

Last night Ireland played Sri Lanka, one of the three remaining games in New Zealand’s super 8 group that I mentioned in my last post. As expected, Ireland lost – but not by much. They managed to get within 10 runs of Sri Lanka’s total.

With the win over Ireland, Sri Lanka consolidate their position at the top of the table, with 4 points over NZ’s and Pakistan’s 2 each. However, the close loss has decapitated their net run rate. From +0.95 after their game against Pakistan, they have shrunk to +0.7.  This remains a good net run rate, but it is a gift to New Zealand. Less than a day after I wrote about the challenge to New Zealand in getting through to the semis (and followed up in the mainstream media), Sri Lanka has smoothed our way somewhat.

To get through to semis we still need to beat Sri Lanka. However, all we need is a win. Even a tie for that matter. With our net run rate now above Sri Lanka’s, a win will keep it above Sri Lanka’s, ensuring we qualify above them.

In the middle of the ODI series, where Indian were flaying the Black Caps, Stuff were exclaiming that Vettori was holding onto his no. 1 ranking. Not likely. By the time that article saw print Vettori had already dropped to 2nd, as the recently updated rankings now show. Vettori has now in fact dropped to 5th, after going wicketless in Auckland.

Kyle Mills managed to hold onto this spot at 3, thanks to his 1/27 in Auckland. Jacob Oram dwindled a bit, dropping from 14 before the series to 19 afterwards. Patel and Southee also slipped, while O’Brien, Ryder, Elliott and Butler don’t even make it into the top 100 (they are, respectively, 118, 137, 131 and 127).

Somehow I expected things to be worse for our bowlers.

Amongst the batsmen, Ryder reached a career high of 47, which is quite impressive considering he was ranked 77 before the series. Guptill was similarly successful; starting the tour at 72 and reaching 44 by the end.

Our highest ranked batsmen remains Taylor, who has slipped out of the top 20 over the series to sit at 23. McCullum is also in the 20s, at 27, where he started the series.  Styris drops into the 30s, despite not getting a bat in his one game, though that will include some degradation from missing the Chappell–Hadlee. Oram’s 8 runs in 3 innings pushes him into the 40s.

Elliott dipped slightly from 57 to 60, though that could have been as bad as 65 if it wasn’t for his furious cameo in Hamilton. Neil Broom just squeezes into the top 200. Kyle Mills didn’t improve his batting ranking much, though he finishes at 19 as an all-rounder. The biggest mover of all was Peter McGlashan,whose late innings heroics in Hamilton boosted his ranking from 329 to 235.

10 wickets is as bad a loss as you can suffer when you are defending in an ODI, but that doesn’t begin to describe yesterday’s mauling. After all, if the rain hadn’t intervened, India may have lost a wicket or two chasing down the full total, and the official margin of victory would have been even less representative. I see that India were 84 runs in excess of their D-L target when the game was called off.

As meaningless as the exercise is, it is rather mindboggling to compare India’s innings last night with their innings at Christchurch, where they scored the highest ODI total ever scored in New Zealand. After 23.3 overs, from which they scored 201 yesterday, in Christchurch they were 139/2. If last night’s innings had been allowed to unfold to as it had in Christchurch, they would have scored well in exces of 500 over 50 overs.

As I say, a meaningless exercise (try extrapolating NZ’s innings in this game over 50 overs), but it does make you wonder just what this Indian team is ultimately capable of.

Adelaide is another big bat-first ground. Or maybe, I’m looking at this wrong. Maybe it’s the fact that Australia prefer batting first that makes all the Australian grounds look like bat-first paradises. Anyway. Win the toss and bat is the best option at Adelaide and against Australia in general.

Of course, win the toss and field is the best option for us, so…

What to do?

I’ve run some numbers, accounting for 1. our ability to chase and set targets, 2. Australia’s ability to set and chase, 3. Adelaide’s assistance for chasing and setting and 4. whether the toss was won or lost. I’m taking data for NZ and Australia only for the last 5 years to capture how we have both been playing recently.

My analysis shows that we must win the toss.

If Australia win the toss they will surely bat. Our ability to chase targets when the opposition has won the toss is poor and it is the worst situation to be in at Adelaide. Under this circustance I reckon we have about a 10% chance of winning. Incidentally, in the last 5 years Aus have never lost winning the toss and chasing. So we must win this toss.

In the last 5 years, we have won nearly 4 times as many games as we have lost by winning the toss and chasing. This counteracts both the Aus strength in setting targets and Adelaide’s assistance for batting first. If we win the toss and chase, it’s pretty much an even chance of a win.

The last of the possibilities, we win the toss and bat, gives us about a 40% chance of winning. Advantage Australia, but still a good contest.

The papers are reporting that the ICC has named Matthew Hayden as one of the top 10 test batsmen of all time. Here’s the list and there’s Hayden, sitting at 10th equal.

The Indian’s aren’t happy. Not necessarily with Hayden’s position in the list, but with the fact that Sachin Tendulkar sits all the way down at 26. Tendulkar surely belongs higher on the list, definitely above Hayden. Tendulkar has more runs, more centuries and a higher average than Hayden.

I’m not going to enter that particular debate. I do think that Hayden is overrated. While he as an excellent batsman, he was basically an expert flat-track bully in an era of flat tracks. (Perhaps I only feel this way because we hardly got to see Hayden at his best. His record against New Zealand was not that impressive.) However, I also think that, inspite of his acknowledged genius, India are equally able to overrate Tendulkar.

The Indian bleating about the list is actually pretty funny. The BCCI secretary even seems to believe it is all a conspiracy to raise the profile of the ICC ranking system above Indian systems.

It only takes a quick look at the list to see that it only ranks the players based on their highest ever achieved rating. That is a long way from measuring how good a player is overall. So Hayden peaked higher than Tendulkar. However, check out the comparison of the two players. Tendulkar maintained a high rating for much longer than Hayden (noting that the time base for the graphs are different). If you change it to a view of ranking charts, you see that Tendulkar maintained an unbroken top 10 ranking for over 10 years, whereas Hayden only managed this for about 5 years. The ICC ranking blogger has noted that Tendulkar played 125 matches in the top 3, his measure of sustained excellence. You can draw your own conclusions from all of this, but it does show that there are innumerable ways of measuring greatness.

I’ve been having some thoughts regarding which countries are the best to score runs in. It’s not an easy thing to look at however, as it is not easy to disentangle the runs you get in a country from the runs you score against a country’s team. (For example, I’ve always believed it is harder to score runs on New Zealand pitches due to their lack of pace and tendency to seam; however, it is relatively easier to score against NZ bowlers, due to their lack of pace and reliance on seam. Do these factors cancel, making it as easy to score runs in New Zealand as anywhere else, masking the difficulty of our pitches? Or are our pitches more benign and our bowlers more dangerous than we have been led to believe?)

I think this is an important thing to get a handle on, as the runiness (or wicketiness) of a country’s pitches is a factor in the averages of that country’s players.

As a first step in analysing this, I have taken a look at the home and away averaged averages of each of the test-playing nations, both bowling and batting. To get a figure representing the disparity in home and away performances, I have taken the ratio of the home and away performances.

This table doesn’t actually tell us much about the differences in the respective home and away conditions. It only tells us who tours better. But it is quite instructive in that respect.

The big surprise really is the fact that South African batsmen score better away from home than at home. The same is true of West Indian bowlers, though to a lesser extent. Overall, this would make South Africa the best tourists, though Australia, New Zealand, England and the West Indies are all very good. Zimbabwe and the Asian teams however have large disparities between their home and away records, with Sri Lanka’s being particularly stark. Sri Lanka’s batting and bowling performances at home are the best of all the countries, whereas their away records are simply bad. They also have the worst home/away win/loss ratio ratio (they win more than two games at home to one win abroad, but lose twice as many away as they do at home).