January 4, 2010
The best batsman, across years and formats
Posted by Anantha Narayanan -
3 days, 1 hour ago in Batting
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Sachin Tendulkar: on top in both forms of the game
© AFP
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| Finally the analysis many of you have asked and been waiting for patiently. This has been on the drawing board for the past six months and I have had quite a few exchanges with many readers to fine-tune the analysis. Lot of care has been taken care to equalise performances by the players across years and across formats.
First, the "Twelve Commandments" followed in doing the analysis.
1. Equal weight for Tests and ODI. T20 internationals not included since many top players have not played any T20-I matches and anyhow very few matches have been played. Let the number of T20-I matches cross 1000 before we consider it worthy of inclusion in this type of analysis.
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Comments (154)
December 28, 2009
Two to 10 players together - for how many Tests?
Posted by Anantha Narayanan -
1 week, 2 days ago in Test cricket
This is a continuation of my previous article which was based on a request by Seshasayee. I had posted the eleven-players-together article and Sumanth Sankaran did an excellent job of doing the 2-10 groupings using some nifty Jave code. I had already done the 2-3 player group work and the results match. Hence I am pleased to present his findings. Let me confess that I have only done the formatting and editing work related to the article using Sumant's findings and have also updated the recent matches. My thanks to Sumanth for this. I have reproduced below Sesha's specific request.
Ananth in future when you have some time you can consider analysing number of Test matches a group of players in a team have played together...Min 2 to Max 11.
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Comments (12)
December 23, 2009
Spectacular but all too brief
Posted by S Rajesh -
2 weeks ago in Tests - bowling
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Shane Bond's Test career lasted only 18 matches, but fittingly, it ended with a match-winning performance
© Getty Images
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| And so the body finally gave up on him. After battling injuries almost relentlessly through a decade, Shane Bond has finally decided that Test cricket is too much strain for him, and New Zealand are without a strike bowler yet again.
Bond in full flight was an utterly spectacular sight, which makes it doubly sad that the cricket world has seen so little of him, especially in a form of the game that allows him to attack without fear. It’s almost unfair that his decision means he’ll continue to play in formats which will curb those attacking instincts and force him to bowl defensive lines to defensive fields with the onus on saving runs.
The series which stands out for me in a brief Test career was the one against India at home in 2002-03. Admittedly conditions were tailormade for seam and swing, and none of the batsmen got runs consistently, but the manner in which Bond prized out India’s much-vaunted batting line-up made for superb viewing. The second innings of the Wellington Test was the most memorable, when he removed Sehwag, Dravid, Ganguly and Tendulkar with high-class seam and swing to win the match for New Zealand. That series remains his most successful against the top teams.
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Comments (53)
December 18, 2009
Eleven players together - for how many Tests?
Posted by Anantha Narayanan -
2 weeks, 5 days ago in Test cricket
This is a continuation of the theme of my previous article. I have tried to do justice to an excellent request put in by Seshasayee. Unlike the one I did in collaboration with Alex Tierno where we had a number of exchanges before I did the analysis, here Sesha has bowled a "googly spinning square" and let me handle it. I thank him for one heck of a suggestion.
I have reproduced below Sesha's specific request.
Ananth in future when you have some time you can consider analysing number of Test matches a group of players in a team have played together...Min 2 to Max 11 :-)
That is a single statement which has multiple analysis of different shades built in. I have done the first one out of these. Let me say that this was one of the toughest bits of analytical work I have ever done. The details would be of interest to some of the readers and I have created a separate document which can be viewed by clicking on the link provided at the end. Continue reading "Eleven players together - for how many Tests?"
Comments (15)
December 7, 2009
Innings Power Factor: a new measure for ODI innings
Posted by Anantha Narayanan -
on 12/07/2009 in ODIs
This piece was written in collaboration with Alex Tierno
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Brendon McCullum's unbeaten 80 off 28 balls against Bangladesh has the highest Innings Power Factor
© Getty Images
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| I have attempted something new for "It Figures" in this article. Almost on a continuous basis, many of the readers have offered suggestions for analysis. Some of these have been answered as a response to the comment. Some require creation and publishing of tables in existing articles. Once in a while I get a suggestion which warrants a separate article. This is the first one created based on this premise. In future when such an idea comes up, I will do a similar publishing.
This is based on a suggestion made by Alex Tierno a few months back. I was tied up with various things and only now could I do justice to the suggestion. Alex, in consultation with me, has also has polished the idea with some tweaking recently.
Alex has suggested that I create a new factor for ODI innings which he called "Destructive index". I have called that the "Innings Power Factor". This is a single factor which incorporates the three major features of an ODI innings: runs, scoring rate and contribution to team score.
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Comments (82)
November 27, 2009
Measuring Team Stability
Posted by Ric Finlay -
on 11/27/2009 in ODIs
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Australia's stability factor over the last 30 years (Click here for a bigger image)
© Ric Finlay
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Australia’s hectic ODI programme this year, involving 32 different players playing in 39 matches, set me wondering if there had ever been a higher “churn” of players for the team. It was easy to establish that the 39 matches was a record high for Australia in a calendar year, beating the 37 matches played in 1999, and never before had Australia fielded as many as 32 players in the same time span; the previous highest was 26 in 1997.
But the high number of matches played creates an expectation of a high number of players; it well may be that the team was more stable in 2009 than in 2008, when only 18 matches were played, but as many as 20 different players were used.
Attempting to quantify team stability from these statistics is not as straightforward as it may initially seem. One could perform a division and come up with 0.82 players per match for 2009, against 1.11 for 2008 but this is meaningless for those who understand that each team contains 11 players!
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Comments (6)
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