Just having a play with some historical test data. I always thought that a chase of 180 in the 4th innings was more likely to favour the bowling side, but it appears that 225 is about the cross over point. A long way for England to go to get there. #ENGvWI
This isn't built with any sort of predictive modelling - just smoothed averages from past matches. This includes all 4th innings, including those with minutes available or 2 days left. The probabilities aren't enough to bet based on them, but are interesting none the less.
#cricket#stats#geeky thread alert - don't bother reading this thread if you're not interested in either cricket or statistics.
A few people have asked me why I never talk about a batter's average in particular countries. There's a really simple reason for that.
There just isn't enough international cricket played - particularly not international test cricket - to make most of those "averages in a country" statistics meaningful in any way.
There's so much randomness in results that looking at a sample size of (say) 12 innings is nuts.
What do I mean "randomness?" Well let's think about it this way. Each ball there's a chance that a batter will get runs, not get runs or get out. For the best batters, that risk of getting out will generally be lower, and it will fluctuate throughout an innings.
At the moment, the #SuperSmash is the poor cousin to the global T20 competitions. And that's by design. NZC looked at the global market and said "trying to compete on this playing field will bankrupt us."
And so the SuperSmash is just a competition to bring through local talent.
There's nothing particularly wrong with that, and it has done its job to a degree. We've found a number of local players, for whom the SuperSmash has prepared them reasonably well for international cricket.
However, I can't help feeling that it could be much more.
One issue that the @BLACKCAPS have had over the years is that they've not gone so well in knock-out matches. Some of that is due to just not being as good as the teams they've been playing. But some of it feels like a psychological issue, too.
My thoughts on the #BBL catch. It is the law and I think it's a good one. The issue wasn't the law. It was that there was so much room outside the boundary.
If the rope wasn't in so close, that would have been an easy catch.
The idea that somehow bringing in the ropes is good for cricket is completely bizarre. The administrators need to stop homogenising cricket.
Some grounds should have big boundaries. Others should have short ones. Asymmetric boundaries are good, not bad.
Having differing boundary sizes results in better captaincy, better bowling, and better batting. It's a bad idea to keep bringing in the boundaries.
Have a 2-3m safety zone between the boundary route and the physical boundary. But no more than that.
This #ENGvNZ test series is just bizarre. You can count on one hand series in history where the two teams have been as even a these two in the 1st innings.
No team has had a 50 run 1st innings lead in any test.
The difference in collective 1st innings batting averages is 0.77.
And yet, England have already won the series and are looking at a whitewash.
And it's not like NZ have batted particularly badly in the 3rd innings.
In every match, England have been set between 275 and 300.
Teams don't normally chase scores in that range successfully.
So what has gone wrong?
1. England has batted very well.
It's important to give credit where it's due. There are two teams on the field, and England have been extraordinary.
There was another really interesting innings in the #IPL match today. This time by Kane Williamson.
He scored 41(26) at Abu Dhabi. That's a strike rate of 157.7, which is the second highest for any score over 40 at Abu Dhabi this IPL. (Top was Suryakumar Yadav's 47(28) SR 167.9)
That, in itself, isn't particularly interesting. What is interesting is how he scored those runs.
He faced only 3 dot balls. He scored off the other 23. Those three dots were a ball he hit too hard to a fielder, one that hit him and they got a leg bye and the ball he got out on.
He scored 5 boundaries, all fours. So he scored 20 runs in boundaries, and 21 in non-boundaries.
He scored at a strike rate over 150, despite scoring fewer boundary runs than run runs. This graph is every innings this IPL with 30+ runs at 135+ Strike rate.
I'm going to make a few comments on Rahul Tewatia's innings, because, statistically, it's really interesting.
First of all, the rate of acceleration was astounding.
I find that breaking T20 innings into 15 ball groups is often really informative. It's very, very informative here.
Another good technique is to look at using exponential smoothing to look at a batsman's scoring rate. For Tewatia's innings, his smoothed rate is astoundingly low at the start, then astoundingly high at the end.