#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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Today is our iron wedding anniversary.

We're having a high-iron dinner. Mmmmm

While I'm loathe to praise a new tax, I've had a think about the new tax that Labour is proposing and while I think they could have done it a lot better, I can see some of the rationale in those numbers. 1/n According to TradingEconomies, we're expected to have a government debt of about $98 billion at the end of this year.

The cost of servicing that debt based on our current interest rates is about $610 million per year. 2/n

Normally on a Tuesday/Wednesday I put out a cricket stats article. I set aside time every Tuesday for doing analysis.

This week was no different, except that I decided to do some more work on a large project that I've been attempting for about 4 months, looking at ODI captaincy. As a result, I didn't have anything to publish. But I did notice something in a different sport.

Ever since I was about 10 years old, I've followed (vaguely) the Portland Trailblazers. I saw them playing a match against the Bulls and I decided they'd be my team. 2/n

Somehow an Indian fan managed to find a way to make England vs Ireland into further evidence of the greatness of MS Dhoni. In the only ODI match that Billings and Dhoni have been on the same field for, Dhoni played a "mature" "anchoring" innings of 25(36) when India were chasing 322. India fell 5 runs short.

Modified Super Rugby concept

4 pools of 7 teams.

Top two from each pool go to quarterfinals. Winner hosts, runner up travels.

The pools are NZ, Aus + SE Asia, SA, and international. NZ pool

Northern - Northland, North Harbour
Auckland - Auckland, Counties
Western - Waikato, Taranaki
Eastern - BoP, Hawkes Bay
Wellington - Wellington Manawatu
Canterbury - Canterbury, Tasman
Otago - Otago, Southland

If @dbseymour was smart, he'd be immediately finding a great Clutha candidate.

Walker's toxic, but Clutha voters won't vote against National, unless they're convinced that voting for a different candidate would be better for National.

Only ACT or an independent can claim that. If ACT ran a serious electorate campaign, they could get 6 or 7 MPs in previously safe National seats.

That wouldn't impact National's number of MPs one iota.

It would be a strategy that could potentially see National/ACT take the reigns even if Labour get 50% of the vote.

Why I don't use the MyVodafone ap to pay my bills. A thread. @vodafoneNZ

I started to load it at 2:53...

I want to take a few tweets to talk about some of the things that the government has done well in response to Covid-19.

I've been fairly vocal with some of my criticisms, but I think that they've generally done a good job, particularly at the stary. 1. The wage subsidy.

This is excellent. It has deferred some of the pain and avoided since from ever happening.

By paying it up front, they have meant that businesses were able to have a degree of certainty in a period of massive uncertainty.

I've been working for a camping ground do some analysis for their business.

At the moment the tourism industry is needing to change focus from overseas tourists to domestic tourists, so it's a good time to do target the capital expenditure carefully. I'm helping with that.

1/n I ran a survey and got a fairly good response. It found some interesting things about how to target the marketing and who was responding from different methods. But I also found that about 15% of people complained about the bathrooms.

2/n

Here's a thought about how matches behind closed doors might be able to have more atmosphere.

This is a little involved, so I'm going to turn it into a thread.

This would work for @SuperRugbyNZ or @NZWarriors but also for other countries with good internet infrastructure. 1/n Some of the issues with coverage from closed stadiums can't be solved easily. I wrote about some of the difficulties here:

firstpost.com/health/coronav…

But some can be solved, or at least mitigated.

One of those is getting a crowd response to celebrate things. 2/n

New Zealand have just dropped the spinner with the best average of all NZ spinners in NZ since 1987 (min 100 overs) because he wasn't successful in Australia. #NZvIND In the last 50 years, only John Bracewell has a better average than Mitchell Santner (29.39 vs 34.52) and only Bruce Martin has a better economy rate (2.29 vs 2.30)