Friday 25 March 2011

Contributions made by openers

In a couple of previous posts, Partnerships that made big contributions" and A different kind of hundred partnership I looked at a different way of measuring the impact of a partnership.

I used the method from the contributions post to look at opening partnerships in this world cup. There have been a couple of outstanding partnerships this time round, not least of which was the innings by Dilshan and Tharanga of 282 vs Zimbabwe at Pallekele.

Here is the list of all partnerships that contributed 100 or more:

NamesForAgainstRunsContribution
TM Dilshan, WU TharangaSLvs Zimbabwe282307
BJ Haddin, SR WatsonAusvs Canada183246
WTS Porterfield, PR StirlingIrevs Netherlands177241
MJ Guptill, BB McCullumNZvs Zimbabwe166217
V Sehwag, SR TendulkarIndiavs South Africa142201
BJ Haddin, SR WatsonAusvs New Zealand133189
Kamran Akmal, Mohammad HafeezPakvs West Indies113180
RW Chakabva, BRM TaylorZimvs Sri Lanka116165
KP Pietersen, AJ StraussEngvs Netherlands105149
CH Gayle, DS SmithWIvs Netherlands100141
HM Amla, GC SmithSAvs Bangladesh98139
MJ Guptill, BB McCullumNZvs Kenya72139
KP Pietersen, AJ StraussEngvs Ireland91125
S Chanderpaul, DS SmithWIvs Ireland89124
TM Dilshan, WU TharangaSLvs Pakistan76105


A couple of names appear there more than once. Dilshan & Tharanga, Haddin & Watson, Guptil & McCullum and, despite often looking as comfortable as a pin in the bottom, Devon Smith.

That leads to the next obvious question: Which country has got the most value from their openers. Here's the list sorted by country and average contribution. (for this average I am dividing by innings, not dismissals, as there is already a bonus for getting a not out)

TeamContribution
Aus104.33
SL99.00
NZ78.17
Eng75.50
India68.29
SA62.67
WI57.14
Ire45.00
Zim38.00
Ban31.67
Neth27.14
Kenya11.83
Can10.00


There's some obvious distortion in these numbers caused by the ability of some teams at minnow bashing. The usual suspects for beating up on minnows (NZ, SA, India and SL) all feature high on the chart. I will at some point produce a table that removes games against lesser teams, but the pub is calling.

Happy World Cup watching everyone.

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