Saturday 24 November 2018

Historical statistical preview of the Second Test, Pakistan vs NZ

I've decided to put together a short summary of some of the historical trends at Dubai, before this match.

First, the probability of different results based on first innings scores. This suggests that a score of 300 is roughly the point where a team is more likely to win than lose, while the 50% winning score is roughly 370.




The next question is how important is the toss.

I've put together this little graph to show that:


Pakistan tend to win when they win the toss, but other teams win as much as they lose if they win the toss.

Interestingly, there isn't enough statistical evidence here to say that the toss actually makes a difference to the result. If it made no difference whatsoever, you would expect to see a result as skewed or more skewed to winning the toss about 12% of the time.

Next I looked at grounds that had similar characteristics over the past 5 years:

Here's where DSC sits in:


The most similar grounds to Dubai, based on the bowlers records are in order of most similar to least similar:
Kingstown
Kanpur
Chittagong (ZAC)
Bulawayo (QSC)
Harare
Abu Dhabi
Delhi
Dunedin (University)
Sharjah

Looking at the results of the players from this match in similar grounds, and weighting them by their similarity to Dubai, here are some key players from each side:

PlayerTeamBatting
Imam-ul-HaqPAK43.41
Mohammad HafeezPAK33.02
Azhar AliPAK65.31
Haris SohailPAK55.39
Asad ShafiqPAK55.42
Babar AzamPAK26.76
Sarfraz AhmedPAK52.96
Bilal AsifPAK6.33
JA RavalNZ33.88
TWM LathamNZ67.06
KS WilliamsonNZ37.03
LRPL TaylorNZ66.36
HM NichollsNZ24.68
BJ WatlingNZ30.28
C de GrandhommeNZ1.50
IS SodhiNZ74.98

Then the equivalent for the bowlers:

PlayerTeamBowling
Mohammad AbbasPAK18.78
Hasan AliPAK19.20
Bilal AsifPAK20.74
Yasir ShahPAK27.24
Haris SohailPAK17.21
TA BoultNZ22.86
C de GrandhommeNZ22.50
N WagnerNZ26.31
AY PatelNZ17.57
IS SodhiNZ60.81

That suggests that this might not be the best test for the leggies, with the ball tending to keep a bit low at Dubai. Both Sodhi and Yasir Shah have the highest weighted averages in their teams.

The relatively high batting averages and low bowling averages for both sides in these conditions suggests that this could be a very difficult match to predict. Both teams are capable of putting together big partnerships and rapid collapses/quick bags of wickets.

It's shaping as another intriguing test. 

10 comments:

  1. Whats your take on current tour of India to NZ?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. India toppled New Zealanders in ODI series.

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    2. Sorry, I hadn't seen these comments. I wrote about that series for Firstpost. You can see my articles here: https://www.firstpost.com/author/michael-wagner/page/1

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  2. IS India will win ICC Cricket world cup 2019?

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