The right attitude

Brett Lee bowling against Australia. Photo courtesy Rikx

When Bill Lawry asked Adam Parore prior to the 2001/2 New Zealand tour of Australia if he wanted to be like Ian Healy, he was astounded by the response. Parore replied that while he wanted to do the same role, he felt that he was better than Healy already, and why would he only want to have his results. Lawry, who has a reputation for his love of all Australian cricketers, commented positively about Parore's confidence.

In that same tour Stephen Fleming was asked by a member of the Australian press if he was hoping to try to get close to the Australian team. His reply was that he was aiming for a 3-0 series win.

In the end the series was drawn 0-0 with Australia narrowly avoiding a loss in two matches and New Zealand batting for half an hour with the final two at the wicket in the other match.

Coming into the first match New Zealand were in tatters. They had struggled against some state second XI's and there were serious doubts about the solidity of the top order. Their bowling attack was described as shaky and pop-gun. The first test initially didn't do much to allay those concerns. O'Connor limped out after 17 overs with figures of 0/67, Nash picked up 0/93 and the only bright spark was Cairns, who's 5 wickets cost 146.

Australia posted 486, kept in check largely through the contribution of medium pace part-timers Astle and McMillan. In the next innings New Zealand were quickly reduced to 55/4. But they didn't give in, and despite struggling to avoid the follow on, declared at 287/8. Australia scored some quick runs and left New Zealand a target of 284 in 57 overs.

The game ended with New Zealand only 10 runs short with 4 wickets in hand and Lee and McGrath bowling as wide as they could get away with in order to prevent New Zealand being able to score the runs.

In that series, the lowly ranked and unfancied kiwis went in with an attitude that didn't care about the rankings or reputations, but instead believed in their own ability, despite all the evidence to the contrary. The result was a team that almost beat one of the greatest teams of all time in a great 3 match series.

Unfortunately in this tour, where a lowly ranked and unfancied kiwi side also take on one of the greatest teams of all time, the New Zealand team have said things like "we're ranked 8th for a reason" and "We've just got to make sure we get better and compete for longer in this series." The aim and expectation was to compete, not to win.

Regardless of the lack of quality of a team, and the ability of their opposition, every team should approach every match with an expectation of winning the match, and a plan as to how they are going to do it. That, and only that, is the right attitude to play cricket with.

Penny-pinching Misers

I've recently watched the movie Moneyball. The idea of a killer stat is interesting, and it is interesting if such a thing exists in cricket.

In baseball getting on base is the primary objective when batting. There are times that other things are ideal, but getting on base is always a good thing. Compare this with batting in limited overs cricket. If the team needs 8 of the last 2 balls, and you hit a single, you are making it extremely unlikely for your team to win the game. (Unless you have Andre Adams at the other end, and Graeme Aldridge is bowling). However if you need 2 runs off 7 balls, and Bruce Reid at the other end, a single is a great thing.

Likewise if you are chasing 324, scoring 110 off 155 deliveries is really making it difficult for your team to win. But scoring 101 off 143 when your team is chasing 197 on a tricky pitch is an outstanding effort.

However it is rarely true in recent times that a bowler can bowl 9 or more overs and concede less than 50 runs and it be a bad effort. If a bowler stops batsmen from scoring runs, they are doing their job. Over the past 5 years when teams restrict their opponents to 250 or less they win roughly 2/3 of the matches. To put that in perspective South Africa has the 2nd best winning record in that time, winning about 2/3 of their matches. To put it another way, If Bangladesh managed to keep their opponents to 250 or less every match they would be likely to have the best winning record in Asia.

As a result, bowlers who can regularly keep their runs conceded under 50 are very valuable for a team. Which leads to the question: who are the best at doing it?

Player	Bowled 9 or more overs	Conceded 50 or less	Percentage
Mohammad Hafeez (Pak)	24	22	91.7%
GP Swann (Eng)	38	33	86.8%
DL Vettori (NZ)	53	45	84.9%
J Botha (Afr/SA)	41	34	82.9%
RW Price (Zim)	54	44	81.5%
Shakib Al Hasan (Ban)	68	52	76.5%
KMDN Kulasekara (SL)	37	28	75.7%
M Muralitharan (SL)	41	31	75.6%
B Lee (Aus)	28	21	75.0%
BAW Mendis (SL)	31	23	74.2%
Saeed Ajmal (Pak)	37	27	73.0%
NW Bracken (Aus)	33	24	72.7%
P Utseya (Zim)	54	39	72.2%
DJG Sammy (WI)	28	20	71.4%
Shahid Afridi (Pak)	78	54	69.2%

In that list of 14, there are 10 finger spinners. Some of them don't often bowl that many overs, and only get to bowl that many if things are going well for them, such as Mohammed Hafeez, Nuwan Kulasekera or Darren Sammy, however the other 9 finger spinners are in the 13 most likely bowlers to bowl 9 or more overs.

If we give in to conventional wisdom that we need pace bowlers in a team to give the bowling line up balance, we need to know who are the most reliable pace bowlers. Here are the equivalent numbers for the quick(er) bowlers.

Player	Bowled 9 or more overs	Conceded 50 or less	Percentage
KMDN Kulasekara (SL)	37	28	75.7%
B Lee (Aus)	28	21	75.0%
NW Bracken (Aus)	33	24	72.7%
DJG Sammy (WI)	28	20	71.4%
Z Khan (India)	52	34	65.4%
MG Johnson (Aus)	54	34	63.0%
Mashrafe Mortaza (Ban)	37	23	62.2%
KD Mills (NZ)	35	21	60.0%
SL Malinga (SL)	44	24	54.5%
JM Anderson (Eng)	56	30	53.6%
SCJ Broad (Eng)	53	27	50.9%

An equivalent table for wrist-spin bowlers is rather redundant, as it would only contain Shahid Afridi, as the only wrist spinner to have 20 or more innings where he has bowled 9 or more and conceded 50 or less in the past 5 years.

Perhaps this would suggest that if we were going to pick a stats-based world team for an ODI, our bowlers might be best to have Kulasekara and Lee opening the bowling, Hafeez and Sammy as our all-rounders and Vettori and Swann as our pure spinners. It would be a very difficult line-up to score off indeed.