Don't steal Corey Anderson's moment

Michael Jeh is a fantastic writer. When I see that he has written an article, I often read it.

Recently he wrote an article about the New Zealand - West Indies match in Queenstown, in it he suggested that Corey Anderson's innings was more a case of bad bowling than good batting. He even suggested that the game contained "possibly an unofficial record for the most full tosses bowled (including junior cricket!)"

I hadn't had a chance to see the innings before reading the article, and so I naturally assumed that Anderson's innings had involved him hitting a number of full tosses for 6. I was quite surprised, therefore, when I watched the highlights that I didn't notice a single full toss before he got to 100.

A few days later, I had a chance to sit down and watch the game closely, and actually see if Jeh's criticism was valid. Not every ball is shown on the highlights, so I wanted to be careful to not judge his article based on the work of the Sky editors.

After watching it I noticed a few things.

There are a few reasons I can think of why a bowler will deliver a full toss. Here is a list of some possible reasons:

• Perhaps they decided that a particular batsman has trouble with full tosses. 
• Perhaps they want to bowl a slower ball, and they know that slower balls are much more effective if the batsmen are attacking them. As a result a wide half-volley or a full toss often pick up wickets. 
• A good tactic for spin bowler who sees a batsman charging down the wicket is to throw in a flat full toss. The batsman often ends up just hitting the ball straight back to the bowler.
• Perhaps they just executed a yorker/full ball badly.
• A bowler who has been hit a number of times sometimes just wants to get through their over, and doesn't focus as much on where the ball lands.

Some of these are a result of poor skills, but some of them are actually caused in reaction to the batsmen. It is important that we identify which is which before we criticize too harshly.

Jesse Ryder has a history of getting out to full tosses. It is not a good idea to bowl one every ball to him, but it is a valid tactic to occasionally bowl one to him, especially outside off stump, where he has a tendency to mistime them and hit them at catching height to cover. This is a risky tactic, and not one you would try every delivery, but it is a valid option occasionally.

Corey Anderson, however, doesn't have a reputation as a bowler who is likely to get out to a full toss. He is possible only behind James Franklin and Colin de Grandhomme in his ruthlessness at dealing with full tosses.

The first 5 full tosses were all bowled to Ryder. The first one was in the 9th over. There was not a single full toss in the first 53 balls. The first one was mistimed for a single. In the next over the West Indians bowled another. It was also mistimed for a single. A couple of overs later Ryder received two in a row. He hit the first for 4, but failed to score off the next one.

About 3 overs later Ryder received another full toss, and again managed only a single off it.

The first full toss that Anderson received was the ball immediately following him bringing up his hundred. There was not a single full toss in the 36 balls that he took to get to 101.

Ryder got 2 more full tosses. The first he managed to score 2 off and the second one dismissed him. Ryder scored 9 runs and was dismissed off the 7 full tosses that he faced. Off the other 44 balls he scored 95 runs. Overall Ryder scored at a higher rate off the balls that bounced than off the ones that didn't.

Anderson received 4 full tosses. He hit two of them for 6 and two of them for 2.

Overall the "unofficial record for the most full tosses bowled" is apparently 11. Only 2 of those 11 were in the first half of the innings. They were a result of good batting, putting the bowlers under pressure and getting them to go searching. 

They also didn't actually contribute that significantly to the overall score. Anderson and Ryder scored 25 runs off the 11 full tosses. This equates to 2.27 per ball. Off their other 87 balls they scored 210 runs, or 2.41 per ball.

The bowling performance by the West Indies may not have been the best ever, but the real story was the extraordinary batting. To focus on the bowlers bowing too many full tosses is to steal the glory that Corey Anderson and Jesse Ryder richly deserve. It is a disappointing angle for such a high quality writer to take, and makes me wonder if it would have been taken if it had been Warner or Dilshan scoring the runs.

A quick look at the Anderson innings

Corey Anderson has been talked of as the big hope for New Zealand cricket for about 7 years.

He was signed to a national contract when he was still at school to make sure he didn't chose to play rugby, a sport in which he also excelled.

He was one of only a few New Zealand players to play first class cricket while still at school since the Second World War.

And yet so far in his international career he has failed to make a splash. Until today.

Today he broke Shahid Afridi's record for the fastest ODI hundred by smiting the West Indies for 131* off 47 balls. The first 101 of which came up off only 36 balls. I honestly thought Afridi's record would never be broken, but I guess you should never say never.

Here's the full 47 balls, for those of you who are interested:

1 . 4 1 . 1 6 1 . 2 1 4 6 1 6 6 . 6 . 6 1 . . 6 6 6 6 6 1 . 1 4 4 1 1 6 6 4 1 2 4 1 6 1 2 2 1

The first question that came to my mind was how does this innings compare to other great innings of the past.

I came up with a formula that I've used a number of times before to quantify how good a limited overs innings is. Basically the score is either squared if they are out or multiplied by 5 more than itself if they are not out, then divided by the balls faced. It rewards both big scores and quick scoring. It isn't perfect, as it doesn't take into account the state of the match, the quality of the opposition the importance of the game or the conditions that the match is played in. However, it is the best simple system that I know of, so it's the one that I use.

I put Anderson's innings into the formula and then compared it to all other big innings that were scored quickly. For this comparison I looked at every innings where a batsman scored more than 75 at a strike rate of more than 110.

Here are the top 20:

Player	Score	vs	Year	Modified	Viv Points
Corey J Anderson (NZ)	131* (47)	v West Indies	2014	379.06	144.6
SR Watson (Aus)	185* (96)	v Bangladesh	2011	366.15	139.7
MV Boucher (SA)	147* (68)	v Zimbabwe	2006	328.59	125.4
V Sehwag (India)	219 (149)	v West Indies	2011	321.89	122.8
SR Tendulkar (India)	200* (147)	v South Africa	2010	278.91	106.4
RG Sharma (India)	209 (158)	v Australia	2013	276.46	105.5
ST Jayasuriya (SL)	134 (65)	v Pakistan	1996	276.25	105.4
HH Gibbs (SA)	175 (111)	v Australia	2006	275.9	105.3
IVA Richards (WI)	181 (125)	v Sri Lanka	1987	262.09	100
Shahid Afridi (Pak)	102 (40)	v Sri Lanka	1996	260.1	99.2
Saeed Anwar (Pak)	194 (146)	v India	1997	257.78	98.4
Shahid Afridi (Pak)	124 (60)	v Bangladesh	2010	256.27	97.8
RT Ponting (Aus)	164 (105)	v South Africa	2006	256.15	97.7
Yuvraj Singh (India)	138* (78)	v England	2008	253	96.5
CK Coventry (Zim)	194* (156)	v Bangladesh	2009	247.47	94.4
L Vincent (NZ)	172 (120)	v Zimbabwe	2005	246.53	94.1
BB McCullum (NZ)	80* (28)	v Bangladesh	2007	242.86	92.7
Ijaz Ahmed (Pak)	139* (84)	v India	1997	238.29	90.9
MS Dhoni (India)	183* (145)	v Sri Lanka	2005	237.27	90.5
ST Jayasuriya (SL)	157 (104)	v Netherlands	2006	237.01	90.4

The first name on the list is Corey Anderson's. This innings overcame Watson's demolition of Bangladesh from 2011.

I've also included "Viv Points." This is a comparison with what many people still consider the greatest innings of all time, Viv Richards vs Sri Lanka in 1987. 100 points means that it was equivalent to Viv's innings.

Incidentally at 43rd on the list was the innings that happened at the other end, Jesse Ryder's 104 off 51 balls. It was also one of the greatest innings in ODI history, but it was completely overshadowed by the outstanding innings from Anderson.

It's still early days in Corey Anderson's career. There have been plenty of players who have had a very good day in an international match (You may notice Charles Coventry and Lou Vincent's name in the above list as evidence of this) but he has now shown that the potential that the selectors saw all those years ago when he was a teenager is closer to being realised.

There are lots of things that can be said about this innings. Poor bowling, small boundaries, big bats etc, but they can't take away from the incredible pace that Anderson managed to score at. It really was a sensational innings.

Kallisculator

I'm sure that there will be tributes to Jacques Kallis all over the web at the moment. I wanted to do something uniquely CricketGeeky. So I've put together an interactive calculator, similar to the Tendulkulator that I did when Tendulkar retired. You enter in the runs and say if they are out or not out, then the basic bowling figures and it will tell you where he will end up on the all time batting and all-rounder's average leader board. You will need to scroll to the right to see the full all-rounder's numbers


I've done my best to lock it down, but it is a shared file, so if you find a way round the security, please don't vandalise it. Let everyone else play too.

When not going for the victory is an act of courage

South Africa chose to defend the last 4 overs, rather than try and score 16 runs for victory. At first glance this seems like an act of either stupidity or cowardice, but I think it was neither.

They missed out on a chance to make history, by becoming the only team to have successfully chased over 450. But they also missed out on losing a match that would have meant that the series was unwinnable.

Instead Steyn and Philander looked at the options and decided that they were a better team than India, and backed themselves to win the next test. If they went 1-0 down in the series, the best possible outcome was a drawn series, but if the match was a draw, then it was still possible to win the series.

Imran Tahir was probably the next man in. In roughly 2/3 of his innings he has lasted less than 10 balls. That is not the player you want to have saving a test. Morne Morkel is more competent, but it's difficult to bat with only one leg working. It was entirely likely that those two could have been dismissed in the space of an over.

Given that restriction, it made sense that the South Africans decided to be positive with regards to the series, and back themselves to win the second match. It certainly would have been frustrating for them and for any South African fans, but it was probably the correct call.

It appeared to be an act of cowardice, but really it was an act borne of a confidence in their ability to win the second test.

Mini-session Analysis, 3rd test, NZvWI, Seddon Park, Hamilton

Here is the final mini-session analysis for the third test between New Zealand and West Indies at Seddon Park, Hamilton

A mini-session is (normally) half a session, either between the start of the session and the drinks break or the drinks break and the end of the session. Occasionally a long session will have 3 mini-sessions where it will be broken up with 2 drinks breaks.

Is the Southee - Boult partnership greater than the Hadlee - Chatfield partnership?

There is a theory that bowlers are supposed to hunt in a pack. That the two bowlers are supposed to work together to get the batsmen out.  There are some proponents of this theory, and some who feel that it is rubbish, and that each bowler is wholly responsible for their own figures.

In the light of their recent performances I've been looking into the opening partnership of Boult and Southee and then I've compared that to others opening partnerships throughout time. They are a fairly new pair, but they actually stack up quite well.

Warner in Perth

I have written before about how impressed I am with David Warner's running between wickets. I genuinely believe that he is one of the best at judging a run that I've seen.

Accordingly I was surprised to see that he had scored the same number of singles as boundaries in the second innings at Perth. I also heard the commentators describe it as a typical innings from Warner. It made me wonder if it actually was a typical innings.

First of all I looked at how Warner compared to other batsmen.  The method I chose to look at was to compare the boundary percentage (boundaries per delivery) and the activity rate (runs scored per non-boundary delivery). I filtered out any batsman who hadn't faced more than 650 deliveries since 2000, hadn't hit more than 50 fours and hadn't played in the past 2 years. I then put the rest of the batsmen on a single graph.

I divided up the batsmen into 4 categories. Aggressive, Block Bash, Pushers and Defensive. Close to the extremes of each group were players who have been reasonably successful.

In the defensive group are players like Rahul Dravid, Peter Fulton, Tino Mawoyo, Ed Cowan and JP Duminy.
Block Bash contains Angelo Mathews, Shane Watson, Chris Gayle and Yuvraj Singh.
Pushers includes Kane Williamson, Shiv Chanderpaul, Jonathan Trott and Thilan Samaraweera.
Aggressive include Ricky Ponting, Sachin Tendulkar, Darren Sammy and David Warner.

Warner has a higher activity rate than anyone in the list. But he also hits more boundaries than most batsmen.

 

Warner's activity rate for his career is 0.353 and his boundary rate is 9.3%. His innings in Perth lasted 140 deliveries. We would expect 13 boundaries, perhaps 12 fours and 1 six. Off the other 127 deliveries we would expect him to score 45 runs. Overall we would expect that he would be on about 99, rather than 112, so he scored slightly faster than we would expect, but the big difference was the make up of the innings.

Warner scored 80 runs in boundaries. That's about 40% more than we would normally expect him to get.

I used the same graph as above, to analyse Warner's other innings. I've included every innings where Warner has scored more than 30. I've drawn in lines to show which group the innings would have fit in.

We can see that Warner's innings does fit in with some of his other innings, but really is closer to the Block Bash quadrant than almost any of his other innings.

It was an interesting innings, because of the context and the opponent, but also because of the way that he scored the runs.