Concentration or Technique

To be a great batsman it requires good technique and good skills of concentration.

Generally players who have a flaw in their technique are shown up early in their innings, while players who have lapses in concentration tend to have difficulty converting starts to big scores.

The challenge is to see if there is a way to quantify this.

So I took a range of batsmen, and looked at their average, compared to their average score after 20. (to get this I found their average on all innings when they had reached 20, and then subtracted 20, to find out how many more they got.)

There were a couple of interesting results. I was expecting McIntosh, North and Samaraweera to have high averages once they got to 50, but I didn't know who to expect to be at the bottom end.

Here is the table:

Name	Average after Twenty	Overall Average	Difference
MJ North	67.66	35.48	32.18
TG McIntosh	54.60	27.54	27.06
AG Prince	67.68	45.61	22.07
S Chanderpaul	77.78	57.00	20.78
MJ Prior	60.83	42.96	17.87
DPMD Jayawardene	81.80	63.95	17.85
SR Tendulkar	74.04	57.48	16.56
Shoaib Malik	49.76	33.77	15.99
Younis Khan	75.65	59.93	15.72
HM Amla	65.07	49.80	15.27
IR Bell	58.90	43.73	15.17
TT Samaraweera	76.68	61.90	14.78
MJ Clarke	62.80	50.27	12.53
AB de Villiers	59.78	47.65	12.13
KC Sangakkara	83.31	71.32	11.99
Misbah-ul-Haq	60.5	48.75	11.75
V Sehwag	64.48	53.34	11.14
PD Collingwood	52.82	41.72	11.10
MJ Guptill	44.72	33.68	11.04
Kamran Akmal	44.57	34.05	10.52
JH Kallis	66.72	57.78	8.94
Yuvraj Singh	43.50	34.78	8.72
RT Ponting	54.94	46.70	8.24
Mohammad Yousuf	67.45	59.51	7.94
R Dravid	52.96	45.11	7.85
IJL Trott	69.23	61.53	7.70
MEK Hussey	55.62	48.31	7.31
VVS Laxman	59.90	52.94	6.96
MS Dhoni	46.27	40.23	6.04
KP Pietersen	54.60	48.94	5.66
PJ Hughes	44.80	39.55	5.25
AN Cook	51.83	47.50	4.33
IK Pathan	43.00	38.85	4.15
BJ Haddin	43.03	39.68	3.35
Tamim Iqbal	41.80	40.13	1.67
BP Nash	40.12	38.85	1.27
GC Smith	49.13	48.11	1.02
CH Gayle	46.82	45.96	0.86
AJ Strauss	42.50	41.98	0.52
LRPL Taylor	40.38	40.21	0.17
TM Dilshan	45.02	45.4	-0.38
G Gambhir	57.25	57.95	-0.70
SR Watson	42.24	43.53	-1.29
SM Katich	47.46	50.48	-3.02
JD Ryder	41.78	47.76	-5.98

There are a couple of results that I find interesting in this group. Firstly how high Matt Prior's difference is. Most wicket-keepers have very a very good eye, and as a result tend to not get out for low scores as often (the average difference for non-keepers is 8.73, while the average for keepers is 7.68)

The number of batsmen who regularly face the new ball being in the bottom half of the group is also surprising. Given that there is a much higher chance of getting out early when facing a new ball, I expected openers such as Dilshan, Ghambir, Watson, and Katich to cash in better when they got a start. (I'm aware that Dilshan played half his games in the middle order diring this period, but strangely his difference was greater in the middle order than opening)

Something that I don't want to mention, but it is interesting is the other two names at the bottom of this list: Ross Taylor and Jesse Ryder. Martin Crowe (quite rightly) got criticized heavily for saying that Maori and Polynesian cricketers were never going to have the impact that Maori and Polynesian rugby players did, because they generally didn't have the concentration required. Taylor (Samoan) and Ryder (Maori) were trumpeted as the counter-examples to his theory, but perhaps their success has more to do with technique than concentration. (Ryder is possibly the most technically fluent batsmen playing the game at the moment, I never got a chance to see Sir Frank Worrell bat, but the description of him as playing grammatically correct shots could equally be made of Ryder's batting in tests. - he does lose his aesthetic pleasentness somewhat in limited overs cricket however)

Of the 38 players who have averaged adding more than 60 after 20 in history, more than half (21) have played in the 2000's. The top 5 are Bradman (obviously), Amiss, Tendulkar, Steve Waugh and Kallis.

It certainly adds something to watch for during the next test match series.