Monday 12 December 2011

The Sehwag and Watson show

This week has witnessed a quite remarkable innings. Sehwag has achieved a score of 214 in a One Day International. That's quite a lot of runs. And scored at a good clip too. So how does it compare to other scores this year?

Well obviously he scored more than everybody else, but the nature of ODI's is that just scoring runs is not the only thing. As well as wickets, deliveries are also a vital resource. One way that I like to check on the effective score is to square the runs scored and divide by the deliveries faced. This way someone that scores faster than a run a ball gets benefit, while someone that scores slower gets their score reduced. This allows us to compare innings like 114 off 121 vs 89 off 75. Which is the most effective. 114 x 114 / 121 = 107.40 while 89 x 89 / 75 = 105.61 so the 114 is better, but only a little bit. While this method is not perfect, I think it is quite easy to understand, and is an interesting metric for analysing scores.

So here are the top 20 scores this year, sorted by this method:

NameRunsBallsEffective score
SR Watson (Aus) 185*96v Bangladesh at Dhaka 356.51
V Sehwag (India) 219149v West Indies at Indore 321.89
V Sehwag (India) 175140v Bangladesh at Dhaka 218.75
KJ O'Brien (Ire) 11363v England at Bangalore 202.68
AB de Villiers (SA) 13498v Netherlands at Mohali 183.22
SR Watson (Aus) 161* 150v England at Melbourne 172.81
AJ Strauss (Eng) 158145v India at Bangalore 172.17
Shahid Afridi (Pak) 6525v New Zealand at Christchurch 169.00
KA Pollard (WI) 9455v Ireland at Mohali 160.65
TM Dilshan (SL) 144131v Zimbabwe at Pallekele 158.29
YK Pathan (India) 10570v South Africa at Centurion 157.50
IJL Trott (Eng) 137126v Australia at Sydney 148.96
KS Williamson (NZ) 100* 69v Zimbabwe at Bulawayo 144.93
PR Stirling (Ire) 10172v Netherlands at Kolkata 141.68
LRPL Taylor (NZ) 131* 124v Pakistan at Pallekele 138.40
DPMD Jayawardene (SL) 144150v England at Leeds 138.24
BRM Taylor (Zim) 128* 120v New Zealand at Harare 136.53
RD Berrington (Scot) 5623v Ireland at Edinburgh 136.35
PR Stirling (Ire) 11395v Scotland at Edinburgh 134.41
KA Pollard (WI) 6027v Netherlands at Delhi 133.33


Watson, Sehwag, Pollard and Stirling all have two entries on the list. Interestingly Pollard's century is not there, but two fifties are. Unsurprisingly most of the scores are at grounds that have a history of being batsmen friendly, but Jayawardene's innings was at Heddingly, which has the opposite reputation, so it is to be singled out as being quite an extraordinary innings. The Williamson knock was one that probably passed most people by, but the fascinating thing about that one was the he was on 93 when he faced the final ball of the match. He managed to hit a no ball for 4 and then hit the bonus delivery for 3.

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