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.

Mini-session Analysis 5th Ashes test - The Oval, 2013

Here is the mini-session analysis for the Fifth test between England and Australia at The Oval, London, England

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.

When was the Ashes won?

The important old ball

England retained the Ashes by securing a draw in the 3rd match at Old Trafford, and then won the series by winning the 4th match at Chester-le-Street.

An interesting question, however, is what parts of the games did England win? It's hard not to recognise the efforts of Ian Bell, who has been immense for England with the bat, often on quite difficult surfaces. Despite his efforts, I think there has been another factor that has been equally influential. England's pace bowlers have bowled well with the old ball.

For the purpose of this article, I've defined the ball as being new if it is less than 20 overs old, and old if it's more than 20 overs.

Here are the difference between the two sets of pace bowlers:

Average	Australia	England
less than 20 overs	22.78	32.32
more than 20 overs	35.28	28.78

Australia are significantly better with the new ball, but England are better with the old ball. While those 7 runs per wicket doesn't seem like a big difference, it is because there have been just over twice the number of overs bowled with the old ball as with the new ball.

Part of the difference has been that Australia seem to have worked hard to keep the shine on the ball, while England seem to have been trying to get the ball to reverse, and not been so worried about using the first new ball as a weapon. England have done much better with the second new ball than with the first (England average 4 runs per wicket more with the first new ball than with the second), while Australia have been the opposite (Australia average 5 runs per wicket more with the second new ball than with the first). Their bowlers almost seem to have run out of steam once the second ball comes along.

Here's how it works out as averages scores. After 20 overs Australia's average score is about 66/2. England is 58/3. However after 80 overs Australia average 180/9 while England are 225/7. Some of that difference is Graeme Swann, but some of that is just how much more effective England's quick bowlers have been with the older ball.

If we took spin bowlers out of the picture and just looked at the fast bowlers, After 20 overs Australia would still average 66/2 (Swann had been about as effective as the quicks with the new ball). England would have been 47/3. After 80 overs Australia would average 250/9 while England would still have 3 wickets in hand at 211/7.

There's a point, however, where these numbers are ridiculous, as the different batsmen are not equally capable, but they do paint a picture.

However they are ignoring the impact that Swann has on the bowlers that are bowling with him.

I believe that one of the reasons that England's quicks have been so effective with the old ball is the pressure created by Graeme Swann. To quantify this pressure, I looked at a statistic that I called Wicket Assists. A wicket assist is awarded to a bowler who bowls an over directly preceding the one where a wicket fell.

Wicket assists is a statistic that I keep note of when I'm coaching, as it's often a better indicator of how much pressure a bowler is exerting on the batsmen than wickets. An example of this is when I had two bowlers opening the bowling together. One bowled 6 overs, and took 0/8 (included 2 no balls, and a wide that just slipped down the leg side). The other bowled 7 overs and took 6/47. Most of the wickets for the second bowler were a result of the pressure that the first bowler built up. The second one got to keep the ball, and got the plaudits, however the one that I recommended for a higher team was the first bowler.

Graeme Swann has taken 23 wickets in this series, but he has also had 23 wicket assists. That's roughly one wicket every 9 overs while he's at the bowling crease. He creates pressure that allows the quick bowlers to take wickets. Compare his rate to Ashton Agar, who had 2 wickets and 5 assists in the two matches he played. That's a wicket roughly every 24 overs that he's at the crease. Nathan Lyon has been more successful than Agar at exerting pressure. 8 wickets and 6 assists, meaning that Australia pick up a wicket roughly every 11 overs that he's at the crease.

Overall I believe that one of the major differences between the two teams has been what their bowlers have done after 20 overs. England's quick bowlers have been better, and their spinners have been better too. Overall, I believe this is the time that this series has been won.

Mini-session Analysis, 4th Ashes Test, Chester-le-Street, 2013

Here is the mini-session analysis for the fourth test between England and Australia at Riverside Ground, Chester-le-Street, England

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.

A terrible decision

Anyone who is an opponent of DRS has just got a whole lot of ammo. The problem is not the system (in my opinion) it's the implementation. The idea that there needs to be clear evidence to overturn a decision is fine, but I genuinely think that the decision to give Usman Khawaja out was appalling.

International cricketers need to be careful about how they talk about umpires, but Jimmy Neesham didn't hold back, with this tweet:

Image found of the third umpire deliberating on Khawaja's referral pic.twitter.com/oz3640AtEB

— Jimmy Neesham (@JimmyNeesh) August 1, 2013

Mini-session Analysis, 3rd Ashes test, Old Trafford, 2013

Here is the final mini-session analysis for the third test between England and Australia at Old Trafford, Manchester, England

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.

Shane Watson and The Form Myth

Shane Watson. Out lbw. Again.

I read somewhere recently that Shane Watson is in bad form.

They implied that he needed to go away and "discover some form." The more I am involved with cricket, the less I believe in form.

Shane Watson has a technical deficiency. He moves his front foot too far across when he is playing in-swing. He also clears his front leg against left arm spin, and plays across the ball. These technical problems aren't really an issue if he's playing against lower quality bowlers, because he can hit the ball, and so he doesn't get out lbw. Once he faces bowlers who can bowl the ball in the places where he finds it difficult to play, he gets out. The champion of cricket on YouTube, Robelinda2 has put up a compilation of some of his lbw dismissals here.

It seems that it often happens once he starts to attack the bowling. It means that his larger innings tend to get cut short even once he's underway. That's why he was labelled by one commentator as Wall Street (great in the twenties, crashes in the 30's and 40's).

I compared Watson with all top 7 batsmen in the last 3 years on their likelihood to get out lbw. Most of us have heard that Watson gets out lbw more than anyone in history except Junior Murray (min 30 matches), but when he gets out is particularly interesting.

I looked at the relative frequency of dismissal by lbw in innings under 30 and in innings 30+. I compared it to other batsmen in the last 3 years. (I picked the last 3 years to include the DRS factor) Here are the numbers:

Score	Watson	Other Batsmen
0-29	33.33%	20.48%
30 +	28.95%	13.78%

Watson is 63% more likely to get out lbw at the start of his innings than other batsmen, but he is 110% more likely than them to get out later on. It is a technical issue, not a form issue. Going away and playing some lower quality bowlers will not fix it. He needs to work on where to put his feet and how to play the different deliveries that are getting him out.

If he does fix that technical issue, the commentators will all say that he's in great form.  But perhaps it will just be that the bowlers are trying to bowl the ball to him in a way that he is now equipped to deal with.

CricketGeek Player Profile: Jackson Bird

Jackson Bird

Jackson Bird is a tall right arm pace bowler from Australia.

He bowls into the wicket at a reasonable (if not express) pace, and bowls consistently in good areas. He moves the ball both in the air and off the seam.

I had the privilege to watch him make his test debut, and he looked like a very good prospect.

He was the top wicket taker in the Sheffield Shield in 2011/12 with 53 wickets and was high up the table again in 2012/13 despite only playing in 6 matches.

He did all this at with a very good average and strike rate. Part of those good figures is due to playing for Tasmania, and hence getting to play half his cricket on the Bellerive Oval, where he has taken 42 wickets at 16.19. However there are only 3 grounds where he averages more than 30 at, and at all of these he has only played one match.

CricketGeek Book Review: The Albion 2013 Ashes eBook - by The Armchair Selector

The team at The Armchair Selector have put together a handy guide for anyone who is wanting to watch the Ashes in 2013.

A screen shot of the eBook's

eye-pleasing layout.

It includes information about the players, the ground, some recent history and some personal accounts of ashes experiences.

The layout and design of the eBook is outstanding, it's visually captivating while still being very readable.

The team have done well to find a balance between being informative about the cricket, and humorous and easy to read. For me the highlight was Peter Miller's section giving tips for keeping awake through the night for the matches.

The one omission was Ashton Agar from the profiles, but to be fair, he was very much a surprise selection.

Overall I really enjoyed it. I would recommend it to any cricket tragic who's likely to be spending a lot of time on the couch (or to anyone who isn't a massive fan, but wants to sound knowledgeable). I'm not sure if they are planning on producing one of these for the return series, but if they are, I'll be buying one.

The eBook costs US$3.99, and can be bought here.

Mini-session Analysis, 2nd Ashes test, Lord's, 2013

Here is the mini-session analysis for the second test between England and Australia at Lord's, London, England

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.

The ethics of walking

What should come next?

My undergraduate degree was a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in Philosophy. While my primary interest was in logic, I also did some ethics and metaphysics papers also. I found ethics a fascinating subject, as things were very difficult to pin down. Different philosophers have argued over the existence of some sort of objective moral law. If they have agreed that there is such a thing as a moral law, they have then often disagreed as to what it is.

The idea of the moral law has led to some great works of literature. Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment is a fascinating look at the concept, as are a large number of Franz Kafka's short stories. But even low-brow fiction often is based on moral dilemmas or concern about the moral law. There's a theory that the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer were so much more popular than other similar books because of some of the moral questions that they posed. Can someone be a monster by nature? Can someone overcome that nature? Is it wrong for someone to act according to a corrupted nature?

 Recently Stuart Broad's failure to walk after edging a ball from Ashton Agar set off a storm of controversy. Claim from one group of fans about cheating followed by counter claims by the other group of fans. Not long ago there was also the issue with Denesh Ramdin claiming a catch that he had actually dropped, and the ICC banning him for 2 matches as a result.

I'm going to first look at the process of the appeal, outlined in rules, then at three possible ethical frameworks and finally at these two situations, and look what the different ethical perspectives would have said about them.

Mini-session Analysis 1st Ashes Test, Trent Bridge, 2013

Here is the final mini-session analysis for the first test between England and Australia at Trent Bridge, Nottingham, England

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.