The greatest ever wicket keeping batsman.

The first article that I wrote that garnered any attention was a look at Matt Prior's career as a wicket-keeper batsman, and to see how he stacked up against some of the greats: Gilchrist, Flower and Ames. It had about 200 reads, until Jarrod Kimber tweeted out a link to it, and then it had about 1000, doubling the total number of reads that my blog had had up until that point. Then there was a rain break in the England vs India test, and one of the Cricinfo commentators decided to link to the article with "here's something to look at while you wait for the rain to clear." I was swamped. About 24000 people read that article in the next 4 hours, and my little project blog became something that people started to read.

I also included a brief comparison with MS Dhoni, which got me a couple of death threats, for daring to suggest that Prior was better than Dhoni. (My favourite was "I'm going to come to England and burn your house down, you biased English." - not particularly concerning at the time, as I lived on the opposite side of the world from England).

I'm going to attempt to play with fire again, and re-look at the question.

Over the past 6 months, I've given up my job, and gone back to university to study statistics. This post is in part me attempting to use some of the tools that I've learned in that process.

One thing that comes up when discussing this, is how difficult it is to bat and keep, and if it's easier to bat with the tail, or with at the top of the order.

To try to answer those questions, I took some information for a few keepers, and had a go at running some models on them. The list of keepers that I've looked at is: Adam Gilchrist, Kumar Sangakkara, Andy Flower, Matt Prior, Brendon McCullum, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Mushfiqur Rahim, Alec Stewart and BJ Watling. Initially, I also looked at Clyde Walcott and Les Ames, but it was difficult to get some of the information to build the models for them, so I've left them out. I'm only looking at batting. This is comparing the batting of players who kept wickets.

The variables that I looked at were as follows:
1. Average of partnerships when they came to the wicket. For example if a player came to the crease at 20/4, this was 5, if they came to the wicket at 380/2 it was 190. For opening batsmen I used 21, as this is the median opening partnership, so it is a reasonable expectation of how difficult it is to bat.
2. How many balls have passed. If the player comes to the wicket in the 51st over, it's likely to be different conditions to coming to the wicket in the 3rd over.
3. Are they the designated keeper or not. For some players, being the designated keeper hurts their batting, but for others it has the opposite effect.

I then split the data into two randomly, created the most parsimonious model that I could with half of one particular batsman's data, and then tested it on the other half of the data. I repeated this 100 times, then took the average coefficients from the 10 models that tested the best.

There are possibly better options for how to do this, but it seemed to return reasonably sensible results.

The next thing that I did was to apply those models to a number of different scenarios, some as a keeper, and some as a batsman.

That resulted in the following graph:



The answer to the question, based on these models, is quite comprehensively Andy Flower. If you're wanting to select another one, as a pure batsman Sangakkara is your man. If you want someone to bat in a crisis, then Gilchrist is the second best option, but to grind the opposition into the dust, after, Flower, you would want BJ Watling.

I quite like the idea of thinking about players based on situations, rather than overall averages. There is certainly more options that I could look at to build the model, including controlling for opposition and location. But for now this is an interesting look at a difficult problem.

New Zealand's remarkable consistency under McCullum

New Zealand have traditionally had reasonable bowlers and not very good batsmen.

Even New Zealand's best batsmen, Crowe, Reid, Turner and Sutcliffe didn't manage to hold the team together often enough for New Zealand to regularly score big scores.

Before the year 2000 New Zealand had only managed to pass 400 on 52 occasions. (roughly 10% of innings). From 2000 until the end of 2012, they managed to pass 400 on 32 occasions (roughy 17% of innings). Since then, under Brendon McCullum, they have managed to pass 400 on 12 occasions in 32 innings (37.5%).

The consistency has been remarkable.

Under McCullum New Zealand have scored under 200 in 27% of innings. The next best was Fleming with 29.3%. Under every other captain who had the team for at least 5 matches, New Zealand scored less than 200 on at least one third of their innings.

This graphic displays the difference quite well:

Under McCullum, New Zealand have scored over 400 more often than they scored over 300 with most captains.

The team's ability to score 400 regularly is actually impressive when compared globally also.

I decided to look at how often a team scored 400, divided by the number of times they were bowled out.  This eliminates situations where the match situation makes scoring 400 unrealistic, for example where a team scores 90/3 to win a match or declares for 385/7 to set up a win.

Here's the table:

Captain	400's	All Outs	400s per AO
DG Bradman	16	21	0.762
SR Waugh	36	56	0.643
AJ Strauss	27	47	0.574
MJK Smith	11	21	0.524
SC Ganguly	27	52	0.519
RT Ponting	45	89	0.506
SM Gavaskar	21	42	0.5
BB McCullum	12	24	0.5
Imran Khan	20	41	0.488
Mushtaq Mohammad	9	20	0.45
GC Smith	50	112	0.446
MS Dhoni	33	76	0.434
MS Atapattu	9	21	0.429
Waqar Younis	9	21	0.429
SM Pollock	11	26	0.423
N Kapil Dev	15	36	0.417
DPMD Jayawardene	17	42	0.405
MJ Clarke	18	45	0.4
WM Woodfull	12	30	0.4

Some other New Zealand names on the list are Fleming, 0.298; Vettori 0.214 and Howarth 0.212.

It is still very early days, but this New Zealand team under Brendon McCullum are starting to show some real promise.

Grief and Success: The Blackcaps response to Phillip Hughes

The New Zealand team put out their bats in memory of Hughes

In the wake of the death of Phillip Hughes and the following outstanding performance by the Blackcaps, I was interested in the opinion of a sports psychologist as to if the two were likely to be connected.  I rang Vicki Aitken, a High Performance Sports Mentor who has a background working with a number of sports, including cricket.

I felt that it would be interesting to find out if she felt that the impressive performance might have been a part of how the New Zealand team responded to the death of Hughes, who was a personal friend of a number of members of the team.

Here's her response to my question:

So how does this play mentally?  I’m speculating from a distance but I would suggest a number of factors may have been involved here:

I believe there are 6 aspects that go into top performance one of which is the need to have a holistic life with good life balance going on. A death can help you put your own life into perspective and the game back into its rightful place as being exactly that a game (albeit a great game!). Athletes notoriously perform better when there is life balance and or perspective going on. The comments from Ross Taylor about playing naturally and like a kid give this argument some credibility.

Lack of emotional response can be a two edge sword. The positive side is that when they make a mistake or error by not responding emotionally rather than dwelling on the past it allows them to stay in the moment more easily which is where you need to be to perform at your very best.

Phil Hughes death (and commemoration of his life) can also be a motivational factor. Athletes have been known to use and attribute their successes at highly emotional times like this to their mate or loved one. Where thoughts are filled between balls of the man in question. So that by the time they switch on again to face the next ball they are 110% focused and in the moment inspired to do so by the legend that has now gone. Two golf examples spring to mind where this has happened: Darren Clarke at the Ryder Cup in 2006 shortly after his wife died of cancer, he played remarkably well helping the Europeans to victory. And back in the 1995 Ben Crenshaw used the death of his legend coach Harvey Penick the week before to go on and win the Masters.

Vicki Aitken – High Performance Sports Mentor – BA, PGDipPE, MPhEd; BASES Accredited, SESNZ Member.    www.hpsportsacademy.com

Match 2, NZ vs South Africa preview

Trent Boult may be a key player in match 2

We now have a little more information about Bay Oval, and what it's all about.  We also have seen both teams play.  And really, we don't actually know much more.

Here are some things that I noticed, and some battles to look forward to.

1. Trent Boult vs Quentin de Kock.  de Kock is a good batsman, in good form, but he looked somewhat clueless against Boult, and it looks like he will need to develop a better plan as to how to bat against him.

2. Vernon Philander vs Martin Guptill. Guptill looked completely out of form in the first game, but that's at odds with how well he played in the CPL just recently. Often a batsman looks out of form when a bowler is bowling in places that makes it difficult for him to score.  I think that is what actually happened in the first match. It will be interesting to see if Guptill has managed to figure out how to get some runs off Philander's bowling.

3. Kyle Mills vs Hashim Amla. If Mills plays in this match, it will be interesting to see if he can repeat the dose against Amla. Mills bowled 21 deliveries to Amla, and he managed to only score 12 before getting out. And those 12 mostly came from streaky, un-Amla like shots. Conventional wisdom would say that Amla's too good to repeat that performance, but Mills is a very crafty bowler, and his successes against Chris Gayle say that he is capable of targeting a player and really getting on top of them.

4. Brendon McCullum vs Morne Morkel.  McCullum backs himself to dominate anyone, but he has always found Morkel a difficult bowler to face. Morkel got him in the first match, and McCullum will not want a repeat in the second.

5. Jimmy Neesham vs Dale Steyn. Steyn will be particularly grumpy with the way that Neesham approached their confrontation in the first match. Neesham didn't look phased by the great bowler at all. It will be interesting to see what lengths Steyn bowls to him today.

Betting tips.

If I was betting $50 on this match, here's where it would go:

1. Total match run outs $10 on over 1.5 at $2.80
There were non in the first match, but there were 3 close calls, and that was without the sort of scoreboard pressure that normally brings about run outs. McCullum sets fields trying to get run outs, and ABdV has been working hard on getting the South African fielding back to where they were in years gone by.

2. South Africa top run scorer $10 on AB de Villiers at $5.00
de Villiers has a phenomenal record in the second match of a series. Over the past 3 years he's only had 2 times that I could see that he's hit less than 50 in the second match in a series. He's hit 3 centuries and 2 not out fifties.  He's also got the wood on most of the New Zealand bowlers.

3. New Zealand top run scorer $10 on Tom Latham at $7.50
Latham looked fantastic, and would have been likely to got a big score other than a piece of bad luck against Duminy.

4. Hashim Amla runs $10 on 0-20 at $2.55
I think opening against a line up featuring (at least 2 of) Mills, Southee and Boult is a very difficult prospect.

5. Head to Head $10 on New Zealand at $2.60
New Zealand are a better team than they showed in the last game.  Look for a big step up.

All odds are from NZ TAB and are accurate at time of writing.

Some stats after the first test in Jamaica

BJ Watling

BJ Watling has taken 5 dismissals again. He's now joined Parore and McCullum as the only New Zealanders to have taken 5 dismissals in an innings 4 times. Ian Smith only did it 3 times.

He also leads the way in terms of 8 dismissals in a match. He's done it 3 times now, there have only been 3 other times a kiwi has done it, Once each for Smith, Lees and McCullum. He's 5th overall for that, behind Boucher, Gilchrist, Healy and Marsh. (But they all had much longer careers)

He's taken 2.296 dismissals per innings. Nobody who has kept for more than 3 matches has managed that.

He also leads the way for NZ with the bat, averaging 47.25 when he is keeping. The next best is McCullum at 34.18, followed by Blain at 32.30, Parore at 26.94 and Smith at 25.56.

Globally he's 4th of all time, behind AB de Villiers (56.96) Andy Flower (53.70) and Adam Gilchrist (only 0.35 ahead on 47.60). The guy that has traditionally been considered the best ever is Ames, in 5th. He averaged 43.40.

NZ under McCullum

New Zealand have won 4 and lost 4 under McCullum. There have not been many New Zealand captains who had a winning record. Only Fleming, Coney and Howarth have winning records, and Fleming and Coney only by one match.

Under McCullum, they have averaged a collective 33.70, which is only slightly behind the 33.99 that NZ averaged under Wright, but they were ahead of it before they came out swinging to try and get quick runs in the second innings.

McCullum has led NZ to a score of 400 in 9 out of his 15 matches. Only Steve Waugh has a better % of getting 400s.

To put that in context, New Zealand averaged 26 under Taylor with roughly the same players, despite having played in South Africa and England under McCullum.

Boult - Southee combination

In matches where they have played together, Boult and Southee have a combined average of 24.08. This puts them close to the all time great mark (McGrath Gillespie averaged 23.02 and McGrath - Lee averaged 25.32). They are clear of New Zealand's other very good combinations - Bond & Martin averaged a collective 25.01 and Chatfield & Hadlee averaged 25.39.

Peter Fulton

Fulton has only scored 306 runs in his last 10 tests, at an average of 17. However he has still averaged about 30 since he came back, which is still quite high by NZ standards. Even with these games, and the ones where he came in earlier, he's still New Zealand's 11th highest averaging opener ever, one place ahead of Guptill.

His double hundreds against England were not flukes. He was in very good form at the time. In the 21 innings leading up to them he averaged 52.7 in first class cricket. But in the 31 innings since then he has averaged only 18.7. I think it is possible for the selectors to drop Fulton despite still keeping faith in him. They need to say "you are not in great form, but we know that you are a capable player. Go away and get some runs under your belt and we'll pick you straight away."

Who should win the NZ cricket awards

I was asked by Tony Veitch to put together some stats for the different awards on offer for the New Zealand Cricket Awards tonight.

I could have just brought up a list of averages, but that's really not the CricketGeek style, so I decided to delve into things a little more closely.

One of the difficult things in cricket statistics is to compare bowling success with batting success. For example, which is better taking 5/84 or scoring 172? We need a device to compare the two disciplines.

I decided to compare each player's year with the historical averages for their position. For example, for batting I compared the batting average with year end batting averages throughout history. I had a cut off of 10 innings, as making a cut off much higher than that excludes too many players, as most teams play less than 10 tests per year. I then compared a player's average to the historical average of averages, and the standard deviation of averages to generate a z-score. (For more on Z-scores, see This NFL blog post)

I used batting average and bowling average for test cricket, as really what we care about is scoring runs and taking wickets. I wasn't totally happy with the results, as there was no advantage for the players who had maintained a high standard over a number of games, rather than just one. (James Neesham, for example, averaged 171 this season, but only over one match).  I first filtered out anyone who hadn't either batted in 10 matches or who had bowled less than 100 overs. Then I multiplied the z-score by the square root of the number of innings that they had applied their skill in, in order to get a fairer list. It only caused a couple of positional changes, but the new lists looked more appropriate.

Here's the test lists.

Player - Skill	Average	Ranking
LRPL Taylor - batting	81.60	12.3
BB McCullum - batting	52.73	5.0
TG Southee - bowling	20.07	3.8
TA Boult - bowling	22.36	3.6
KS Williamson - batting	47.21	3.4
BJ Watling - batting	42.27	2.0
N Wagner - bowling	30.42	1.1
CJ Anderson - bowling	30.54	1.0
CJ Anderson - batting	32.70	-0.3
TA Boult - batting	32.25	-0.4

I would give the award to Ross Taylor. He scored 816 runs at an average of 81.60. He past 50 in half of his innings. McCullum, Southee, Boult and Williamson all had great years, but Taylor's average really makes his numbers stand out.

Next I looked at the ODI lists.

Here I decided to use the batting and bowling index developed by S Rajesh from Cricinfo (and me separately). Again I compared the players index to the historical data.

Here's the list:

Player - Skill	Index	Ranking
CJ Anderson - batting	84.48	16.1
LRPL Taylor - batting	43.77	6.9
MJ Guptill - batting	44.22	6.4
KS Williamson - batting	39.04	4.7
MJ McClenaghan - bowling	23.87	1.1
NL McCullum - batting	26.23	0.9
JDS Neesham - bowling	23.69	0.8
CJ Anderson - bowling	24.85	0.7
KD Mills - bowling	25.97	0.7
L Ronchi - batting	22.93	-0.1

Again a batsman takes the title. This, however was not particularly surprising. Anderson was immense with the bat, and generally the games were played on high-scoring pitches, which don't really flatter bowling statistics.

For the T20 award I used batting index, but my own metric for bowling. In a previous post I showed how each wicket worked out to roughly 5 runs in a t20. Accordingly we can take 5 runs off a bowler's total for every wicket they have taken. They then get a modified run rate. I used this to compare the NZ players' years to the historical data. This is a little less relevant, as there is not a lot of historical data (about 1/10 the quantity of test and ODI information) and also New Zealand only played 6 matches, so the sample size is very small.

Here is the list:

Player - Skill	Index/Modified run rate	Ranking
L Ronchi - batting	221.11	14.7
BB McCullum - batting	101.08	4.1
AF Milne - bowling	2.75	2.9
AP Devcich - batting	73.34	1.7
C Munro - batting	60.04	1.5
JDS Neesham - bowling	5.00	0.5
JD Ryder - batting	44.02	0.0
NL McCullum - batting	42.25	-0.1
NL McCullum - bowling	5.64	-0.3
HD Rutherford - batting	40.02	-0.3

Luke Ronchi is a bit of a surprise here, but I remember looking up his stats and being surprised as to how effective he has been in t20s recently. During the course of the year he averaged 133 at a strike rate of 166. Those are quite ridiculous numbers.

The last major prize left is the Sir Richard Hadlee Medal, for the best overall. For me that goes to Brendon McCullum. He managed to attract the attention of the whole nation with his 300, and he also captained the side particularly well across all the formats. There would be a fair argument for Taylor and Anderson, but for me, McCullum needs to be acknowledged some how, and that award seems appropriate.

Who would you give the overall award to?

The McCullum Conundrum

There seems to be a regular pattern to cricket related chat in New Zealand. It often refers to Brendon McCullum.

A number of people want him dropped. They mention that he has only scored 1 hundred in the past 3 years. That he averages in the low 30's in test cricket and that he's too arrogant.

A roughly equal number of people want him to remain in the team, talking about how "form is temporary, class is permanent" and mentioning his successive fifties against England, his double century in India and his good captaincy.

While engaging in one of these fruitless (but fun) discussions, I noticed something surprising in his numbers. His away form has been horrible recently, but his home form has been remarkably good.

Here's what I mean. He has played exactly the same number of tests both home and away. In 41 tests at home McCullum has scored 2531 runs at a respectable average of 41.49. However, in 41 tests away he has scored 2153 runs at a much more pedestrian 29.90.

That's a fairly significant difference, but it wasn't always like this. Up until the end of 2010 his numbers were fairly similar. It's only since then that things have changed.

	Home			Away
Year	Matches	Runs	Average	Matches	Runs	Average
2004-2010	29	1669	37.93	27	1563	36.34
2011-2013	12	862	50.71	14	590	20.34

His career progress in terms of home and away is visually quite interesting.  Here are a couple of graphs to show the difference:

If we break it down by year we also see something interesting:

We can see that there has been a big difference in average per year at home and away from 2011 onwards.

This isn't due to the teams that he has played either.  In that time McCullum has played Zimbabwe, England, South Africa and West Indies both home and away, and has played against Pakistan at home, and Sri Lanka, Australia and Bangladesh away. There is no particular difference in the strength of his opponents at home and away in that time.

I also looked at a weighted 7 match average. This is where I look at an average for 2 games either side of a match, and 3 games either side of a match and average those two averages. It's a reasonable guide to the form that a batsman is in, and it normally covers 12-14 innings, so it is a reasonably reliable guide.  Again I broke it up into home and away.

We can see here that his career was tracking along similar lines for a long time, but then they started to split. The latest weighted average is at just over 57 for home matches, and just under 16 for away matches.

If McCullum was able to replicate his home form away from home, there would be no more questions asked about his place in the side.

I wondered if part of the difference was due to where he batted. He has moved around the order a bit recently, and wondered if he was more likely to play in positions that didn't suit him away than at home.

However I quickly checked his averages at different positions options, and found that there was a significant difference in his average at home and away for every group of batting positions. As an opener he averages 51.80 at home and 32.13 away. Batting from 3-5 he averages 37.40 at home and 30.57 away. In the lower order (6-9) he averages 41.26 at home and 27.72 away.

The question then remains as to what he can do about it. How does he become good at batting in conditions he can't practice in?

One option is to play a season of first class cricket as an overseas player.  He has played 3 matches in his career as an overseas pro, in 2007, and was quite successful, but picked up an injury doing so.

The difficulty is finding somewhere that takes overseas players, and plays their first class cricket when NZ is not playing, where the standard is high enough to be useful. Martin Guptill played second division cricket in England, and dominated, but that did not translate to his test game improving significantly.

Given that he's captain, it makes it more difficult for him to be able to find time to play in England also. But that does bring another question. Is the difference due to captaincy? Are the difficulties of captaining a side on tour affecting his game?

This is a difficult question to answer initially, as he wasn't captain at the start of his career when he was going well, but he also wasn't captain all the time when his away form started to dive. I first of all looked at the over all numbers, which are quite different. When he was not captain, he averaged 39.11 at home and 32.55 away. When he is captain his numbers are truly astounding. His home average is 59.85, while his away average is 15.18. However, if we just look at the matches where he was not captain since 2011, his averages are 44.30 at home and 23.50 away. It seems as if the impact of captaincy is exaggerated due to the fact that he is captain at a time where he is already struggling away from home. Also his away matches as captain have been against South Africa, England and Bangladesh. McCullum has struggled against left-arm spin at times, so Bangladesh, with 3 left arm spinners, is hardly the best tour option for him personally. (Just under half of his dismissals as a captain have been to left arm spin bowlers) Also England and South Africa are two of the more difficult places to tour.

If Brendon McCullum can find his form away from home, he is capable of becoming one of New Zealand's greatest ever captains. He has at his disposal probably the most solid batting line up New Zealand has ever produced combined with what is turning into one of the most lethal opening bowling attacks ever.  It may be worth playing a tour without him, in order to get him to play some serious first class cricket overseas and allow him to improve his away game.

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.

A Statistician's Look at New Zealand Cricket

I’m really a statistics writer. I’m not the first call for any pieces about management styles, off the field behaviour and so on. When I write about cricket I generally write about what happens on the park, and particularly about the results, and what can be found from analysis. However the current situation in New Zealand Cricket is one that is fascinating to me. The current “crisis” seems to be one that has been misunderstood, misreported, over-estimated and entirely avoidable. So I thought I’d take a statistical enquiry type approach to the current situation, and see what came of it.

The statistical enquiry cycle has 5 parts: Problem, Plan, Data, Analysis and Conclusion.

Problem: Why is there an environment in NZC where a breakdown between captain and coach can have catastrophic consequences and be played out in the public domain as appallingly as this one has.

Plan: Look back over the last 6 years of New Zealand Cricket’s history and see if there is a pattern, and anything that might be the reason:

Data: In a statistical enquiry this is where I gather the numbers. Obviously that’s not so relevant in this situation. So instead I went through just over 4000 articles in three different news archives that related to New Zealand Cricket. Here is a time-line of some of the significant events in New Zealand Cricket over the last 6 years. I’ve broken it up into Governance, Management, Leadership and Players; but some of the issues related to more than one category, so they could have fit across more than one. In these situations I picked what I felt was the most appropriate.

Date	Governance	Management	Leadership	Players
Jan-2006				Cairns retires
June-2006		Snedden announces 5 year test plan. Incuded 2 tests in 18 months.
July-2006			Andy Moles appointed as ND coach
Sept-2006	Don Neely replaces John Reid as president of NZC
Dec-2006		Snedden steps down	Dayle Hadlee appointed bowling coach
Jan-2007				Astle retires
Apr-2007				Fleming retires as ODI captain
June-2007		Justin Vaughan appointed new CEO. Forms committee to look at Bracewell’s position as coach. Includes Ric Charlesworth	Wright turns down Australian academy, expresses interest in working with NZ cricket.
July-2007			Bracewell re-appointed for 2 more years. Mark O’Neill new bating coach. Wright to have a (largely unspecified) role. Bracewell loses veto over selectors
Aug-2007	Heath Mills expresses concern about the newly mooted ICL. Asks NZC to talk with ICC about it.		Nash, Turner, Hadlee and Bracewell all re-appointed as selectors. Haslee and Nash given 1 year contracts, Turner and Bracewell 2 year contracts	Bracewell drops Fleming from t20’s. appoints Vettori captain
Sept-2007				Vettori given test captaincy. Fleming says he will stay on.
				Cairns, Harris, Astle and H Marshall all sign for ICL
Oct-2007			Ric Charlesworth quits as high performance manager	Craig McMillan retires
				B McCullum made vice captain
Nov-2007			Wright appointed high performance manager	Andre Adams makes himself unavailable for ODIs
Dec-2007		Richard Hadlee initially left off guest list for Chappell-Hadlee fixture.
Jan-2008				Bond signs with ICL
Feb-2008		Vaughan allows Auckland to play James Anderson, despite opposition from other asociations.		Fleming retires
				Ryder incident in bar
				Lou Vincent & Adam Parore join ICL
May-2008			Bracewell announces he will quit April 2009	Andre Adams becomes a Kolpak player
June-2008		Major changes in the organisation at NZC. 11 positions removed and 20 created. John Wright and Lindsay Crocker’s jobs both disestablished
July-2008			Dermot Reeve appointed coach of CD
Aug-2008		A number of staff leave NZC – Alec Astle, Dayle Hadlee, Dayle Shackel, Warren Frost, Brian Aldridge	Bob Carter appointed Canterbury coach
Sept-2008	Alan Isaac replaces Sir John Anderson as chairman of NZC board after Anderson retires.
Nov-2008		Geoff Allott appointed general manager of cricket.	Andy Moles appointed coach
		NZC apologises to West Indies for “it’s all white here” slogan
Dec-2008			Mark Greatbatch appointed as advisor to national selection panel
Jan-2009			Heath Mills criticizes selectors for not communicating with players when they are dropped.
Feb-2009			Dave Currie appointed manager
			Mark O’Donnell appointed assistant coach
Apr-2009			Moles asks to become a selector.
June-2009		State Insurance pull out as sponsor		Bond becomes available after ending ties with ICL
Aug-2009			Moles and Vettori added to selection panel, replacing Nash
Oct-2009		First Class competition moves to home and away format.	22 – reports players unhappy with Moles	McCullum loses vice captaincy
			23- Vettori gives some support to Moles
			24- Moles quits.
Nov-2009		Name of first class comp returns to Plunket Shield	John Wright to assist Vettori with national team
Jan-2010			Greatbatch appointed coach	Taylor named “stand-by captain”
Feb-2010		NZC announce partnership with USACA. Schedule matches in Florida	Martin Crowe appointed “batting advisor”
Mar-2010	NZC agrees to nominate John Howard, rather than original pick, Sir John Anderson as new ICC president.	NZ pull out of Zimbabwe series
May-2010			Roger Mortimer joins as performance director.
June-2010	John Howard rejected as ICC president			McCullum gives up keeping in tests.
Aug-2010	Alan Isaac appointed as ICC vice-president. Chris Moller takes over as NZC chairman		Shane Bond assistant coach at CD
			Trent Woodhill appointed as assistant coach
Oct-2010	Robbie Hart appointed to board
	Board calls for sweeping review post Bangladesh clean-sweep
Nov-2010		Geoff Allott resigns.	Duncan Fletcher comes in temporarily as consultant
Dec-2010	Bond, Martin Crowe and Gerard Gillespie bought into cricket committee.	Another deal with USACA	John Wright replaces Mark Greatbatch as coach. Vettori loses selector role.
Jan-2011			Alan Donald joins as bowling coach
Mar-2011				Vettori retires from T20i
Apr-2011	Crowe quits cricket comittee		Buchanan appointed director of cricket.
June-2011			Donald quits as bowling coach	Players consulted on the leadership qualities of Taylor and McCullum
			National selection managers role introduced, given to Greatbatch temporarily	Taylor appointed as captain, after rigorous process
			Trent Woodhill reappointed	Vettori quits ODIs
July-2011			Hesson appointed Kenyan coach
			Damian Wright appointed bowling coach
			Mike Sandle appointed manager
Sept-2011		Vaughan steps down as CEO	Kim Littlejohn appointed national selection manager
Dec-2011		David White appointed CEO
Mar-2012				Ryder & Bracewell dropped for breaking protocol
				Ryder takes indefinite break from cricket
Apr-2012		NZC signs 8 year media deal		ICC rule Wagner eligible for NZ
May-2012		Therese Walsh comes onboard to run NZC’s part of the 2015 World Cup	John Wright turns down a new contract with NZC
July-2012			Mike Hesson named as new coach	Williamson named interim captain while Taylor injured and McCullum rested
				Ryder makes himself eligible for Wellington
Aug-2012			Bob Carter appointed as assistant coach
			Damian Wright steps down as bowling coach
Sept-2012	Review of the board completed. 39 recommendations were made, and published.	Friday night TV deal announced.
Nov-2012	Stephen Boock named NZC president, Greg Barclay appointed as director		Turner and Crowe appointed talent scouts	Hesson approaches Taylor with Sandle and Carter, tells him that he is going to recommend a leadership change to the board after the tour.
Dec-2012	Chris Moller announces a special general meeting to look at a new constitution for New Zealand cricket.			McCullum appointed captain. Taylor rejects offer of split captaincy, steps down from South Africa tour.

Analysis: This is where I normally do some calculations, arrange the data into a nice table, and perhaps draw a graph. None of those things work here, so instead I’ve looked at some of the trends in the stories.

The one constant in New Zealand cricket over the past 6 years has been change. During that time the team has had 5 coaches, at least 11 selectors and at least 16 assistant or specialist coaches. There has been a litany of job titles for people too. General manager of cricket, chairman of selectors, convenor of selectors, national selection manager, high performance manager, performance director, director of cricket selection advisor, batting advisor etc. There have also been 6 captains for the international team (although Kane Williamson was only as an injury replacement and Jamie How was only for a tour match)

There have been a number of quite significant changes in the power balance between the captain and the coach. First there was a confrontation between Bracewell and Fleming. Then Moles and Vettori. Then Hesson and Taylor. The role of the captain has changed a number of times. Vettori was a selector, and for a while was actually the coach as well (although that was only for about 2 weeks while the team was between coaches). However this is not an issue that is limited to New Zealand cricket. There were similar issues in Australia between Warne and Buchanan and most spectacularly in England between Pietersen, Flintoff and a range of coaches.

An interesting story came out in 2009 where Richard Hadlee felt that Fleming had downgraded the role of coach in New Zealand. That balance in power has certainly been an issue.

Likewise there was an issue with player power in Central Districts while Dermot Reeve was coach, and almost one in Auckland not long after Paul Strang took over. In that situation Auckland Cricket acted quickly, brought in someone extra to help sort out the communication and define the roles between the senior players and the coach.

Conclusion: This is not the first time that there has been a power issue between coach and captain in New Zealand Cricket, or in international cricket in general. It is something that has been bubbling under the surface for a while. New Zealand Cricket probably need to do what Auckland did: bring in someone who is respected by both the coaches and the players, get them to work with both groups to define clearly the roles and expectations of the coach and captain. And then stick with it.

There have been so many changes in New Zealand Cricket over the past 6 years, that consistency is probably better than making more changes. However the roles need to be more clearly defined, and there needs to be a third person introduced to make sure that the two are working together correctly. That person may be the manager, or the director of cricket or someone else, but whoever it is needs to get involved before this happens a fourth time.

World T20 Statistics

Here is a list of tables of some different statistics from the World T20. I have separate tables for the Group stage, the Super 8's and the overall data. Interestingly the batting numbers are reasonable similar, but the bowling numbers are significantly different. This is possibly a reflection on the strengths of the teams that missed out on the next stage, Bangladesh, Ireland and Afghanistan all have strong bowling line-ups and while Zimbabwe's strength is normally more about their batting, it didn't really fire in this tournament.

All of these are statistics that I have worked out previously, although I had to modify my DL partnership formula to reflect the nature of T20 cricket. I decided to use a score of 147 as an expected score as it's 56.6% of 260, and 56.5% is the resources left in an ODI match shortened to 20 overs.

I will try to update these regularly throughout the tournament.

Best innings:

For more info on how this is calculated see this post:

Group stage
Super 8's
Knockout Stage *
Overall Tournament

Best Partnerships:

Here I take into account the teams situation at the start and the teams situation at the end. Effectively these are the partnerships that have made the biggest contribution to their team's score. For more information see this post:

Group stage
Super 8's
Knockout Stage *
Overall Tournament

Contribution made by bowlers:

Every wicket is worth about 5 runs to a teams total. So I subtract 5 runs per wicket, and then work out the economy rate. For more info see this post:

Group stage
Super 8's
Knockout Stage *
Overall Tournament

Activity rates:

This is the runs a batsman scores per delivery that doesn't get hit to the boundary. I explain this in more detail in the glossary:

(minimum 10 balls faced)

Group stage
Super 8's
Knockout Stage
Overall Tournament

*I have reached my page limit on this platform, so these pages are in a different format.

Mini-session Analysis 1st Test Ind NZ Hyderabad 2012

Here is the final mini-session analysis for the first test between India and New Zealand at Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium, Hyderabad, India

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.

MS Dhoni said before the match that their aim was to win the most mini-sessions, because the team that does that normally wins the match. His team certainly executed his plan.

Mini-Session	Score	Winner
1-1a	India 65/1 off 13	India
1-1b	India 32/1 off 12	New Zealand
1-2a	India 39/1 off 15	New Zealand
1-2b	India 46/0 off 14	India
1-3a	India 75/1 off 16	India
1-3b	India 50/1 off 17	draw
2-1a	India 26/0 off 12	India
2-1b	India 38/0 off 9	India
2-2a	India 41/2 off 15	New Zealand
2-2b	India 26/3 off 11.3	New Zealand
2-3a	New Zealand 39/3 off 14	India
2-3b	New Zealand 45/1 off 19	India
2-3c	New Zealand 22/1 off 9	India
3-1	New Zealand 53/5 off 19.3	India
3-2	New Zealand 41/1 off 18	India
4-1a	New Zealand 30/0 off 14	New Zealand
4-1b	New Zealand 21/0 off 11	draw
4-2a	New Zealand 30/2 off 14	India
4-2b	New Zealand 24/3 off 16	India
4-3a	New Zealand 18/4 off 6.5	India

Final update here. India win the match by an innings and 115 runs. The win the mini-session count 13-5

Lunch, Day 1: The mini-session count is level at 1-1

New Zealand really missed a trick in the morning session. They dropped Sehwag twice, and left a gap for him to score at 3rd man, allowing him to score 24 of his 47 runs to that spot.

However despite that, the first session was quite even. Boult again looked dangerous. He is turning into a very handy bowler.

Middle drinks, Day 1: NZ lead the mini-session count 2-1

Trent Bould bowled Tendulkar. In his 5 matches, his victims now include Gayle, Kallis, Gambhir, Tendulkar and Michael Hussey. It seems that the better the batsman, the more they struggle with Boult.

Tea, Day 1: The mini-session count is level at 2-2

Kohli and Pujara have put together a great partnership here. New Zealand will want at least one more wicket before the new ball.

Post tea drinks, Day 1: India lead the mini-session count 3-2

Two more dropped catches in that session. The Kohli-Pujara partnership was fantastic. New Zealand will be very frustrated with this match. They have played some good cricket, and yet are behind in the match.

Stumps, Day 1: India lead the mini-session count 3-2

It was a day of missed chances for New Zealand, and yet they are still well in this match. Boult bowled very well, as did Jeetan Patel, although with very little luck. The 4 bowlers who took wickets all had at least one catch dropped off their bowling, so all can feel a little unlucky.

The star of the day, however is Cheteshwar Pujara. His 119* so far has been head and shoulders ahead of any of the other Indian batsmen. It wasn't quite chanceless, but the one half chance that he did offer up was still after he'd scored more than anyone else managed.

Tomorrow there is likely to be some good cloud cover, which, when combined with a two paced pitch, should make for tricky batting conditions.

Tea, Day 2: India lead the mini-session count 5-4

Due to my TV dying, I've been unable to watch much of this day, but Kruger van Wyk seems to have pulled off one of the stumpings that he made his name with. The partnership between Dhoni and Pujara threatened to take the game away from New Zealand, but in the end 438 is a fair score, but not much more. In the last 6 first class matches at this ground, at least one of the first innings have scored more than 400, so it's about what would be expected.

How the New Zealand batsmen go about building their innings now that Hesson is in charge will be interesting.

Stumps, Day 3: India lead the mini-session count 10-4

New Zealand are in a lot of trouble.

While India are dominating the match, I don't think that the difference between the teams has been quite as great as the scorecard would indicate. There have been number of 50-50 decisions by the umpires, and only one of them has gone to New Zealand's favour. India have also had the luxury of having a lot of men round the bat. It's a luxury that their batsmen purchased for them.

Ashwin and Ojha really made the most of the advantage that their batsmen gave them, and looked more dangerous than I've seen either of them before. Ashwin bowled one of the best deliveries I've seen to Chirs Martin. That was really a waste, as he could have probably gotten out Martin without needing such a good delivery. He should really have saved his best for when he's bowling to someone who is good against spin, like Misbah-ul-Haq or Darren Bravo.

First drinks, Day 4: India lead the mini-session count 10-5

Good work from McCullum and Williamson. McCullum has really gone into his shell here. He has quite a poor record when he defends. In innings where he has a strike rate of less than 45 he's never scored a 50. In his career he's only batted more than 150 balls 8 times, so to face 92 balls for only 31 runs is certainly not batting according to his normal script. If these two put together a very large partnership it could be the start of a very good period in McCullum's career.

Lunch, Day 4: India lead the mini-session count 10-6

McCullum and Williamson are still there, and have batted through the entire session. Realistically they need to bat for another session before New Zealand start to look even marginally likely to draw the match.

Second session drinks, Day 4: India lead the mini-session count 11-5

The umpire strikes back. Brendan McCullum was out bat before wicket, then Ross Taylor left one that bowled him. Still, the Indian bowlers put a lot of pressure on the batsmen, and created the situation where the umpire had to make a decision.

Williamson is still looking solid. This is the 7th time he has faced more than 100 deliveries, in only his 27th innings.

Tea, Day 4: India lead the mini-session count 12-5.

Ashwin and Ohja have continued to weave a web of mystery over the New Zealand lower order. Dhoni made a fantastic change bringing in Raina for an over to Williamson. The lack of overspin seemed to unsettle him. The next over Ojha came back in and got out Williamson immediately.

End of match: India win the mini-session count 13-5

A complete thrashing. New Zealand went from 98/1 to 164 all out. 9 wickets for 66 runs. The innings was typified by the dismissal of Doug Bracewell. He was beaten by a good ball, edged it. The catch was grounded by Kohli, but Bracewell didn't notice, and walked off in a hurry. If he had stayed around, he might have been given not out, but he had given up. Ashwin and Ojha were too good, and New Zealand were awful, despite good, fighting knocks from Guptill, McCullum and Williamson.

New Zealand will need to make an enormous improvement in order to level up the series in the second match.

Does keeping influence batting?

My post a month and a bit ago about Matt Prior has generated a significant amount of interest, including one specific comment that I would like to address.

Unfortunately the poster was anonymous, but they recommended Sangakkara as the greatest wicket-keeper batsman, pointing out that he batted at number 3 and often had to come into bat in the first 5 overs. It made me wonder just how hard batting after keeping was. So I had a look at some stats...

I found 5 players who have played at least 10 innings as keeper and non-keeper: Here are their averages:

Name	Inngs keeping	Avg keeping	Inngs not keeping	Avg not keeping
AJ Stewart	145	34.92	90	46.70
KC Sangakkara	81	40.48	81	72.75
AC Parore	109	26.94	19	22.70
A Flower	100	53.70	12	35.45
BB McCullum	85	34.77	12	55.18

The last three in the list probably don't give us enough information to be able to say too much, although both Flower and Parore are curious in that they averaged better when keeping than not keeping. In Parore's case it might have been because he usually batted at 7 or 8 when keeping, and at 3 when not keeping. It also might have been that he was less confident of his place in the side when Lee Germon was the captain, and so did not bat with the same confidence. Another possible explanation was that the matches he didn't keep in were the ones where Glenn Turner was in charge of the team, and his style of coaching might not have suited Parore.

Likewise most of the matches where Flower didn't keep were at the end of his career where there was increasing political tension in Zimbabwe. This was obviously impacting him - and led to the famous black armband incident. (As an aside - Henry Olonga's autobiography, which mentions this incident "Blood Sweat and Treason" is well worth reading.) But he also might have batted better when he got a chance to have a look at a pitch after keeping.

But the overall theme of the statistics is that batsmen bat better when they are not keeping. Sangakkara is particularly astounding. His average of over 70 is impressive, especially as he is such a fluid batsman that all 72.75 of them will have probably flowed in an aesthetically pleasing manner off his bat.

It also goes to underline how fortunate we are to be living in a time with so many great wicket-keeper batsmen. All of Prior, Dhoni, Gilchrist, Flower, McCullum, Sangakkara... have been producing such remarkable numbers that they have transformed the entire position.

Matching Mercury

The dictionary defines mercurial as: changeable; volatile; fickle; flighty; erratic.

While we are still 16 days away from Mercury being at its farthest point from the sun, we are seeing two of the most mercurial teams playing in Sri Lanka tonight. New Zealand and Pakistan are both teams that can look like a Rolls-Royce or a rubbish truck.

Between the two teams in the last 3 years they have been involved in 20 matches that have been either won or lost by 100 or more runs, and 13 that have been concluded with more than 15 overs remaining.

In the 10 most recent matches between the two teams, 2 have been close. New Zealand won by 7 runs at Abu Dhabi and lost by 2 wickets with 6 balls remaining at Napier. But 2 have been two of the most one sided matches in recent memory between test teams: NZ won by 9 wickets just after the first drinks break at Wellington, but lost another match at Abu Dhabi by 138 runs.

As a result it is almost impossible to say who will win this match. The 10 matches are 5-4 to NZ with one N/R (that Pakistan were looking quite good in). It is a strange situation where a match is too close to call, and yet will probably be very one-sided.

To add to the mystery the game is the first ever ODI at Pallekele. Looking through the previous games at lower levels, the one thing that seems constant is rain. Almost every match was decided by messers Duckworth and Lewis. However, even this can't be relied on, as the forecast is for a pleasant sunny day, with negligible wind.

One thing that has been common on this ground is lots of wickets and runs for quick bowlers, and not may wickets or runs for spinners. In one match a quick took 5/57 off 7, while a spinner got 0/17 off his 7 overs. This suggests that it is a pitch that gets good bounce.

Given all this here is my (somewhat hesitant) things to watch for:

1. Tim Southee. Southee has really shone under Allen Donald and John Wright, taking 14 wickets in 8 matches at 21.71. There have only been two bowlers to have taken more wickets in that time, both of them are also (likely to be) playing, Shahid Afridi and Hamish Bennett. The difference here is that those other two players have been as mercurial as their teams, taking 4 and 5 wicket bags, and then nothing, whereas Southee has been difficult for his opponents in all but one match (on the road at Napier). Southee loves a little bounce, and a little greenness. Look for a big performance from him, especially if New Zealand bowl first.

2. Brendan McCullum. John Wright has been trying to get McCullum to slow down a bit. McCullum has averaged near 60 recently in tests, and near 20 in ODI's. If he manages to score some more runs, even at a lower strike-rate he may become much more of an asset for New Zealand.

3. Misbah-ul-Haq. This year Misbah has scored 388 runs at 77.60. And he's scored a lot of those runs against New Zealand. If they are going to win this game, they will probably need to find a way to get past him.

4. James Franklin and Wahab Riaz. In the few games that we do have records of at Pallekele left arm fast medium bowlers have been the most effective. This could just be coincidence or it could be something about the make up of the pitch. This game may just tell us.

5. Shahid Afridi. He has taken lots of wickets so far in the tournament, but his average against New Zealand is a pedestrian 47.78, which is particularly odd given that he is a leg-spinner and generally New Zealand batsmen have struggled against leg-spin.

If I was going to be betting on this game (and I probably won't be, it's too hard to call) I would be looking at putting money on top innings run scorer. I'd look at someone who was good at playing pull, hook and cut shots, given that the pitch is likely to bounce a bit. Perhaps someone like Umar Akmal might be a good look.