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.

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.

Adding value with the ball

A while ago Nicholas Rohde wrote a series of articles that got some people upset. He used an economic model to look at which batsmen had made the greatest contribution.

His basic method was to compare the runs they had scored to the runs that an average batsman would have scored finding the added value that they provided their team.

I read through his article and was impressed with his approach despite feeling there are some issues in the way that he interpreted his results. He did not take in account the extra frequency of matches in the modern era when suggesting that a current selector should pick a young Tendulkar over a young Bradman. Bradman should be judged on his opportunities, not on someone elses (Bradman played in 87% of Australia's matches during his career, only just behind Tendulkar's 92%). However the background theory is actually quite intuitive and also provides some very interesting results.

I took his idea and applied it to test bowling. My method was probably not identical to his, but what I did was break down each year to find out how many runs bowlers had conceded and how many wickets had been taken in that year. For each bowler I then found the total runs and wickets in the years that they played, to give a value for what the average bowler would have done. There are some issues with this method for figuring out added value, but I feel that it gives a better guide than any other practical method I can think of.

Here is an example of how it works:

Shabir Ahmed played 10 tests between 2003 and 2005 for Pakistan. He took 51 wickets for 1175 runs. In 2003 there were 1305 wickets taken for 47145 runs. 2004 had 1555 wickets for 54916 runs and 2005 had 1508 wickets for 50377 runs. The total runs per wicket for those three years was roughly 34.9. So we multiply his wickets (51) by 34.9 to get 1780. We then subtract the runs he conceded (1175) to get his value of 605. Effectively he saved his team 605 runs more than an average player would have.

So once we add up the figures, who comes out on top?

First we'll look at the aggregates, and there are a few familiar names there.

Player	Matches	Wickets	Average	Added Value
M Muralitharan (ICC/SL)	133	800	22.72	8410
GD McGrath (Aus)	124	563	21.64	6260
SK Warne (Aus)	145	708	25.41	5174
CEL Ambrose (WI)	98	405	20.99	4261
Sir RJ Hadlee (NZ)	86	431	22.29	4115
SM Pollock (SA)	108	421	23.11	4105
MD Marshall (WI)	81	376	20.94	4096
CA Walsh (WI)	132	519	24.44	3891
Wasim Akram (Pak)	104	414	23.62	3472
Imran Khan (Pak)	88	362	22.81	3328
Waqar Younis (Pak)	87	373	23.56	3273
AA Donald (SA)	72	330	22.25	3110
DW Steyn (SA)	51	263	23.07	3088
FS Trueman (Eng)	67	307	21.57	2745
DK Lillee (Aus)	70	355	23.92	2715
J Garner (WI)	58	259	20.97	2654
RGD Willis (Eng)	90	325	25.20	2071
MA Holding (WI)	60	249	23.68	1939
A Kumble (India)	132	619	29.65	1919
M Ntini (SA)	101	390	28.82	1849
JN Gillespie (Aus)	71	259	26.13	1750
SF Barnes (Eng)	27	189	16.43	1749
AK Davidson (Aus)	44	186	20.53	1731
JC Laker (Eng)	46	193	21.24	1636
CV Grimmett (Aus)	37	216	24.21	1625

We notice that the likes of Barnes and Davidson are a lot higher than they would be in a pure wickets table.

Muralitharan is miles ahead of McGrath in 2nd place. Regardless of what Bishan Singh Bedi thinks his record is formidable. Once his action was cleared he still had to put the ball in the right place, and do the right thing with it, and he did that, time after time after time.

Glenn Mcgrath jumps over Anil Kumble and Shane Warne into second spot. Both he and Shaun Pollock changed the way that bowlers thought about opening the bowling, with his metronomic accuracy and aggressive approach being incredibly valuable to his team. His economy being the difference between him and Warne on the table.

Now when we are looking for the best bowler consistency is important, but really we want to know who could be expected to do the best in the next game, so how well they do per innings is more important.

Here is the table of added value per innings. (I've limited it to bowlers who bowled more than 10 innings and took more than 25 wickets)

Player	Wickets	Average	Added Value	AV per innings
J Cowie (NZ)	45	21.53	641	49.31
MJ Procter (SA)	41	15.02	615	43.90
H Ironmonger (Aus)	74	17.97	1036	38.35
RAL Massie (Aus)	31	20.87	407	37.02
M Muralitharan (ICC/SL)	800	22.72	8410	36.56
SF Barnes (Eng)	189	16.43	1749	34.99
SE Bond (NZ)	87	22.09	1087	33.97
RJ Harris (Aus)	35	21.37	459	32.76
DW Steyn (SA)	263	23.07	3088	32.51
Shabbir Ahmed (Pak)	51	23.03	605	31.83
AE Hall (SA)	40	22.15	436	31.16
K Higgs (Eng)	71	20.74	833	30.83
BN Schultz (SA)	37	20.24	423	30.23
ERH Toshack (Aus)	47	21.04	652	28.33
GA Lohmann (Eng)	112	10.75	997	27.70
Sir RJ Hadlee (NZ)	431	22.29	4115	27.44
MD Marshall (WI)	376	20.94	4096	27.13
WJ O'Reilly (Aus)	144	22.59	1288	26.83

The name at the top is one that most readers won't know. The 1938 Wisden said this about Jack Cowie, "Had he been an Australian, he might have been termed a wonder of the age." During the 12 years that he played, New Zealand only played 9 test matches and he famously only got to bowl once to Bradman, getting him out for 11. Hutton described him as the best bowler he had faced. An example of how much better Cowie was than his contemporaries is that the rest of New Zealand bowlers averaged over 54 in the same 9 tests.

The second name is more familiar: Mike Procter was the match referee at the 2006 match where Pakistan refused to come out and field, and also was the one who banned Harbajhan Singh in Sydney 2008. He only played a small number of tests due to being from South Africa, but in his 401 match first class career he managed to keep his bowling average under 20 (as well as averaging over 36 with the bat)

The third name on the list, Dainty Ironmonger didn't make his debut until he was 45, but was very effective with his left-arm slow medium, and very ineffective with the bat (having a similar average to Chris Martin).

Murali is the first of the recent players on the list, which is a credit to him, as he kept that up for a very long time. Steyn is also remarkably high, ahead of the likes of Hadlee, Marshall and Lillee.