Who are the most reliable 6 hitters

I noticed that the ICC have set up a new game, where you need to pick a player who is going to hit a 6.

This is an interesting option, as there are not many stats out there for how reliable batsmen are at hitting 6's. We know how many 6's a player has hit, but how regularly they hit them is another issue. For example, Aaron Finch has hit 21 sixes in the 9 matches he has played in the last 2 years. However those 21 sixes came in just 4 innings. In the other 5 matches he didn't hit any. Once he gets going he really starts to pepper the boundary. In comparison, Ziaur Rahman from Bangladesh has hit 10 sixes in the 11 matches he's played in that time. However he's hit those 10 sixes in 6 matches, meaning there are only 5 that he hasn't hit a six in. In other words Finch has hit more sixes per match, but Rahman is significantly more reliable.

As the ICC game is about either hitting a six or not, the most important stat is their reliability, not their sixes per match.

To help out anyone who is playing that game, I've compiled a list of the 6 hitting reliability of players who had played 5 or more matches in the last 2 years. I've listed everyone who has hit a 6 in 40% or more of the matches.

If you want to join my league - here's the link.

Player	Matches	Sixes	Innings with a 6	P(hits a 6)
SE Marsh (Aus)	5	5	4	80%
DR Smith (WI)	9	16	6	66.7%
Yuvraj Singh (India)	11	21	7	63.6%
MDKJ Perera (SL)	11	14	7	63.6%
AM Rahane (India)	5	4	3	60%
SR Watson (Aus)	14	30	8	57.1%
RR Patel (Kenya)	14	17	8	57.1%
MJ Guptill (NZ)	14	15	8	57.1%
HD Rutherford (NZ)	7	9	4	57.1%
MN Waller (Zim)	7	5	4	57.1%
Gulbadin Naib (Afg)	11	12	6	54.5%
Ziaur Rahman (Ban)	11	10	6	54.5%
MEK Hussey (Aus)	11	8	6	54.5%
Mushfiqur Rahim (Ban)	13	11	7	53.8%
BB McCullum (NZ)	17	26	9	52.9%
KA Pollard (WI)	17	25	9	52.9%
DJ Bravo (WI)	19	18	10	52.6%
MN Samuels (WI)	16	26	8	50%
MJ Lumb (Eng)	12	13	6	50%
R Gunasekera (Can)	8	4	4	50%
JL Ontong (SA)	6	6	3	50%
MW Machan (Scot)	6	4	3	50%
CH Gayle (WI)	15	26	7	46.7%
DA Warner (Aus)	15	22	7	46.7%
LMP Simmons (WI)	11	12	5	45.5%
MR Swart (Neth)	11	12	5	45.5%
DA Miller (SA)	11	7	5	45.5%
AD Hales (Eng)	20	18	9	45%
AJ Finch (Aus)	9	21	4	44.4%
Ahmed Shehzad (Pak)	16	14	7	43.8%
Mahmudullah (Ban)	14	12	6	42.9%
Mohammad Shahzad (Afg)	14	11	6	42.9%
Asghar Stanikzai (Afg)	7	5	3	42.9%
LJ Wright (Eng)	19	20	8	42.1%
DT Johnston (Ire)	12	9	5	41.7%
Shakib Al Hasan (Ban)	12	7	5	41.7%
Mohammad Hafeez (Pak)	25	20	10	40%
GJ Bailey (Aus)	20	16	8	40%
F du Plessis (SA)	15	11	6	40%
RS Bopara (Eng)	10	10	4	40%
NJ O'Brien (Ire)	5	2	2	40%

Why and How the Champions League format needs to change

I'll start out by saying that I love the concept of the Champions League T20.

There needs to be more focus on domestic cricket, because that is a much more reliable way of growing the game than trying to grow it at the international level. Strong clubs/provinces will pick up players from lesser nations, and give them a chance to develop and succeed. A couple of examples of this from football are George Weah, who is from Liberia, but managed to win a Serie A title with AC Milano and obtained significant recognition for his skills that would not have been possible if he had only been playing for Liberia (who only twice even managed to qualify for the African Cup of Nations during Weah's 19 year career.

Likewise the New Zealand football team managed to go unbeaten in the 2010 Football World Cup, mostly thanks to a solid defense of Winston Reid, who had learned his football playing for a Midtjylland in Denmark, Ryan Nelsen, who had played for DC United and Blackburn Rovers Tommy Smith from Ipswich Town and Ivan Vicelich who had played for Roda JC and RKC Waalwijk in the Netherlands. It is hard to imagine those three players being as compotent if they had just played domestically in New Zealand, for the likes of North Shore, Christchurch United and Auckland City. New Zealand had such a solid defense largely due to the strong club nature of football.

The problem I have with the current Champions League is that it is not a fair competition.

Firstly every first class team is not able to compete, secondly the rankings are arbitrary, and not result based, thirdly the competition is set up in a way that has to much of an element of luck involved.

The Mountaineers from Zimbabwe won the Stanbic Bank Cup quite comfortably. But that is as far as they can go, despite having at least 7 current or former international players in their squad. Likewise the Dhaka Gladiators won the Bangladesh Premier League, contain 9 international players, but were not invited to the tournament.

The rankings are completely wrong. Every time Trinidad and Tobago have been in the tournament they have finished ahead of the South African teams and at least one of the Australia teams. Every time there has been an English team there, their top team has finished ahead of the second South African and Australian team. And yet South Africa and Australia get two teams in the main draw, while the English and West Indian teams need to qualify. This ranking system is ranking teams on how much money they can pull in, rather than how good they are. That is inherently wrong.

The third problem is with the tournament structure. The nature of T20 cricket is that the best team does not always win. However they will win more games over the course of a series. This makes it difficult to have a fair system that is concise enough to not drag on for months. However the current system is far from fair.

The big problem is the qualifying stage. A three team single round-robin is possibly the worst way to decide qualification imaginable. To demonstrate this I ran a simulation using the Pakistani domestic results from the last 3 years. I chose Pakistan because they were the competition that had one team being the most dominant.

The Sialkot Stallions have a formidable record. In the last 3 years they have lost only one match in the Pakistani competition. They have averaged 8.35 runs per over in that time, while their opponents have only averaged 7.23 runs per over. In a fair competition they should almost always make it through the group stages.

The only time they didn't win was the time where Pakistan also used the 3 team single round-robin method of qualification.

I took the Sialkot Stallions' results and then made 3 other teams who were all significantly less strong, but roughly equal to each other. They were all roughly average for other Pakistani teams. I then ran a simulation 1000 times. First with a 3 team single round robin, then with a standard 4 teams pool, where two go through. (if anyone would like a copy of the simulation that I used, just email me)

In the first option (3 team single round-robin) Sialkot went through 62.4% of the time. This means that they missed out in more than one in 3 of the tournaments, despite being a vastly superior team. In the second option, (4 team standard group) Sialkot went through 786 times. This meant that they missed out only 21.4% of the time.

With these numbers the 3 team single round-robin was 76% more likely to eliminate the best team.

I believe that the 3 team single round-robin should be avoided at all costs. Here is the format that I would like to see:

Teams: 3 from India. 2 from Australia, South Africa and England. 1 from West Indies, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Zimbabwe and Bangladesh. This makes 15 teams. The extra team then is either the team that won the previous competition, or if they already qualified the next best team from their country. For example, the last champions league winners were the Mumbai Indians. Mumbai lost the elimination final in the IPL, so they were effectively 4th overall. Hence they qualify for themselves. If instead RCB had won the final of the Champions League last year, then they would have gone through instead.

This then results in 16 teams. If we were to then have 4 groups of 4, going into 2 groups of 4 then to semis and finals we would need to play 39 matches. The matches could be played 3 per day for the initial round. (One morning, one afternoon and one night, with one double header and one played at another stadium). The second group round could be played 2 matches per day, and then (following a rest day (which would probably be used for travel for some teams) semi-finals and finals.

The whole tournament would easily fit within the 20 day window that the tournament has been using so far, and could even be squeezed to 16 days. (This would require the use of 2 stadiums that are quite close together - like Lords and the Oval, Chandigarh and Mohali, Centurion and the Wanderers, Eden Park and Seddon Park. etc)

It would also be a much fairer system. Each team would have exactly the same mountain in front of them. If anyone can win 8 in a row, they win the cup. In the current system Yorkshire could win 6 in a row, and only be in the semi-finals, where if (for example) KKR win 2 and lose 2 they could also potentially make the semi-finals. Something doesn't seem right about that.

So that's my take on the Champions League. Eventually I'd like it to get to a system where the champion from each country go through, then the next 6 are based on performance at the previous Champions League. So a team coming in the top 6 qualifies an extra spot from their country. (Similar to how the Basketball World Championships work.)

The ICC Cricket Committee

I think I am developing a man-crush for a large black man.

Clive Lloyd was the chairman of the cricket committee which has come out with more sense in one statement than the rest of the ICC has managed in the last year combined. Here are their recommendations, and why I agree.

1. Allow associates into the Cricket World Cup.

The idea of a world cup is that it is a world competition. Ideally you want teams form all over the world to have a chance to play in it. This tournament, like at least the last two, was seriously enhanced by the associate nations. Can anyone say that all the matches involving Netherlands and Ireland were duds this year? I certainly will not be saying that. Canada and Kenya were disappointing, but this is no reason to throw the baby out with the bath water.

2. Recommend the universal application of UDRS.

Unfortunately this one is likely to meet with opposition from the global bullies when the recommendation goes to the part of the ICC that has power, and does not really care about cricket as much as their own political ambition, but it is a very sensible suggestion. The games that have it are fairer, more watchable, and have less exhibition of bad behavior. I"m not sure how these three things are bad.

3. Getting rid of runners.

Running between wickets is an essential part of batsmanship, and if someone is not fit to run, then they are not fit to bat. If they can't run, they can still go out and hold up an end if a game needs saving, but at the moment players with an injury are at an advantage over players without one, which encourages dishonesty.

4. Looking at the option of day/night tests.

I live in Auckland, where we don't get test cricket. If I want to go to a test match, I have to drive to Hamilton, about 1 and a half hours away. If I go after work (I can normally sneak away at 3:30 if I need to) I get one session in. It's a big gamble to decide if one session is worth the entry fee, three hours in the car and the cost of petrol. However if I could get two sessions, I would be twice as likely to attend one of the midweek days. Better for the players to have a crowd. Better for the sponsors to have a more audience friendly product.

There is also the potential to have a more interesting game. One of the things that makes test cricket awesome is that the conditions change, and managing that is part of the skill of test captaincy. Replacing the early morning swing with the different challenges of playing under lights needs to be looked at seriously but it is an option that has the potential to have cricket benefits.

5. Stricter over-rate penalties.

I think that if we are going to have required over-rates, then we need to enforce them. I can not remember a game where MS Dhoni has been captaining where a team has met the required over rate. We need to either change the rules, to say that it is alright, or enforce it correctly. Again this is unlikely, as the chief perpetrators are from the same nation that wields undue influence.