Using Added Value to measure cricket performances - Part 2 ODI bowling

Reid and Matthews chat before the final over.

It was the summer of 1990/91, just before Christmas. I was on holiday at my Aunty's place in Mount Maunganui. My cousin and I were sleeping in the glass conservatory, looking out over the sand-dunes. The air smelt like salt and sand.

In our little room was a little TV, on the TV was the cricket coming out of Australia.

New Zealand were playing against Australia in Hobart.

I was 11 years old, and I was enthralled.

Danny Morrison was bowling. A year earlier, he had come to speak to my primary school assembly, then signed autographs by the school pavilion. I got him to sign my cricket bat, and I tried really hard to not get it scratched off. He was my favourite bowler. Australia needed 6 runs to win. Greg Matthews was on strike. I wasn't sure why, but as nobody seemed to like Greg Matthews, I didn't either.

Morrison bowled from around the wicket, and speared a fullish ball into leg stump. Matthews drove it, inside-out, through point for four. I really didn't like Matthews now.

Slow and steady?

There is a famous fable about a tortoise and a hare. They decide to have a race. The Hare runs off at great pace, gets close to the finish line and decides he is so far ahead he can afford to have a sleep. While he is sleeping, the tortoise catches up, over takes him, and finishes the race just as the hare is waking up. The moral of the story is supposed to be "slow and steady always wins the race."

Of course that moral is ridiculous. Slow and steady gets beaten by moderately fast and steady. Which in turn gets beaten by fast and steady. If slow and steady won the race I'd back myself to beat Ussain Bolt in the 100m. I reckon I can do it much slower than him.

However the true moral is that reliability is a very important virtue. And yet it is a very difficult one for us to take account of. There is inherently more interest in the unusual than the usual. Occasional exceptional performances are given more prominence in our memories than consistently good ones.

For example I can clearly remember Chris Pringle bowling a maiden in the last over of a match when Australia needed 2 runs to win. It was exceptional. Something that I'm never likely to see again. However I also watched a game where Gavin Larsen bowled 10 overs for 12 runs, including 5 maidens. I can't remember a single second of Larsen's performance. We tune out consistency, because it isn't memorable.

When asked who the best bowers in t20 cricket are, it is natural to tend towards the spectacular. We remember Mendis introducing the carrom ball and bamboozling everyone. We remember Malinga sending the stumps flying. We remember Narine, reviving the tradition of the West Indian mystery spinner like in the days of Sonny Ramadhin. We remember Warne saying how he was going to get McCullum out, and then doing it.

However we don't remember Samuel Badree, Daniel Vettori, Mohammed Hafeez, Nathan McCullum, Angelo Matthews or Darren Sammy. These names are ones that we remember, and can at times recall them doing something with the bat, or in the field, but their bowling tends to be unspectacular.

I was chatting with a top football coach recently, and he said to me "that Vettori chap, what he does must be harder than it looks." This guy has coached football at international level, and has been hugely successful at many different levels. His comment indicated the workings of a great sporting mind. He knows that often the things that look easy on a field take a lot more work than the things that look spectacular.

If we can't remember reliability, we need a metric to measure it. The standard cricket averages are not particularly helpful for this, as they can be skewed by occasional particularly good or particularly bad performances. Instead I decided to look at how often a bowler produces a good performance.

That in itself causes some problems. What is a good performance? In a t20 game, the aim of the bowlers is really to defend runs. Taking wickets is part of that, but often the real job is to not concede too may runs. So I'm going to define a good performance as being one where the bowler bowls at least 2 overs and conceded no more than a run a ball.

If every bowlers in the team did this, the maximium their opposition could score would be 120 plus any byes or leg byes. This is almost a guaranteed losing score, so there is some justification for defining 6 an over as a good target.

Here is a list of the number of good performances the top few bowlers have had. The innings column is innings where they have bowled at least 2 overs.

Name	Innings	Innings at 6rpo or less
Saeed Ajmal (Pak)	47	28
Shahid Afridi (Pak)	55	27
DL Vettori (NZ)	33	24
NL McCullum (NZ)	35	20
J Botha (SA)	36	18
Umar Gul (Pak)	49	18
BAW Mendis (SL)	27	17
GP Swann (Eng)	38	17
Mohammad Hafeez (Pak)	31	16
DT Johnston (Ire)	25	15
DW Steyn (SA)	28	15
M Morkel (SA)	30	13
DJG Sammy (WI)	31	13
SCJ Broad (Eng)	41	13
AD Mathews (SL)	25	12
Harbhajan Singh (India)	24	11
SL Malinga (SL)	38	11

The two names at the top of the list have both bowled in a lot of matches, which is what we would expect. Matthew Hayden scored more centuries, fifties and overall more runs than Don Bradman, but it took him a lot more matches to do it. There won't be many people claiming that Hayden was better than Bradman. It's because the number of good performances themselves are not so important as how often you did them.

So I sorted the table by percentages. The numbers were quite interesting really:

Name	Innings	Innings at 6rpo or less	Reliability
DL Vettori (NZ)	33	24	72.73%
BAW Mendis (SL)	27	17	62.96%
DT Johnston (Ire)	25	15	60.00%
Saeed Ajmal (Pak)	47	28	59.57%
NL McCullum (NZ)	35	20	57.14%
GH Dockrell (Ire)	18	10	55.56%
DW Steyn (SA)	28	15	53.57%
DJ Hussey (Aus)	19	10	52.63%
Mohammad Hafeez (Pak)	31	16	51.61%
J Botha (SA)	36	18	50.00%
Shahid Afridi (Pak)	55	27	49.09%
AD Mathews (SL)	25	12	48.00%
Harbhajan Singh (India)	24	11	45.83%
GP Swann (Eng)	38	17	44.74%
M Morkel (SA)	30	13	43.33%
DJG Sammy (WI)	31	13	41.94%
KMDN Kulasekara (SL)	24	10	41.67%

Some of the names at the top of the list are spectacular players: Ajantha Mendis, Saeed Ajmal and Dale Steyn. But there are more of the other sort. Well ahead of the pack is Daniel Vettori, but also Trent Johnston, Nathan McCullum, George Dockrell, Dave Hussey and Mohammad Hafeez.

It's players in this second group that often get forgotten when great teams are picked. One of my favourite cricket analysts, Gary Naylor, wrote an interesting piece about greatness. His definition of greatness is one that relies on the aesthetics of the player. Gavin Larsen could never be a great under that criteria.

And yet perhaps better than being great is being consistently good. Glenn McGrath was consistently good. Shaun Pollock was consistently good. Whereas Brett Lee and Alan Donald were spectacular. We remember Donald, and forget Pollock, despite Pollock having had a much better record.

So I challenge you to look at a different type of greatness. The greatness of being consistently good. Next time you see Nathan McCullum or Mohammad Hafeez bowling, stop to admire how they manage to get fantastic results, without ever looking like fantastic bowlers. That is a form of greatness in itself.

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.

Preview - SA SL 1st ODI Paarl 11/12

This is a bit of the battle of the unknowns here.

There have only been a handful of matches at Paarl. There have only been two matches between South Africa and Sri Lanka in the last 5 years. Both teams are somewhat unpredictable, and Sri Lanka are likely to have a vastly different line up to the test matches.

So it is hard to make too many predictions really.

However there are a couple of things to look for.

1. Dilshan hit 58 and 106 in his last two innings against South Africa. He is under some scrutiny as captain and needs a score. Will this be his time?

2. De Villiers is likely to bat at 4, keep wickets and captain his team. Dhoni and Sangakkara both proved that it is possible to succeed while keeping, captaining and batting in the top 5, but Gilchrist, Germon, Taibu and Flower all struggled with the excessive workload. De Villiers is certainly a talented batsman, but so were Gilchrist and Flower. It will be interesting to see if he can hold it all together.

3. Ajantha Mendis is likely to make a return. He's only bowled 7 overs against South Africa in any form of cricket, but he took 3 for 30 in those 7 overs, picking up Smith, Kallis and Duminy. If he can repeat this then Sri Lanka are in with a big show.

4. Lasith Malinga is playing his 100th ODI match. He has played 4 ODI matches against South Africa and taken 10 wickets, roughly one wicket every 3 overs. He is always an interesting bowler to watch, and it will be good to see how he goes in this match.

5. JP Duminy looking to get on the board. Duminy's last 4 ODI innings against Sri Lanka have been 3(3), 0(2), 0(1) & 0(1). He has faced 7 deliveries scored 3 runs and been out 4 times. However his last outing at Paarl was him guiding the Cape Cobras to a win with 52* at the end of a match, so he may be in a good space to turn that round.

Some betting tips.

In the three matches that have been played at Paarl between big teams, there have been 2 century opening partnerships and one 50 opening partnership. The 2nd wicket has been even more productive. If you are looking to be over on any batsman, make sure they are in the top three. Likewise don't think the game is over just because one team has a good start. Most teams get off to a good start at this ground.

Dance of the Titans?

Australia have looked ominous. Sri Lanka have looked like they are capable, and now they meet. The first match between two really good teams.

The Sri Lanka Pakistan was merely shadow boxing. Without Malinga and Mendis Sri Lanka lose one of the things that makes them what they are.

Here is my guide to things to look for in this match:

1. Ajantha Mendis. He has been one of the big stories of the last 4 years. When he burst onto the scene in 2008 everyone was talking about him. And yet he has never played an ODI against the Australians. We don't know if they will be able to read him or not. It's one thing to play him in a T20, where you don't have the luxury of time, but the decision making process for a batsman is different in an ODI, and we will finally get to see him in action. Interestingly his stats when bowling first and batsman don't have scoreboard pressure are much worse than when bowling second. so the toss may be vital to his success.

2. Michael Clarke. It was hard to watch or listen to any Australian sport show without hearing someone calling for Clarke to be dropped. Everyone was saying that he was so badly out of form that he shouldn't be there. There was even a teenage fan manage to get into a press conference and tell him so. Well the advice seems to have worked. In his last 5 matches, Clarke has averaged 109 at a strike rate over 90. That's not bad. And Sri Lanka are close behind Pakistan as his second favourite opponent. His form has returned at the right time, and now we get to see if it is truely good form, or just a statistical blip.

3. Captaincy. Ponting has been criticised for the way that he captains his teams, for being too conservative, and not attacking enough. During the last 5 years, Ponting has got less wickets per run out of his bowlers than any other player to have captained Australia other than Michael Hussey. Likewise Sangakkara has not been nearly effective at gaining wickets for his bowlers as Jayawardene was. However there is a significant difference. When things go wrong for Ponting, he tends to get more conservative. Sangakkara tends to get more unorthodox. It will be interesting to see what the pressure does here.

4. Batting First. The team that bats at Premadasa normally wins. More than 75% of matches over the last 5 years have been won by the team batting first. However, in day/night games the scores are almost even, so it will be interesting to see what happens near the end of the first innings. Which ever team finishes the first innings best is likely to go on and win the game. If you are someone into in-game betting it might be a good idea to back the underdog if it's at something like 2.50 at the 40th over. There is a high chance that it will change to their favor over the next 10-15 overs.

5. "Sri Lanka haven't lost until Angelo Mathews is out." Tony Grieg famously said, just before Mathews went on to single-handedly destroy Australia at their last meeting. Can he repeat the dose tonight?

Sneaky 20c bet: Michael Clarke to top score for Australia at $4.75

These are the things I'm watching for. What are you looking out for?