Is the Southee - Boult partnership greater than the Hadlee - Chatfield partnership?

There is a theory that bowlers are supposed to hunt in a pack. That the two bowlers are supposed to work together to get the batsmen out.  There are some proponents of this theory, and some who feel that it is rubbish, and that each bowler is wholly responsible for their own figures.

In the light of their recent performances I've been looking into the opening partnership of Boult and Southee and then I've compared that to others opening partnerships throughout time. They are a fairly new pair, but they actually stack up quite well.

Some records from Day 1 Australia vs South Africa in Adeliade 2012/13

Here are some stats/records/trivia that I've noticed from day one of the test between Australia and South Africa.  In no way is this exhaustive, as there has been a lot of things happen on this day.

It is the second highest score by a team on the first day of a test, narrowly behind Australia's 494 against South Africa in Sydney in 1910/11

Clarke became the first person to score 4 double centuries in a calendar year.

Three players hit centuries on the first day of a test. I know that there has never been 4 players hit centuries, and haven't been able to find any other incident of a third century being completed on the first day.

Other interesting trivia:

It was Clarke and Hussey's fourth double century partnership, and second in succession.

Two South African bowlers (Morkel and Tahir) also got (less desired) centuries.

Two South African bowlers (Kallis and Steyn) had to leave the field with an injury mid-over. This is the first incident I could find of this happening twice in a day.

The morning session on day 4

The day started ominously for the West Indies with Ravi Rampaul getting out caught by Prior off Finn on the third ball, but the first over was no indication at all of what was to come. The next two hours contained a perfect example of the best of test cricket.

Tino Best came out to the wicket, walking with a swagger that really did not fit with a number 11 with a highest score of 27. But he took no time to declare his intent. He swung wildly at the first few deliveries, connecting with a couple, and made it to 20 off 14 balls. At the other end the under fire Denesh Ramdin was slowly pushing the ball round the field and accumulating runs in a sensible fashion.

The English bowlers were bowling too short to Best, and he was enjoying it. All of a sudden his swagger was at a new level. He was mixing up glorious back foot drives and streaky edges, but no matter how aesthetically pleasing the shot was, they all managed to miss the fielders and find their way to the boundary. The English bowlers were still smiling, and laughing about it, thinking that it was just a tail-ender having a brief larrop. But it was much more than that.

After 44 balls Best became the first number 11 to score a fifty against England in over 100 years. He is only the thirteenth player to score a test fifty from number 11. At about this time the decided to start to bat sensibly. He only scored 1 boundary in the next 10 overs, leaving the bulk of the scoring up to Ramdin. The partnership reached 100 after 19.3 overs.

The next over Ramdin bought up his hundred and pulled out a note from his pocket and held it up for the cameras to see. It read "Yea Viv Talk Now," meaning something like "what are you saying now Viv" in reference to an article that Sir Vivian Richards had written about Ramdin before the match saying that "For some reason, he has deteriorated in such a big way. Just the way he is walking back, he looks like a totally lost guy." Ramdin answered him with the bat, but his response with the note paper was for some a step too far. Ian Botham went as far as to suggest that Ramdin would be advised to hide when he gets back into the pavilion.

It wasn't long before the irrepressible Best got back into the action. He hit a four to go past Zaheer Khan's score of 75, the previous highest score by a number 11 in test history. Best then set his sights on a hundred before lunch. He made it into the 90's with 5 overs in hand and it was potentially going to a huge embarrassment for England, conceding a century to a number 11. Unfortunately, however the fairytale came to an end at 95 when Best tried to hit a slower ball out of the park to bring it up in style. West Indies went from 280/8 overnight to an imposing 426 all out. With the shortened game, the follow on target is 150, so England will need 288 to avoid the follow on.

At this point there are only two realistic options remaining: a West Indian win or a (somewhat more likely) draw. It will be interesting to see how the inexperienced West Indian bowling line up will respond to platform that their colleagues have established.

The series of big partnerships

About this time last year, I described a way of analysing partnerships in ODI matches.

I started a new table for this year, and noticed how many big partnerships there were in the Sri Lanka - South Africa series. There were 8 that came out with an adjusted score of 100 or more in 5 games. Compare this to last years series where there was a big partnership in about 2/3 of the matches.

Here is the table of the big contributions:

Batsmen Names	Runs	Start	End	DLAS
AB de Villiers, GC Smith	186	70/2, 17.1	256/3, 45.1	194
JH Kallis, HM Amla	144	9/1, 2.4	153/2, 28.3	182
WU Tharanga, TM Dilshan	94	-	94/1, 18.3	133
AN Peterson, GC Smith	84	-	84/1, 13.1	115
GC Smith, HM Amla	76	-	76/1, 16.3	107
AB de Villiers, GC Smith	87	84/1, 13.1	171/2, 23.5	101
WU Tharanga, LD Chandimal	84	21/2, 9.6	105/3, 28.3	101
KC Sangakkara, TM Dilshan	83	17/1, 3.1	100/2, 16.2	100

DLAS is Duckworth-Lewis Adjusted Score

It is clear that the batsmen certainly enjoyed themselves in this series. It will be interesting now to see if the New Zealand, Zimbabwe, Australian or Indian batsmen will enjoy the same success.

Where the Ponting-Clarke partnership fits in

Here are some tables that the Ponting-Clarke partnership fits into.

4th Wicket partnerships in Australia.

Partners	Runs	Opposition	Ground	Year
VVS Laxman, SR Tendulkar (India)	353	v Australia	Sydney	2004
MJ Clarke, RT Ponting (Aus)	352	v Pakistan	Hobart	2010
WM Lawry, KD Walters (Aus)	336	v West Indies	Sydney	1969
PD Collingwood, KP Pietersen (Eng)	310	v Australia	Adelaide	2006
MJ Clarke, RT Ponting (Aus)	288	v India	Sydney	2012
DS Lehmann, SR Waugh (Aus)	250	v Bangladesh	Cairns	2003
MJ Clarke, MEK Hussey (Aus)	245	v Sri Lanka	Brisbane	2007
AL Hassett, KR Miller (Aus)	235	v West Indies	Sydney	1951

4th wicket partnership for Australia

Partners	Runs	Opposition	Ground	Year
DG Bradman, WH Ponsford	388	v England	Leeds	1934
MJ Clarke, RT Ponting	352	v Pakistan	Hobart	2010
WM Lawry, KD Walters	336	v West Indies	Sydney	1969
JN Gillespie, MEK Hussey	320	v Bangladesh	Chittagong	2006
MJ Clarke, RT Ponting	288	v India	Sydney	2012
MEK Hussey, SE Marsh	258	v Sri Lanka	Pallekele	2011
CS Serjeant, GM Wood	251	v West Indies	Georgetown	1978
DS Lehmann, SR Waugh	250	v Bangladesh	Cairns	2003
MJ Clarke, MEK Hussey	245	v Sri Lanka	Brisbane	2007

4th Wicket partnership vs India

Partners	Runs	Ground	Year
MJ Clarke, RT Ponting (Aus)	288	Sydney	2012
Javed Miandad, Zaheer Abbas (Pak)	287	Faisalabad	1983
JD Ryder, LRPL Taylor (NZ)	271	Napier	2009
GE Gomez, CL Walcott (WI)	267	Delhi	1948
WR Hammond, TS Worthington (Eng)	266	The Oval	1936
Javed Miandad, Zaheer Abbas (Pak)	255	Faisalabad	1978
G Boycott, BL D'Oliveira (Eng)	252	Leeds	1967
Javed Miandad, Shoaib Mohammad (Pak)	246	Lahore	1989
HA Gomes, CH Lloyd (WI)	237	Port of Spain	1983
IVA Richards, RB Richardson (WI)	235	Kingston	1989

4th Wicket for Australia vs India

Partners	Runs	Ground	Year
MJ Clarke, RT Ponting	288	Sydney	2012
MJ Clarke, RT Ponting	210	Adelaide	2008
AR Border, DM Jones	178	Chennai	1986
DM Jones, TM Moody	173	Perth	1992
RN Harvey, SJE Loxton	159	Melbourne	1948
PJP Burge, NC O'Neill	150	Kolkata	1960

For Australia vs India for any wicket

Partners	Runs	Wkt	Ground	Year
MJ Clarke, RT Ponting	288	4	Sydney	2012
RT Ponting, SR Waugh	239	5	Adelaide	1999
SG Barnes, DG Bradman	236	2	Adelaide	1948
ML Hayden, RT Ponting	234	2	Melbourne	2003
DG Bradman, AR Morris	223*	5	Melbourne	1948
AR Border, KJ Hughes	222	3	Chennai	1979
DC Boon, MA Taylor	221	2	Adelaide	1992

At the SCG for any wicket

Partners	Runs	Wkt	Opposition	Year
SG Barnes, DG Bradman (Aus)	405	5	v England	1946
VVS Laxman, SR Tendulkar (India)	353	4	v Australia	2004
WM Lawry, KD Walters (Aus)	336	4	v West Indies	1969
BC Lara, RB Richardson (WI)	293	3	v Australia	1993
MJ Clarke, RT Ponting (Aus)	288	4	v India	2012
AL Hassett, KR Miller (Aus)	235	4	v West Indies	1951
RW Barber, G Boycott (Eng)	234	1	v Australia	1966

Rescue Partnerships (3rd wicket fell before 40)

Partners	Runs	Wkt	Opposition	Ground	year
DG Bradman, WH Ponsford (Aus)	388	4	v England	Leeds	1934
MJ Clarke, RT Ponting (Aus)	288	4	v India	Sydney	2012
A Flower, MW Goodwin (Zim)	277*	5	v Pakistan	Bulawayo	1998
JD Ryder, LRPL Taylor (NZ)	271	4	v India	Napier	2009
GE Gomez, CL Walcott (WI)	267	4	v India	Delhi	1948
CS Serjeant, GM Wood (Aus)	251	4	v West Indies	Georgetown	1978
HA Gomes, CH Lloyd (WI)	237	4	v India	Port of Spain	1983
DG Bradman, AR Morris (Aus)	223*	5	v India	Melbourne	1948
WR Hammond, E Paynter (Eng)	222	4	v Australia	Lord's	1938
RL Dias, LRD Mendis (SL)	216	4	v India	Kandy	1985
HG Deane, HW Taylor (SA)	214	4	v England	The Oval	1929
IR Redpath, KD Walters (Aus)	210	4	v West Indies	Sydney	1969
DL Amiss, AW Greig (Eng)	210	5	v New Zealand	Nottingham	1973
Abdul Razzaq, Inzamam-ul-Haq (Pak)	206	6	v West Indies	Georgetown	2000

Contributions made by openers

In a couple of previous posts, Partnerships that made big contributions" and A different kind of hundred partnership I looked at a different way of measuring the impact of a partnership.

I used the method from the contributions post to look at opening partnerships in this world cup. There have been a couple of outstanding partnerships this time round, not least of which was the innings by Dilshan and Tharanga of 282 vs Zimbabwe at Pallekele.

Here is the list of all partnerships that contributed 100 or more:

Names	For	Against	Runs	Contribution
TM Dilshan, WU Tharanga	SL	vs Zimbabwe	282	307
BJ Haddin, SR Watson	Aus	vs Canada	183	246
WTS Porterfield, PR Stirling	Ire	vs Netherlands	177	241
MJ Guptill, BB McCullum	NZ	vs Zimbabwe	166	217
V Sehwag, SR Tendulkar	India	vs South Africa	142	201
BJ Haddin, SR Watson	Aus	vs New Zealand	133	189
Kamran Akmal, Mohammad Hafeez	Pak	vs West Indies	113	180
RW Chakabva, BRM Taylor	Zim	vs Sri Lanka	116	165
KP Pietersen, AJ Strauss	Eng	vs Netherlands	105	149
CH Gayle, DS Smith	WI	vs Netherlands	100	141
HM Amla, GC Smith	SA	vs Bangladesh	98	139
MJ Guptill, BB McCullum	NZ	vs Kenya	72	139
KP Pietersen, AJ Strauss	Eng	vs Ireland	91	125
S Chanderpaul, DS Smith	WI	vs Ireland	89	124
TM Dilshan, WU Tharanga	SL	vs Pakistan	76	105

A couple of names appear there more than once. Dilshan & Tharanga, Haddin & Watson, Guptil & McCullum and, despite often looking as comfortable as a pin in the bottom, Devon Smith.

That leads to the next obvious question: Which country has got the most value from their openers. Here's the list sorted by country and average contribution. (for this average I am dividing by innings, not dismissals, as there is already a bonus for getting a not out)

Team	Contribution
Aus	104.33
SL	99.00
NZ	78.17
Eng	75.50
India	68.29
SA	62.67
WI	57.14
Ire	45.00
Zim	38.00
Ban	31.67
Neth	27.14
Kenya	11.83
Can	10.00

There's some obvious distortion in these numbers caused by the ability of some teams at minnow bashing. The usual suspects for beating up on minnows (NZ, SA, India and SL) all feature high on the chart. I will at some point produce a table that removes games against lesser teams, but the pub is calling.

Happy World Cup watching everyone.

Partnerships that made big contributions

In an earlier post, A different kind of hundred partnership I looked at a number of partnerships ranked by how much they increased the Duckworth-Lewis expected score.

I have come up with a new method. If you want to skip the geekery of me explaining how it works, click here to go straight to the table.

There were a number of problems with the method I used in the hundred partnership post, some of which I outlined at the time. I spent some time thinking about it, and what could be done to give a more accurate description of the contribution a partnership made to a teams cause. Part of the idea of statistics is to find a way to make the numbers tell the story, and I didn't feel that these told the story accurately enough. There were a few glaring anomalies.

The first thing that I wanted to fix up was that shorter partnerships added more than longer ones. For example Amla and Duminy's partnership of 102 off 16.2 was worth much less than Misbah-ul-Haq and Younis Khan's partnership of 89 off 13.3. These partnerships seem like they are of a similar value to their respective teams. Also there was too much of an advantage for a partnership that came in after the fall of a couple of early wickets. It didn't seem correct that Sarwan and Bravo's epic 125 runs off 22.3 overs was worth 250 more than N McCullum and Styris's 120 off 14. It was a great recovery from 0/2 to 125/3, but it still felt a little off.

I came up with a couple of options to deal with this. Firstly I divided the DL prediction at the start and end by 50, then divided by the number of overs faced. This gave me a very interesting result. The numbers suddenly looked a lot more intuitive. It also eliminated the problems with a team getting off to a bad start, or a particularly good start. Clarke and Watson's 110 run partnership that came in at a ridiculous -75 with the old method was now a more sensible 94. They were still penalised for being a lot slower than the team had been going, but not nearly as much.

I also made a slight modification to the predicted score for anything less than 10 overs, by making it a little more moderate. Again I used the Duckworth Lewis g-score of 250, and multiplied the predicted score by the number of overs used, and then 250 by 10 minus the number of overs used, and then divided by 10. Under the old method if a team was on 34/1 off 2 overs, the predicted score would be 410, now it would be 282. This seems a more realistic platform to start with. Once the over calculation in the paragraph above was added in, the start went from 16 to 11. Not a big difference, but probably more fair. This can however cause a problem in the case of a long unbeaten partnership. If a 2nd wicket partnership went from 33/1 off 2 to 333/1 off 50, they would have added 300 runs, but this method would give them 322. However given that this situation is incredibly unlikely, I am happy to live with that issue for now.

Here are the top 15 partnerships under the new method.

Batsmen Names	Score	Start	End	DL Adjusted
RR Sarwan, AB Barath	165	42/2, 12.4 Overs	207/3, 43.2 Overs	185
AB de Villiers, JP Duminy	131	82/3, 13.3 Overs	213/4, 35.2 Overs	171
MJ Guptill, JD Ryder	123	18/1, 3.4 Overs	141/2, 24.5 Overs	161
BJ Haddin, SR Watson	110	-	110/1, 19.4 Overs	156
MJ Prior, IJL Trott	113	23/1, 2.5 Overs	136/2, 22.1 Overs	156
RR Sarwan, DM Bravo	125	0/2, 1.6 Overs	125/3, 24.3 Overs	132
HM Amla, MN van Wyk	97	16/1, 2.3 Overs	113/2, 22.2 Overs	130
JP Duminy, F du Plessis	110	90/4, 23.2 Overs	200/5, 44.5 Overs	126
Misbah-ul-Haq, Mohd. Hafeez	94	56/3, 13.3 Overs	150/4, 36.1 Overs	123
SM Davies, AJ Strauss	90	-	90/1, 12.1 Overs	120
SE Marsh, CL White	100	33/4, 12.3 Overs	133/5, 32.6 Overs	117
DE Bollinger, SE Marsh	88	142/8, 36.5 Overs	230/9, 48.1 Overs	110
DJ Hussey, AC Voges	95	103/4, 25.2 Overs	198/5, 39.1 Overs	110
NL McCullum, SB Styris	120	190/5, 35.5 Overs	310/6, 49.5 Overs	110
SB Styris, KS Williamson	81	80/3, 14.5 Overs	161/4, 33.1 Overs	109

One interesting thing here is that there are three quite different partnerships all with DL adjusted results of 110. Each had a very different role in their game, but have all come out the same under this analysis. This feels good intuitively, as it is hard to separate them when the context of each game is taken into account.

Looking at this list, does this seem like a good method for ranking partnerships and their value. There aren't many that seem out of place to me here, and it seems to tell a better story than sorting them just by total runs scored.

A different kind of hundred partnership

In a test match if a pair of batsmen put on a hundred partnership, it generally increases the teams score by that number of runs. This seems fairly obvious. The exception comes when a team is trying to put together some quick runs before declaring. In this case the team are often going to declare at a certain score regardless of how many wickets have fallen. In this case if a team is 220/3 or 220/7 they will still get 220. A 2nd wicket partnership of 100 if the team declares at 220 has not necessarily added 100 because the team may have got to that total even if that partnership had been 0. Likewise if a team is chasing a winning total the same thing applies.

A similar situation happens in one day cricket. A team has two resources that they have to convert into runs, wickets and balls. If a team that has 1 over left and 7 wickets in hand, the wickets are completely irrelevant. But at the start of an innings the wickets are very important. A slow 100 run partnership at the end of a match can actually cost a team runs that they should have got. There are famous stories of this happening, including one where Ian Botham deliberately ran out Geoffrey Boycott because he felt Boycott was scoring too slowly.

Fortunately Frank Duckworth and Tony Lewis developed a system of describing the number of resources left to a team at various combinations of overs and wickets. While their system was designed solely to help find fair targets/decisions in rain affected matches, it is a useful tool for analysing progress throughout games.

I used their basic version to look at all the partnerships over 70 in ODI's this year. The key things I was looking at were the predicted score then they came to the wicket, and then the predicted score when their partnership ended. I already used this technique once in an earlier post Duckworth Lewis as a prediction tool

The problem came with opening partnerships, as there was no data to use for the inital prediction. As the Duckworth-Lewis system was based on the idea of 250 being the expected score for a team, I used this as my starting point.

Using this system I generated this list of the top partnerships:

Batsmen Names	Score	Start	End	DL Difference
MJ Guptill, JD Ryder	84	-	84/1, 10.0 Overs	282
SM Davies, AJ Strauss	90	-	90/1, 12.1 Overs	245
BJ Haddin, SR Watson	110	-	110/1, 19.4 Overs	147
HM Amla, MN van Wyk	97	16/1, 2.3 Overs	113/2, 22.2 Overs	133
SE Marsh, CL White	100	33/4, 12.3 Overs	133/5, 32.6 Overs	128

Haddin and Watson scored 26 more than Ryder and Guptill, but because they took 9.4 overs more to do it, their partnership is not rated as highly. The biggest problem with this way of measuring partnerships is that it penalises a pair if someone else did particularly well. For example, when Haddin got out, Michael Clarke came in an added 103 with Watson, in 19.1 overs at 5.37 which is not a bad effort in the middle overs. However the DL predicted score when Clarke arrived was 397, and it reduced to 322 by the time he departed, giving them a score of -75. However the team were chasing 295, so effectively they are being penalised for the good start, and for them pacing the innings appropriately.

I'll do an update of this table at the end of the group stage of the World Cup and it will be interesting to see who comes out on top.

8th Wicket partnership

One remarkable feature of the current test match happening in Hamilton is the 8th wicket partnership between Williamson and Southee. Already at 83 it is equal with the 2nd wicket partnership as the largest of the innings.

I wondered if this partnership was remarkable, so I looked up a list of all 100 run 8th wicket partnerships where the score started at 200 or less.

The surprising thing was how many there were. If Williamson and Southee manage to make another 17 runs then they will be the 5th partnership to achieve this since August 2009.

Given that it has only happened 33 times in the history of cricket, this seems like a very large number.