Using Added Value to assess cricket performances - Part 3 ODI all rounders

Viv Richards - by Aditya Naikdesai

Growing up in the 1980's, cricket was all about three things: the mighty West Indies, Lance Cairns biffing 6's and the "Big 4" all rounders.

I remember sitting on the school bus as someone was sharing the updates of a match that they'd been listening to on the radio: Viv Richards hit a century, Malcolm Marshall took 3 wickets, Lance Cairns hit a ball onto the roof. I may have been mixing up 3 different games, but that's what every match report felt like.

Other matches were all about the battle between Imran Khan and Ian Botham, or Richard Hadlee vs Kapil Dev. Those 4 players transfixed a generation - each of them had the ability to win a match with either the bat or the ball.

Throughout history, all rounders have been both highly sought after, and incredibly rare. To find a player who was capable of playing as a batsman or a bowler was unusual. To find someone who was a star with both was phenomenal.

There are 43 players who took more than 100 wickets and scored more than 2000 runs in ODI cricket. Some of them were batsmen who bowled a bit, some bowlers who occasionally contributed with the bat, some were "bit's and pieces players." An interesting question is if any were truly all rounders. Were any players both above average batsmen and bowlers?

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.

Is Dale Steyn the best bowler ever?

I recently read a (typically) good piece by Ant Sims about Dale Steyn. Some of the numbers that she came up with were very impressive. It got me wondering. Is Dale Steyn the best bowler ever?

She had the idea to compare him to other bowlers at a similar stage in their career. I decided to do something similar, so I looked at a large number of bowlers who had bowled in either 60 matches or 100 innings to look at how they compared at that point of their career.

Some players tend to hold on for a long time after their peak. Sometimes it is because everyone (including them) thinks that they are just one innings away from recapturing their glory days (think Ricky Ponting), or because they are still one of the best from their nation, even though they are no longer nearly as good as they were (think Sir Frank Worrell). But for what ever reason, about 60 games is often when a lot of bowlers reach their statistical zenith. They are experienced enough to know how to take wickets, but not old enough that they have lost too much energy.

Probably the most important statistic for bowlers in test matches is the average. Once I had pulled out all the bowlers data, there was one extraordinary number in the list: 20.14 by Shaun Pollock. Steyn is in the middle of this list.


The next thing that I look at is strike rate. Steyn is a strike bowler. It is not his job to hold up one end. He is there to take wickets. Strike rate is a measure of how many deliveries it takes a bowler on average to take a wicket. Generally the best bowlers tend to take wickets slightly better than every 10 overs, giving a strike rate under 60.

Here Steyn really shines. He has the second best strike rate of any bowler after 60 matches. And then he's only marginally behind Waqar Younis. Here's another way to put it. The first two bowlers I remember vividly from when I grew up were Malcolm Marshall and Richard Hadlee. Steyn is more likely to get a wicket on any given ball than either of them were.

Another measure is bowling index. This is a more complicated statistic, which is described in the glossary. While it is best suited for comparing bowlers in limited overs matches, it does tell a story in tests also. It really tells us who has kept the batsmen honest while they have been taking their wickets. It's not perfect, but it is interesting. (You may need to scroll to see Steyn's numbers in this one)


Again we see Shaun Pollock on top, and by a reasonable margin, this time ahead of Deadly Derek Underwood. Steyn is near the bottom of the list, along with the majority of the bowlers in the era of boundary ropes and uncompressed bats.

So to answer the question: is Dale Steyn the best bowler ever? Probably not, that's possibly Shaun Pollock, but Steyn is certainly up there with the best.

For a different way of looking at the greatest bowlers ever, and to see where Steyn is placed on that list, you can also try this article that I wrote at the beginning of the year. The numbers need updating, but they were right as at the 7th of January.

Why don't we like Kyle Mills

Kyle Mills is an enigma. He doesn't bowl very fast. He swings the ball, but not as much as many other bowlers. He gets a bit of bounce, but he doesn't hit the deck particularly hard. He bowls good line and length, but isn't as metronomic as some other bowlers. And yet he continues to record amazing numbers.

Over the last 7 years he has consistently been a quality bowler. He managed to get ranked as high as number 1 in the world in the ICC ODI bowlers rankings. (He is one of only 5 New Zealanders I can find to have done it, joining Hadlee, Bond, Vettori & Chatfield). His worst year in the last 7 was 2010 when he took 19 wickets in 13 matches at an average of 26.57 and an economy rate of 5.39. This gave him a bowling index score of 23.87. To put that in context Zaheer Khan has a career average of 29.03 and an economy rate of 4.91, (index 23.76). In Mills' worst year he was still as good as Zaheer Khan.

And yet we don't really like him. Nobody calls up talkback praising him. Nobody writes previews of series where he is seen as a threat. He just goes about his work, getting wickets, bowling dot balls, and not being noticed.

I heard through twitter that people had been calling talkback asking for Mills to be dropped. They called up and talked about the time he got hit for 3 sixes and a 4 in an over by Mark Boucher and Jacques Kallis in 2003/4. They never mention that New Zealand won that game, and that was mostly because in the over before going for all the runs, Mills had bowled an almost perfect over to concede just 3 off the bat when they needed 40 off 3. Nor do they mention that this was right at the start of his career, and that he learned a lot from the experience.

After the first two ODI's in Jamaica, I read a couple of newspaper reports that said that Tim Southee was New Zealand's best bowler. I understand that the two reporters were not actually at the ground, so they may not have had the best perspective, but I fail to see how anyone who watched those games can believe that Southee was a better performer than Mills.

Southee had reasonable figures, but that was in part because New Zealand seemed to have a plan to make sure they kept Gayle at Mills' end. Roughly half the deliveries that Mills has bowled this series have been to Gayle. But he has coped with this task well. Here are the figures for all NZ bowlers to Chris Gayle:

Player	Deliveries	Runs	Wickets	E/R
KD Mills	50	38	1	4.56
NL McCullum	35	40	1	6.86
TS Nethula	30	40	0	8.00
TG Southee	41	56	0	8.20
RJ Nicol	24	26	0	6.50
JDP Oram	31	42	0	8.13
DR Flynn	4	7	0	10.50
RM Hira	9	16	0	10.67
AM Ellis	7	9	0	7.71
KS Williamson	4	6	0	9.00
DAJ Bracewell	20	50	0	15.00

And all New Zealand bowlers against everyone else:

Player	Deliveries	Runs	Wickets	E/R
KD Mills	64	44	1	4.13
MJ Guptill	2	2	0	6.00
NL McCullum	43	44	1	6.14
TS Nethula	54	53	1	5.89
TG Southee	109	114	4	6.28
RJ Nicol	30	43	1	8.60
JDP Oram	71	89	0	7.52
DR Flynn	2	2	0	6.00
RM Hira	5	6	0	7.20
AM Ellis	17	31	0	10.94
KS Williamson	12	23	1	11.50
DAJ Bracewell	22	40	2	10.91

For these tables I've combined the T20's and the ODI's.

I think it is fairly clear who has been the most effective bowler.

Watching the second game live, the battle between Gayle and Mills was fantastic. Mills missed with 3 deliveries and all of them disappeared for 6. The other 30 deliveries that Mills bowled to Gayle in that match conceded just 16 runs.

If New Zealand manage to dismiss Gayle early, Mills will be able to be used at other batsmen. He may well be the trigger that turns the tide in this series. But even if he is, he's unlikely to be celebrated back home.