Shane Watson and The Form Myth

Shane Watson. Out lbw. Again.

I read somewhere recently that Shane Watson is in bad form.

They implied that he needed to go away and "discover some form." The more I am involved with cricket, the less I believe in form.

Shane Watson has a technical deficiency. He moves his front foot too far across when he is playing in-swing. He also clears his front leg against left arm spin, and plays across the ball. These technical problems aren't really an issue if he's playing against lower quality bowlers, because he can hit the ball, and so he doesn't get out lbw. Once he faces bowlers who can bowl the ball in the places where he finds it difficult to play, he gets out. The champion of cricket on YouTube, Robelinda2 has put up a compilation of some of his lbw dismissals here.

It seems that it often happens once he starts to attack the bowling. It means that his larger innings tend to get cut short even once he's underway. That's why he was labelled by one commentator as Wall Street (great in the twenties, crashes in the 30's and 40's).

I compared Watson with all top 7 batsmen in the last 3 years on their likelihood to get out lbw. Most of us have heard that Watson gets out lbw more than anyone in history except Junior Murray (min 30 matches), but when he gets out is particularly interesting.

I looked at the relative frequency of dismissal by lbw in innings under 30 and in innings 30+. I compared it to other batsmen in the last 3 years. (I picked the last 3 years to include the DRS factor) Here are the numbers:

Score	Watson	Other Batsmen
0-29	33.33%	20.48%
30 +	28.95%	13.78%

Watson is 63% more likely to get out lbw at the start of his innings than other batsmen, but he is 110% more likely than them to get out later on. It is a technical issue, not a form issue. Going away and playing some lower quality bowlers will not fix it. He needs to work on where to put his feet and how to play the different deliveries that are getting him out.

If he does fix that technical issue, the commentators will all say that he's in great form.  But perhaps it will just be that the bowlers are trying to bowl the ball to him in a way that he is now equipped to deal with.

Test team of the year

I put together an ODI team of the year, and I'm going to use a similar method for test team of the year.

The first thing that needs to be decided on is the balance of the team. Often the successful teams play with 4 bowlers and one batsman who can contribute with the ball. (There has only been one game this year where a team has won with only using 4 bowlers)

This time rather than using matches at the World cup as a premium, I'm looking at away matches as the premium. This year we have seen some very good performances by home teams, and only a few by away teams, so there needs to be a bonus for teams performing away from home. (For the purpose of this I don't consider games in UAE as away games for either team)

Openers, Alastair Cook & Tino Mawayo

This was selected from batsmen who had played at least 6 innings as openers.

The selection was fairly straight-forward

Player	Matches	Runs	Actual Average	Points
AN Cook (Eng)	8	927	84.27	84.31
TMK Mawoyo (Zim)	3	310	62.00	59.17
Taufeeq Umar (Pak)	10	831	46.16	46.55
DA Warner (Aus)	3	195	48.75	43.84
Mohammad Hafeez (Pak)	10	647	40.43	36.41
V Sibanda (Zim)	3	272	45.33	36.40
GC Smith (SA)	5	322	40.25	36.20

In reality Tino Mawoyo's first class record suggest it is unlikely that he will turn out to be a world class opener, but he has produced world class numbers this year (including carrying his bat for a particularly memorable 453 ball epic 163* against Pakistan). And Zimbabwe has produced some outstanding batsmen in their short test history.

Number 3 Rahul Dravid

This was not so straight forward, as the runs below were not just scored at number 3. Dravid did better when he opened the batting, and Amla did worse the one innings that he didn't bat at number 3. Sangakkara scored the most runs, but didn't manage any not out's so his average suffered accordingly.

Player	Matches	Runs	Actual Average	Points
R Dravid (India)	12	1145	57.25	59.05
KA Edwards (WI)	6	595	54.09	53.12
SE Marsh (Aus)	4	287	41.00	48.67
Azhar Ali (Pak)	10	732	45.75	45.14
KC Sangakkara (SL)	11	1034	49.23	43.93
HM Amla (SA)	5	423	47.00	42.27
IJL Trott (Eng)	6	365	40.55	36.47

Numbers 4 & 5 Younis Khan & Ian Bell

Ian Bell has batted at 6 for this year, but he has been a specialist batsman, rather than an all-rounder.

Player	Matches	Runs	Actual Average	Points
IR Bell (Eng)	8	950	118.75	110.24
Younis Khan (Pak)	8	765	85.00	83.93
Misbah-ul-Haq (Pak)	10	765	69.54	75.15
KP Pietersen (Eng)	8	731	73.10	65.07
DG Brownlie (NZ)	3	268	53.60	60.76
S Chanderpaul (WI)	8	646	53.83	54.21
DM Bravo (WI)	10	949	49.94	53.91
BRM Taylor (Zim)	3	358	71.60	50.44
SR Tendulkar (India)	9	756	47.25	49.62
MEK Hussey (Aus)	9	680	42.50	48.18
TT Samaraweera (SL)	7	501	41.75	46.82
Shakib Al Hasan (Ban)	5	451	50.11	46.54
JH Kallis (SA)	5	359	51.28	46.12

All rounder Mike Hussey

This was a surprise. I was expecting Shakib, Watson, Vettori or Kallis to come out on top here. Hussey was hardly a front-line bowler, but we are only looking for someone who can contribute, and of the players that do that he has been the most effective this year. Kallis has not exactly had a vintage year with the ball, bowling 61 overs for 232 runs. Watson however has been outstanding with the ball, but surprisingly poor with the bat, especially since I thought I remembered him batting really well.

Player	Batting	Bowling	Difference
MEK Hussey (Aus)	48.18	17.97	30.21
Shakib Al Hasan (Ban)	46.54	30.66	15.88
Mohammad Hafeez (Pak)	36.41	22.66	13.75
DL Vettori (NZ)	40.23	27.68	12.55
AD Mathews (SL)	40.52	30.58	9.94
R Ashwin (India)	34.59	27.25	7.34
SR Watson (Aus)	23.82	17.14	6.68
Azhar Ali (Pak)	45.14	38.92	6.22
DJG Sammy (WI)	18.19	30.13	-11.94
TM Dilshan (SL)	35.21	53.45	-18.24
MN Samuels (WI)	32.51	54.06	-21.55
IJL Trott (Eng)	36.47	110.09	-73.62
JH Kallis (SA)	46.12	257.98	-211.86

Wicketkeeper Matt Prior

This was the easiest decision of all.

Matt Prior is so far above the rest of the keepers in terms of batting that he really selects himself. His numbers don't indicate that he is the best keeper, but given that he concedes about 5 byes per innings, but his adjusted average is about 25 runs more than the next best with the bat, he can't be overlooked.

Here is the batting stats for everyone who averaged 35 or higher:

Player	Matches	Runs	Actual Average	Points
MJ Prior (Eng)	8	519	64.87	64.90
T Taibu (Zim)	3	267	44.50	39.17
Adnan Akmal (Pak)	8	211	35.16	36.54
Mushfiqur Rahim (Ban)	5	340	37.77	35.07

And their byes stats:

Name	Byes	Deliveries	Byes/100 overs
Adnan Akmal (Pak)	26	8559	1.82
T Taibu (Zim)	15	2581	3.49
Mushfiqur Rahim (Ban)	34	4741	4.30
MJ Prior (Eng)	65	8096	4.82

The intangible is dropped catches. It is more work than I'm prepared to do to go back and count the number of catches dropped. If Adnan or Taibu had not dropped any catches, and Prior dropped 1 per game, then there would be a difficult decision, but given that we don't have any data we have to proceed on the understanding that there is no significant difference between them.

Bowlers James Pattinson, Shane Watson, Doug Bracewell and Saeed Ajmal

Here I decided that a bowler had to have bowled 90 overs. I got this number as it was roughly the lower quartile of bowlers who had bowled in 5 innings. This was better than just using 5 innings, as measuring in overs allows more consistency (someone who bowls 2 overs in each of 5 innings just giving a rest to the other bowlers and picks up 3 wickets for 55 runs because the batsmen are slogging him would end up with a very good average despite not being a front-line bowler - for a less extreme version of this see Mike Hussey) Unfortunately Vernon Philander just missed out on this.

I also needed to have at least 2 quick bowlers and at least 1 spinner. The final position comes down to performance (although in reality it would probably come down to the conditions). As a result I have picked Saeed Ajmal, as the best spinner.

Name	Matches	Overs	Wickets	Actual Average	Weighted Average
JL Pattinson (Aus)	3	98.5	20	15.20	16.90
SR Watson (Aus)	6	113.5	14	19.07	17.14
DAJ Bracewell (NZ)	3	101	16	19.25	17.39
TT Bresnan (Eng)	4	139.3	21	19.09	20.95
Z Khan (India)	3	114.2	13	23.15	21.46
DW Steyn (SA)	5	178.4	28	19.57	21.76
Saeed Ajmal (Pak)	8	487	50	23.86	21.97
Mohammad Hafeez (Pak)	10	167	15	25.93	22.66
Aizaz Cheema (Pak)	4	146.4	19	24.78	23.38
U Yadav (India)	3	96.3	16	22.93	23.42
P Kumar (India)	6	268.3	27	25.81	23.92
Abdur Rehman (Pak)	8	412	36	26.27	24.39
SCJ Broad (Eng)	7	270.2	33	22.30	24.80
PP Ojha (India)	3	177.2	20	22.50	25.02
Umar Gul (Pak)	8	287.5	34	25.67	25.09
JM Anderson (Eng)	7	296.2	35	24.85	25.57
R Rampaul (WI)	8	283.1	31	25.03	26.20
R Ashwin (India)	4	221	26	24.80	27.25
DL Vettori (NZ)	4	228.1	16	27.12	27.68
CS Martin (NZ)	5	192	20	29.45	27.94
NM Lyon (Aus)	8	198.4	23	27.47	28.64
CT Tremlett (Eng)	5	207.4	23	27.17	29.71
HMRKB Herath (SL)	10	470.1	41	29.07	29.92

Most of the players selected have not played much cricket, and just scrape in on overs bowled. If we extended that to 150 overs required the line up would be Dale Steyn, Praveen Kumar, Saeed Ajmal and Mohammad Hafeez.

The team (in batting order)

Alastair Cook
Tino Mawoyo
Rahul Dravid
Younis Khan
Michael Hussey
Ian Bell
Matt Prior
Shane Watson
Doug Bracewell
James Pattinson
Saeed Ajmal

12th man Mohammad Hafeez

Surprisingly there are no South Africans or Sri Lankans in the team. There are also no West Indians or Bangladeshis either.

That's my stats based team. What is your team?

ODI team of the year

Well, it wouldn't be the end of the year, without people naming a team of the year.

Here is my attempt at ODI team of the year:

Method:
For batsmen I broke down the players into openers, top order and lower/middle order players.
I then looked at all batsmen's results batting in these positions throughout the year, giving a bonus for world cup matches and for games against harder opposition. I created a points system that took in account their runs scored, their wickets lost and their deliveries faced. The higher the score the better.

Openers:

Sehwag & Watson

Name	Matches	Runs	Average	Strike rate	Points
V Sehwag	12	645	53.75	122.58	133.432
SR Watson	22	1124	59.15	92.35	108.154
SR Tendulkar	11	513	46.63	91.98	99.282
HM Amla	15	632	45.14	87.67	73.667
MJ Guptill	16	650	54.16	68.58	73.338

Somewhat unsurprising, given that they have both dominated this year. Tendulkar was a close 3rd.

Top Order

de Villiers, Clark & Taylor

Name	Matches	Runs	Average	Strike rate	Points
AB de Villiers	10	467	51.88	108.28	113.889
LRPL Taylor	17	561	51.00	87.09	86.13
MJ Clarke	24	900	56.25	91.01	81.247
Yuvraj Singh	11	381	42.33	89.78	80.421
IJL Trott	28	1246	51.91	80.84	77.224
V Kohli	31	1349	49.96	81.49	76.953
KC Sangakkara	26	1127	51.22	83.78	75.762
G Gambhir	15	562	40.14	85.09	74.575
JP Duminy	13	523	47.54	87.61	70.696

This was a little more interesting. I was quite surprised bu Clarke's numbers, as I hadn't remembered him having such a good season. By the same token Kohli had an amazing season, but missed out.

Lower/Middle order

Dhoni & Duminy

Name	Matches	Runs	Average	Strike rate	Points
MS Dhoni	23	759	63.25	81.69	100.227
JP Duminy	11	451	50.11	100.00	79.152
KJ O'Brien	12	324	29.45	125.31	77.566
Umar Akmal	28	785	41.31	86.95	62.378
Misbah-ul-Haq	20	545	45.41	73.80	61.635
DJ Hussey	16	342	38.00	152.94	61.583
KA Pollard	20	528	31.05	151.26	57.963
YK Pathan	12	271	27.10	121.15	53.221
MEK Hussey	14	347	38.55	93.24	51.55
EJG Morgan	15	384	29.53	85.71	51.297
F du Plessis	13	288	28.80	84.12	50.829

Initally I was going to have this and wicket-keeper as separate sections, but given that Dhoni came first as a batsman and there is not a lot of point in having two wicket keepers, it's better to take an extra batsman. JP Duminy just edges out Kevin O'Brien, but O'Brien is an obvious choice for 12th man, as he can contribute with the bat or the ball. And because I like his style of play.

Bowlers.

Quantifying the records for bowlers is not as easy as batsmen. I again created a measure that valued dot balls and wickets, and put a higher value on performances in the World Cup and in matches against good teams. The lower the points the better.

Name	Matches	Wickets	Average	Economy	Points
DW Steyn	14	25	18.50	4.41	19.78
RJ Peterson	9	18	21.15	4.74	20.51
M Morkel	14	26	17.73	4.41	21.26
Shahid Afridi	27	45	25.65	4.35	21.76
Wahab Riaz	13	23	20.77	5.32	22.51
TG Southee	13	25	22.85	5.00	22.56
JDP Oram	12	23	23.88	4.71	23.13
SL Malinga	24	48	23.13	4.89	23.46
B Lee	19	33	23.03	4.62	23.47
Z Khan	14	30	23.75	5.08	23.64
M Muralitharan	11	17	22.35	4.22	23.81
BAW Mendis	14	17	24.13	4.46	25.15
HK Bennett	10	17	26.61	5.73	26.09
Mohammad Hafeez	32	32	24.06	3.43	26.64

There are a couple of interesting names here. Mohammad Hafeez misses out due to not taking many wickets in the World Cup. Perhaps this is a weakness in my system, as he was really one of the outstanding bowlers of the year. Peterson likewise only played 2 games outside the world cup, and went at about 6 an over in those matches. But he had a fantastic World Cup and it is fair that a player gets a bonus for performing at the highest stage.

The final team:

Sehwag
Watson
de Villiers
Taylor
Clarke
Duminy
Dhoni
Shahid Afridi
Peterson
Morkel
Steyn

12th man O'Brien

How does your team look?

The Sehwag and Watson show

This week has witnessed a quite remarkable innings. Sehwag has achieved a score of 214 in a One Day International. That's quite a lot of runs. And scored at a good clip too. So how does it compare to other scores this year?

Well obviously he scored more than everybody else, but the nature of ODI's is that just scoring runs is not the only thing. As well as wickets, deliveries are also a vital resource. One way that I like to check on the effective score is to square the runs scored and divide by the deliveries faced. This way someone that scores faster than a run a ball gets benefit, while someone that scores slower gets their score reduced. This allows us to compare innings like 114 off 121 vs 89 off 75. Which is the most effective. 114 x 114 / 121 = 107.40 while 89 x 89 / 75 = 105.61 so the 114 is better, but only a little bit. While this method is not perfect, I think it is quite easy to understand, and is an interesting metric for analysing scores.

So here are the top 20 scores this year, sorted by this method:

Name	Runs	Balls		Effective score
SR Watson (Aus)	185*	96	v Bangladesh at Dhaka	356.51
V Sehwag (India)	219	149	v West Indies at Indore	321.89
V Sehwag (India)	175	140	v Bangladesh at Dhaka	218.75
KJ O'Brien (Ire)	113	63	v England at Bangalore	202.68
AB de Villiers (SA)	134	98	v Netherlands at Mohali	183.22
SR Watson (Aus)	161*	150	v England at Melbourne	172.81
AJ Strauss (Eng)	158	145	v India at Bangalore	172.17
Shahid Afridi (Pak)	65	25	v New Zealand at Christchurch	169.00
KA Pollard (WI)	94	55	v Ireland at Mohali	160.65
TM Dilshan (SL)	144	131	v Zimbabwe at Pallekele	158.29
YK Pathan (India)	105	70	v South Africa at Centurion	157.50
IJL Trott (Eng)	137	126	v Australia at Sydney	148.96
KS Williamson (NZ)	100*	69	v Zimbabwe at Bulawayo	144.93
PR Stirling (Ire)	101	72	v Netherlands at Kolkata	141.68
LRPL Taylor (NZ)	131*	124	v Pakistan at Pallekele	138.40
DPMD Jayawardene (SL)	144	150	v England at Leeds	138.24
BRM Taylor (Zim)	128*	120	v New Zealand at Harare	136.53
RD Berrington (Scot)	56	23	v Ireland at Edinburgh	136.35
PR Stirling (Ire)	113	95	v Scotland at Edinburgh	134.41
KA Pollard (WI)	60	27	v Netherlands at Delhi	133.33

Watson, Sehwag, Pollard and Stirling all have two entries on the list. Interestingly Pollard's century is not there, but two fifties are. Unsurprisingly most of the scores are at grounds that have a history of being batsmen friendly, but Jayawardene's innings was at Heddingly, which has the opposite reputation, so it is to be singled out as being quite an extraordinary innings. The Williamson knock was one that probably passed most people by, but the fascinating thing about that one was the he was on 93 when he faced the final ball of the match. He managed to hit a no ball for 4 and then hit the bonus delivery for 3.

Misbah-Ul-Haq and Australia's bowling in Sri Lanka

A gritty test match is happening in Zimbabwe as I type this. Two teams are scrapping for every inch, a veritable Battle of Verdun - where both sides are defending stoutly, and generally resisting the opposition advances. It is likely to end in a tame draw, but this does not give credit to the commitment and courage that some of the batsmen (and tired bowlers) have shown in the 3 days where the score has advanced by 780 runs in 270 overs. In only his third test, Tino Mawoyo took 453 deliveries for his 163 runs, Azhar Ali took 193 deliveries for 75, and Younis Khan (who normally scores at a reasonable rate) took 265 deliveries to score 88. All of them had a strike rate under 39.

Then along came captain slow. Misbah-ul-Haq. Possibly the slowest batsman since Mark Richardson - one of the few recent players to have a higher average than strike-rate (along with the likes of Chanderpaul, Dravid, and Richardson.) Only 6 times in his career before this game has he scored at a strike rate higher than 50 (and one of those was 12 off 23 and only included 4 scoring shots). So the conditions were perfect for a stodgy defensive innings. What was less expected was 66 off 110 - at a strike rate of 60. While 60 would be positively slow for the likes of Sehwag or Dilshan, it is 50% more than he normally scores at. This would be the same as Sehwag scoring at 122.4. In a game where his usual pace would have seemed reasonable, he chose to attack, and did it well.

The second interesting thing from the past week, was the Australian demolition of Sri Lanka. Earlier in the week, over on Poshins World I commented on the dominance that Sri Lanka have had over their opponents at home over the last 5 years, and in particular their batsman not finding anyone too difficult. The only exception was medium paced bowlers and spinners that don't really spin the ball much. And it seemed to be the same again when Watson picked up 3 wickets, and Lyon picked up 5 in the first innings (4 wickets from Lyon were balls that didn't spin, only the Sangakkara wicket turned appreciably).

The difference here was two fold. Watson was bowling quickly. He used to bowl mid to high 120's, but he seems to have been doing a lot of work in the nets, and is falling over a bit in his action, but has increased his speed appreciably, now bowling high 130's. Secondly, Lyon got the wickets with the ones that didn't spin, because he had put the batsman into survival mode with great spin bowling leading up to that, and crucially with great fielding. I am more convinced than ever after that game that the number one thing that defines how well Australia go is their fielding. I was only keeping a rough count, but as far as I remember every single ashes match in the last 4 series that has had a result has been won by the team that has dropped the least catches. There might be one or two exceptions as it was more from gut feel observation than statistical analysis, but the principle remains - when Australia field well, they win matches.