Some Questions ahead of the 3rd test

Questions leading into the third test

1. Who will actually be fit to play for New Zealand?

There is talk that Kane Williamson, Henry Nicholls and Mitchell Santner were all too sick to get out of bed yesterday, and all are unlikely to play. Trent Boult and Lockie Ferguson have already gone home. Glenn Phillips has been called in as a late replacement, meaning that there is a chance that New Zealand will end up playing four wicket keepers, and recalling Jeet Raval to the squad simply due to lack of other options. If those 3 are all out of contention, then New Zealand’s top 7 is likely to include Raval, Tom Latham, Tom Blundell, Ross Taylor, Phillips, BJ Watling and Colin de Grandhomme.

2. Will either side opt for two spinners, and if so, who will make way?

The Sydney Cricket Ground has a reputation as a spinners track, and both teams have added an extra spinner into their squad. If Australia opt for Mitchell Swepson, then they are likely to end up either dropping a batsman, or going in with only two pace bowlers and giving the 3rd seamer role to Matthew Wade. Wade’s over against New Zealand in Melbourne was considerably less threatening than his spell in Perth, suggesting that he is less effective with the red ball than the pink one. This suggests that going with two spinners is a highly risky move for them.

Another option could be to select Michael Nesser as an all rounder to replace Wade in the side, allowing more cover for the extra spinner, but lengthening the tail considerably. This is unlikely to happen, as Australia have traditionally shied away from picking five bowlers in test sides, and Tim Paine has made it clear that he does not favour changing the formula too much.

New Zealand have taken Todd Astle on a holiday so far, not playing any tests on this tour or in the matches in New Zealand. Will Somerville has been added into the squad, and his familiarity with the conditions and point of difference with his height is likely to make him a tempting option. Somerville is a former Sydney resident, and played for New South Wales for a few years before returning to New Zealand to try to play international cricket. He is close to 2 metres tall, and so created different challenges for batsmen by being able to extract similar bounce to a bowler bowling with loop even while bowling on a flatter trajectory.

Astle provides the advantage of being a competent batsman, so bringing him into the side in place of de Grandhomme is a possibility. That would allow a 3rd genuine seam bowler into the side. Another option is for Astle and Somerville coming in with Tim Southee and Neil Wagner with de Grandhomme acting as the 3rd seamer.

3. Will the pitch actually turn, or is the spinner’s SCG a bit of a myth?

Over the past 10 years, spin bowlers have bowled over 1000 overs at the SCG, but only picked up 82 wickets at an average of over 50 at the SCG. Pace bowlers have taken 192 wickets at and average just under 35 there. Nathan Lyon has averaged 47 at the ground in that time, and collectively the leg spinners used there have averaged roughly 70. The days of Stuart McGill ripping teams apart on the SCG seem to be long gone.

However, when looking at the way that the series has progressed, Australia might consider favouring spin more. New Zealand’s two standing quick bowlers have not been much less effective than their Australian counterparts. Southee and Wagner have taken 26 wickets at less than 23 runs each, while Pat Cummins and Mitchell Starc have taken 19 wickets at just under 18 each. However, Lyon has been much more effective than Santner (10 wickets at 22.7 vs 1 wicket at 250). Giving Lyon slightly more to work with might exaggerate that difference even more.

4. Will New Zealand keep trying to out last Australia with the ball?

New Zealand have had a clear bowling plan in this series. With the new ball: pitch it up, and try to get it to swing occasionally, but mostly bowl a 4th stump line, on a good length. With the older ball, bang it in short of a length. Both tactics have been mostly designed to get the batsmen to play risky shots and get out doing so, rather than trying to actively dismiss the batsmen.

While that tactic has been reasonably successful for Southee and Wagner, it has meant that there has been a lot asked of the other bowlers, and they have not been as successful. Perhaps bowling 1m fuller, and more at the stumps. Cricviz released some interesting data recently that of all batsmen who have faced 500 balls aimed at the stumps since 2006, only Steven Smith averages over 33 against those deliveries, and of players who are still active test batsmen, Virat Kohli has the third best average against balls targeting the stumps of 24.08. That suggests that bowling straighter might be a better tactic. The odd delivery will be hit through the leg side or down the ground, but the approach may well bear more fruit.

The difference in length and line from the Australian bowlers has been clear. They have tended to bowl at the stumps more. Some of that is due to the different styles, but some of it is just that they had different plans, and those plans (especially when a batsman was new to the crease) have been much more effective.

5. Should the match even be going ahead?

Cricket is the job of the players, and of the administrators, but it is still at its heart a game. Is there a point where playing games in the midst of an ongoing natural disaster becomes a little insensitive? Should this match even be going ahead?

The smoke from the New South Wales bushfires has been so thick that the views of mountains in Southern New Zealand (over 2000 km away) has been blocked and some of the New Zealand glaciers have turned brown. In terms of distance, that would be like smoke from a fire in Dubai blocking out the view of the buildings at one end of Marine Drive in Mumbai from the other.

The Remarkables have disappeared. Pics from yesterday and today. 🙁 #AussieSmoke pic.twitter.com/KQjRgwwb5N

— Margie (@Margie186) January 1, 2020

The question has to be asked as to what point is it where player welfare comes to the fore? The atmosphere in Sydney is so polluted from the fires that one lung professor likened breathing it to smoking 40 cigarettes. The PM2.5 reading in some outer suburbs of Sydney was 734. To put that in context the match in Delhi that was called off between India and Sri Lanka had a PM2.5 reading of under 400.

Sport can be important for the morale of people who are experiencing a traumatic event, but there is such a thing as being too soon, and while the bodies of the dead from the fires are still not yet buried it may be too soon to be playing games. Even if the timing is acceptable to the public, is the safety issue to the players too extreme for such triviality.

How well will Afghanistan's spinners go?

It's a fascinating question - at least two out of 4 spinners who have been very successful in limited over cricket are likely to make their test debut tomorrow. They will be playing in India, a country known for spinning tracks.

The Afghan captain, Ashgar Stanikzai is certainly bullish about their ability: "In my opinion, we have good spinners, better spinners than India."

That's a big call. India have some very high quality spinners in test cricket. But does he have a point?

There is no doubt that Afghanistan's spinners have been good in limited overs cricket, but does that mean anything?

Some spinners have excelled in test cricket and limited overs. Warne, Murali, Shakib, Swann all have excellent stats in all forms of the game.  But others haven't seen such correlation. Amit Mishra, Ish Sodhi, Abdur Razzak and Sunil Narine all have very strong limited overs stats, but have not converted that to test matches.

The comparison of Sodhi and Rashid is an interesting one. When they've played against similar opponents, they have had very similar stats. See for example this graph of combined IPL and Big Bash statistics. (This is the 8 players who played a reasonable number of matches in both tournaments over the past 2 years)

They have clearly been two of the stand out bowlers in the two major domestic T20 tournaments, and yet, Sodhi averages over 40 in test cricket with the ball.

Part of that will be that Sodhi has to play half his cricket in New Zealand, but part of it is also that it is not always possible to predict absolutely test success based on limited over success. They are sometimes linked, but not always.

I wondered if there was a general relationship in the numbers. Were Narine and Sodhi the outliers, or were Warne and Muralitheran the odd ones.

So I tried to construct a model, to see what happened. It turns out, to my surprise, that it is possible to predict, vaguely, the average and strike rate of a bowler in test cricket based on their ODI and T20 performances. I looked at the 37 players who had played as spinners in all 3 formats, had played at least 40 combined limited overs matches and had taken at least one test wicket.

The model is not very reliable, but it was better at predicting the bowling statistics of the players than just taking the average for the group. So it did provide some interesting numbers.

The equations that it came out with were as follows:

Only 4 of the 6 Afghani spinners had played enough limited overs cricket to have meaningful numbers, and here are their predicted results:

That would relate to the following results based on overs bowled:

Those wouldn't be particularly bad returns for a first ever test against India, but they also aren't really the results that Stanikzai is hoping for.

But the question comes up, how reliable is this anyway?

There is a degree of randomness in cricket results that means that any predictions are always quite unreliable. Looking at the graphs of the predicted vs actual for the career stats, it shows that there is quite a bit of variation about the trend.

I've added in the red lines manually, They show where roughly 95% of the data fits. Within 17 of the average and within 20 of the strike rate. Those are huge variations, which shows that it's very difficult to predict test performances based on limited overs performances.

I have added in the best realistic and worst realistic expected figures, based on these confidence bands:

It will be interesting to see which one of these the Afghani spinners actually get closest to.

Flight, guile and Santner

Mitchell Santner ran in to bowl in his typically graceful manner. He bowled slightly short of a good length, and the ball skidded off the pitch. Hamilton Masakadza diffused it comfortably, playing it out into the off side.

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In his reply to David Hume’s argument about miracles, CS Lewis added in a chapter titled “A Chapter Not Strictly Necessary.” The idea was that it was a chapter that wasn’t really needed for his argument, but it gave him pleasure to write it, and so he added it into his book. His chapter was about the aesthetic beauty of nature.

Mitchell Santner is a very good bower. The fact that he makes what he does look good is a bonus, it’s not really necessary. If he took ugly wickets, it would look the same in the scorebook.

The Miraculous Metamorphisis of Mark Craig

Mark Craig in action

In the first two tests in this series, Mark Craig looked like one of the worst spin bowlers to ever wear the black cap. And that is saying something, given that there have been some very ordinary spin bowlers produced by New Zealand in the past.

It looked like he really had no options for taking a wicket or containing the batsmen. His RPO being over 4 seemed to show that the batsmen had taken a cautious approach, rather than anything else. It could have quite easily been over 6, if they'd really gone after him.

Then, come day 2 of the third test, he picked up 5 wickets in a morning, to post the best ever bowling figures in Sharjah, and be described by one of the Pakistani commentators as Craig the Destroyer.

It's interesting to look at how this happened. How did the teddy bear turn into a grizzly bear?

I noticed two things in common with almost all the wickets: drift and bounce. Lets go though them individually.

Is Daniel Vettori a good selection?

I've been asked by a few people what I think about picking Daniel Vettori for the 3rd test in Sharjah. So I've pulled some numbers from overseas tests (as performances in New Zealand conditions are fairly close to being irrelevant in Sharjah).

Firstly Vettori is quite different from most spinners. He takes more wickets in the first innings than he does in the second innings. This is partially because he relies more on bounce than turn, so he gets more assistance in the first innings than he does later on.

Also, his numbers away from home are better than I realised recently, but also he's not played many tests. In the past 5 years, he's only played 6 away tests, and 3 of them were in 2010. However in all 6 tests he's taken more wickets in the first innings than in the second.

During that time, however, despite only playing in 6 matches, he's taken more wickets at a better average than any other New Zealand spinner (not counting Ross Taylor's 2 wickets for 34 runs). Ish Sodhi, Mark Craig and Kane Williamson all have better strike rates, but because Vettori bowls so economically, he ends up with a better average.

This is also a big advantage when New Zealand are needing to get to the new ball (which they definitely need to do in UAE, the old ball is useless for both quicks and spinners). He can get through those overs without costing too many runs. This was the role that McCullum took on for himself in the first two tests.

This was also useful when the team is under pressure. In the game that he played at Antigua, Chris Gayle was in a destructive mood. West Indies were already on 96 when Vettori came to the crease in the 21st over. Vettori bowled the next 16 overs from that end for only 26 runs. While he didn't pick up Gayle, he did get him to inside edge just past his stumps twice.

Another interesting thing has happened as a result of Vettori's bowling: when he's played New Zealand won about as often overseas (20% vs 22%) but have lost a lot less often. As a result with Vettori NZ averages 0.46 wins / loss overseas, as opposed to 0.38 without him overseas.

It's certainly an interesting selection, and one that could work quite well.

Have Australia's selectors selected the New Zealand squad

Earlier this year the Australian selectors picked Ashton Agar as their 13th player picked as a spin bowler in 5 years. Some of the names included in that list are the likes of Michael Beer, Xavier Doherty and Glenn Maxwell. The Australian selectors picked some of them despite a fairly ordinary domestic record.

During that same time New Zealand have picked 4 players as spin bowlers in test matches. Part of that is the presence of Daniel Vettori, probably the best New Zealand's ever spinner to have played for New Zealand. A couple of other players have been named in squads, or played short-form cricket, but Vettori, Patel, Martin and Todd Astle (one match) have been the only spinners used in the last 5 years.

Now in the squad for Bangladesh is the name Ish Sodhi. There's a chance that he's not going to get picked, and that New Zealand will continue to just use Williamson and Martin for the actual tests, but the decision to go with Sodhi is a strange one.

Sodhi looks like he could become a very good bowler. He's got a lot of people who know a thing or two about cricket talking, and genuinely turns the ball. However there's a difference between being able to turn a cricket ball and being a good spin bowler. The two are related, but they are not the same thing.

Sodhi has played 12 first class matches for 22 wickets at an average of 48.40. That's not a very encouraging record.

To be fair to the selectors, there are not many New Zealand spin bowlers with a great record recently, but Sodhi is the player with the worst record of the current crop.

Here are the records of all the potential rivals for the back-up role to Bruce Martin since 2012: (assuming Vettori is unfit)

Name	Wickets	Average
Sodhi	22	48.40
Nethula	37	45.32
Singh	13	39.15
Boult	9	23.44
Astle	41	44.68
McCullum	15	24.60
Patel	142	32.90

Jono Boult, Bhupinder Singh and Nathan McCullum have probably not played enough first class cricket in that time to really be able to read much into their records, but there is a name that stands out as a glaring omission: Jeetan Patel.

While I was one of the people who said things like "he should never play for New Zealand again" based on his somewhat insipid performance with the bat in South Africa, the selectors job is not to pick someone to face Steyn and Morkel, rather they should be picking the player who is the best equipped to take over if Bruce Martin gets injured. For me that's Jeetan Patel.

Bruce Edgar said that he picked Sodhi based on his good tour of India with New Zealand A. A tour where he took 2 wickets at 84.5. Astle ended with better figures in each innings that both bowled in. If Sodhi was being taken as a third spinner, then that would be a little more understandable. He's there to get experience, to get exposed to some quality coaching etc. But the risk of Martin getting sick or injured and having to thrust a player who has not yet earned his spot into a test match (against a team that is good against spin) is too great.

Cricket is littered with stories of young players who are picked too early, and either never recover, or take much too long to do so. It is one thing to pick a young player who (like was the case with Vettori) has put sufficient performances on the board to suggest that they deserve their spot. It is another thing to pick a young player who has yet to do that. It sometimes works (Doug Bracewell is a good example) but often doesn't. Martin Crowe has said repeatedly that he should not have been picked so young, as he hadn't yet convinced himself that he was ready to step up. Spin bowling (and legspin bowling in particular) takes a certain psychological strength. You have to be prepared to be hit, relying on your own ability to beat the batsman in the end. If a player doesn't believe in themselves, then the best laid plans are often irrelevant.

I believe this is a bad decision by New Zealand cricket. It is a big gamble with a promising young player's career, and also a gamble with a potential banana-skin test series.

When was the Ashes won?

The important old ball

England retained the Ashes by securing a draw in the 3rd match at Old Trafford, and then won the series by winning the 4th match at Chester-le-Street.

An interesting question, however, is what parts of the games did England win? It's hard not to recognise the efforts of Ian Bell, who has been immense for England with the bat, often on quite difficult surfaces. Despite his efforts, I think there has been another factor that has been equally influential. England's pace bowlers have bowled well with the old ball.

For the purpose of this article, I've defined the ball as being new if it is less than 20 overs old, and old if it's more than 20 overs.

Here are the difference between the two sets of pace bowlers:

Average	Australia	England
less than 20 overs	22.78	32.32
more than 20 overs	35.28	28.78

Australia are significantly better with the new ball, but England are better with the old ball. While those 7 runs per wicket doesn't seem like a big difference, it is because there have been just over twice the number of overs bowled with the old ball as with the new ball.

Part of the difference has been that Australia seem to have worked hard to keep the shine on the ball, while England seem to have been trying to get the ball to reverse, and not been so worried about using the first new ball as a weapon. England have done much better with the second new ball than with the first (England average 4 runs per wicket more with the first new ball than with the second), while Australia have been the opposite (Australia average 5 runs per wicket more with the second new ball than with the first). Their bowlers almost seem to have run out of steam once the second ball comes along.

Here's how it works out as averages scores. After 20 overs Australia's average score is about 66/2. England is 58/3. However after 80 overs Australia average 180/9 while England are 225/7. Some of that difference is Graeme Swann, but some of that is just how much more effective England's quick bowlers have been with the older ball.

If we took spin bowlers out of the picture and just looked at the fast bowlers, After 20 overs Australia would still average 66/2 (Swann had been about as effective as the quicks with the new ball). England would have been 47/3. After 80 overs Australia would average 250/9 while England would still have 3 wickets in hand at 211/7.

There's a point, however, where these numbers are ridiculous, as the different batsmen are not equally capable, but they do paint a picture.

However they are ignoring the impact that Swann has on the bowlers that are bowling with him.

I believe that one of the reasons that England's quicks have been so effective with the old ball is the pressure created by Graeme Swann. To quantify this pressure, I looked at a statistic that I called Wicket Assists. A wicket assist is awarded to a bowler who bowls an over directly preceding the one where a wicket fell.

Wicket assists is a statistic that I keep note of when I'm coaching, as it's often a better indicator of how much pressure a bowler is exerting on the batsmen than wickets. An example of this is when I had two bowlers opening the bowling together. One bowled 6 overs, and took 0/8 (included 2 no balls, and a wide that just slipped down the leg side). The other bowled 7 overs and took 6/47. Most of the wickets for the second bowler were a result of the pressure that the first bowler built up. The second one got to keep the ball, and got the plaudits, however the one that I recommended for a higher team was the first bowler.

Graeme Swann has taken 23 wickets in this series, but he has also had 23 wicket assists. That's roughly one wicket every 9 overs while he's at the bowling crease. He creates pressure that allows the quick bowlers to take wickets. Compare his rate to Ashton Agar, who had 2 wickets and 5 assists in the two matches he played. That's a wicket roughly every 24 overs that he's at the crease. Nathan Lyon has been more successful than Agar at exerting pressure. 8 wickets and 6 assists, meaning that Australia pick up a wicket roughly every 11 overs that he's at the crease.

Overall I believe that one of the major differences between the two teams has been what their bowlers have done after 20 overs. England's quick bowlers have been better, and their spinners have been better too. Overall, I believe this is the time that this series has been won.

Another first innings spinner

A couple of years ago I wrote a post about Daniel Vettori, showing that he was much more effective in the first innings than in the second innings.

Among spin bowlers who have taken more than 250 wickets, Vettori is alone in this, but among bowlers who have taken less wickets there are a few others. Here's the list of regular spin bowlers who started their careers post 1978 and who have a second innings average higher than their first innings average.

Name	First innings wickets	First innings average	Second innings wickets	Second innings average	difference
Shakib Al Hasan (Ban)	78	30.74	28	38.50	-7.76
SLV Raju (India)	57	28.50	36	34.22	-5.72
DL Vettori (ICC/NZ)	226	33.07	134	36.70	-3.63
Abdul Qadir (Pak)	151	32.19	85	33.88	-1.69
NM Lyon (Aus)	52	32.23	32	32.69	-0.46

It's a fairly short list, but the interesting thing is the last three names on it. Vettori and Qadir are two outstanding bowlers. But they both have quite similar records to Nathan Lyon.

I thought it would be interesting to look at the three bowlers together, after they had all played the same number of matches as Nathan Lyon has:

1st innings (24 matches)	Deliveries	Runs	Wickets	Avg	S/R	E/R
DL Vettori	3039	1317	35	37.63	86.8	2.6
Abdul Qadir	3895	1853	50	37.06	77.9	2.85
NM Lyon	3239	1676	52	32.23	62.3	3.1

2nd innings (24 matches)	Deliveries	Runs	Wickets	Avg	S/R	E/R
DL Vettori	3592	1452	47	30.89	76.4	2.43
Abdul Qadir	3338	1506	42	35.86	79.5	2.71
NM Lyon	2082	1046	32	32.69	65.1	3.01

We can see that Vettori started off his career more conventionally, being more effective in the second innings. But the thing that stands out to me is how much more effective Lyon is at taking wickets than either of the other two. His strike rate is remarkable. (To put his strike rate in context: at the same stage of his career Warne had a strike rate of 67.4) Lyon's overall average and strike rate is also better than Vettori's or Abdul Qadir's was after 24 matches.

It seems that the Australian selectors and public are still somewhat unconvinced by Lyon, but I think that if he can hold his own in a comparison with Vettori and Abdul Qadir, then he is probably a bowler worth persevering with.

Why I Love "The Boring Middle Overs"

Possibly not the most balanced field in an ODI.

In a couple of days, New Zealand and South Africa will play an ODI in Paarl.  And the press box will be almost empty.  There was close to 60 people in the press box just down the road at Newlands for the test match. Admittedly quite a few of them weren’t actually press, but just people who managed to get a pass in order to get a good seat some free food, and internet access to block up the lines for the people who actually needed it, but there were still a significant number of writers there, hunting out stories about the epic mismatch. In Paarl there is likely to be less than 10 actual journalists.

Part of that is because there is the African Cup of Nations on at the same time, and some of the newspapers and agencies only have so much budget to cover sport.  Paarl is a long way away from Potchefstroom and Kimberly, where the other two matches are.  A number of the writers are going to watch the first match on TV in Johannesburg and then drive to the other two matches. Others are not going to go to any of the matches, watching instead on television.

But as much as budget is a reason, so is the fact that most of them don’t actually like one-day cricket.  Some of them like tests and t20’s, some of them just like tests, and some of them don’t really like cricket at all, they just like how many stories there are in a cricket match.

I hear people saying things like “there’s those horrible overs between over 10 and over 40” and “it’s dreadful, killing the game.” Both of these sentiments make me wonder if they actually like cricket at all.  Because for me the middle overs of an ODI are almost as pure as cricket gets. When I said that to some South African cricket writers over dinner they looked at me as if I was crazy.  One of them actually suggested getting me professional help.  However, let me explain why I love the middle overs.

Part of it probably stems from growing up in New Zealand in the 80’s and 90’s.  The first cricket game I went to by myself was during the Cricket World Cup in 1992, where dibbly-dobbly bowling almost took New Zealand to the title. I also played as a spin bowler who often didn’t spin the ball much, and relied on variations in flight, pace and bounce to get wickets.  However I think my love of ODI cricket, and the middle overs in particular are more than just nostalgia.

Cricket is more than a simple bat and ball game that involves hitting a ball as far as you can.  The subtlety is what makes cricket a better game (in my opinion) than baseball, softball, rounders or any other similar game.  Cricket is, at its core, a game of risk vs reward decision-making. Most batsmen are capable of scoring at close to 2 runs a ball, for a while.  The problem is that when they try that it is very risky.  They tend to get out quite quickly if they aim to go at 2 a ball. So they find ways to reduce that risk. Instead of trying to hit the ball over mid off, they try and place it past him along the ground.  Instead of trying to hit the ball over the covers for 4, they push it down to third man for a single, or leave it alone.

A defensive shot is pure foolishness in baseball, it’s booed and jeered in kilikiti but it has merit in cricket. Even the most attacking players have a balance between attack and defence. But pure defence is only occasionally called for. Different game states call for different mindsets from the batsmen.  But not just the batsmen.  The bowlers and captains also have to make decisions about how attacking/defensively they play.

A out-swing bowler is most likely to get wickets if they bowl half volleys.  The only problem with this is that they are also likely to get hit for four if they do that.  There are times when they are prepared to roll the dice and try, but it’s risky.  So they weigh risk and reward, and tend to only bowl half volleys occasionally (or at least they intend not to bowl them). Likewise a spin bowler is more likely to take wickets with a slow, flighted delivery, that's full enough to bring a batsman forward, but short enough to turn.  However if he bowls that ball too often the batsman is likely to step out of his crease and deposit him over the straight boundary. Accordingly the spin bowler mixes up their flight, pace and line (and sometimes spin direction) to keep the batsman tied down.

A captain has a lot of options when it comes to setting a field, even within the ODI rules about field placement. There are 16 main zones where a batsman scores runs, and 9 fielders.  Accordingly the art to setting a defensive field is often damage limitation. However a good captain and bowler will work together to make sure the easiest runs have an element of danger to them. For example, a captain will set a deep point to an off-spinner, and leave a gap for a batsman to score a single there.  However to do that requires hitting against the spin, and if the ball bounces a little more, or turns a little more, there’s a chance that playing the ball out to that man will result in an edge.

Likewise a popular tactic is for a left arm spinner to come round the wicket and bowl on leg stump, with a field set in close on the off side, and (other than one player) deep on the leg side.  A batsman can score a single off most deliveries without much risk, but to try and score more is a significant risk. And if he misjudges slightly he is at risk of creating a run out, where the man at (normally) shortish mid-wicket can field the ball and throw down the stumps.  That has become a position for some of the best fielders in world cricket.  Previously the likes of Ponting, Rhodes and Harris fielded at backward point, now Guptill, Gibbs and Warner can often be seen in at shortish mid-wicket.

This balance, and battle of wits between batsman and fielders is most on display during the middle overs of an ODI.  There are what Gary Naylor of 99.94 and testmatchsofa brilliantly described as “agreed singles” where both teams are happy with a single off a delivery, and these can be frustrating, but not if you watch what the bowler is trying to do.  A bowler like Andrew Symonds or Chris Harris would often leave mid off back, apparently gifting the batsman an easy single, but then they would back themselves to save any ball hit there.  When watching this period I ask myself what the plan is to try and get a wicket without taking a risk. What is the shot that the captain is letting the batsman have, and what’s the risk for him in that?  These are the questions that make the middle overs enjoyable.

Sure there are less fours, sixes and wickets.  However there is still the battle of wits.  I’m not sure what the attraction is in watching big hit after big hit.  I prefer the balance between the mental and physical battle that only cricket really provides.  And, for me, there’s nowhere better for that than the “boring middle overs.”

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.

CricketGeek Player Profiles: Samuel Badree

© WICB Media - Pal Pillai

I had intended to write a profile on Badree before the tournament started, but school work got in the road. Samuel Badree is possibly the most under-rated player on the planet right now. While his Trinidad and Tobago team mate, Sunil Narine has attracted all the headlines with his funky hair style and mystery deliveries, Badree has avoided the attention, despite also taking wickets and not conceding many runs.

Narine looks special. He holds the ball in a strange way. He flicks his wrist when bowling off spin. He turns it both ways. When he is bowling drama is in the air. It's totally absorbing. Badree is almost the opposite. He does get some turn, both ways, but it's not particularly exaggerated.

Badree is instead the master of line and length. He has enough variation that the batsman can't settle down, but enough consistency that if they wait for the bad ball his whole spell might have gone by and they've only had one ball to hit. For a leg-spinner that is exceptional. Narine is someone who you can't take your eyes off. At the end of a Badree over it is hard to remember anything happening. He bores the batsmen into submission. And he does it well.

His boringness is part of why it has taken so long for him to reach international cricket. He played his first match for Trinidad and Tobago in January 2002. It took until June 2012 before he made his international debut. 10 years is a long time to wait for a call up, particularly in the West Indies who seem to go through spinners faster than Hollywood celebrities go through spouses. In that time there have been 25 other players bowl at least 10 overs of spin for the West Indies.

He's only played 5 T20 internationals, so it is hard to draw much from his statistics in the international game, but he has played a lot of matches for Trinidad and Tobago, and his record for them is remarkable.

Career Economy Rate - minimum 100 overs

The most important question is really how many runs does a bowler concede.



We can see that he is unmatched in this arena. He is so miserly that if Daniel Vettori bowled 3 overs per match, and Badree bowled 4 overs per match, Badree would still average less runs per match than Vettori. Or Steyn, Ajmal, Swann, Malinga, or anyone else with an economy rate over 6.2.

Career Bowling Index - minimum 100 overs

The bowling index is found by multiplying the runs per ball and the runs per wicket. It is one of the best guides to the effectiveness of a bowler.



This time Badree is second. He's got the second best bowling index of anyone who has ever played, and the only one ahead of him, Narine, is yet to suffer second year syndrome, when he has to adapt to players figuring him out. There are a lot of very good bowlers behind him in this list.

Career bowling Contribution: - minimum 100 overs

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:



Again Badree's numbers are better than anyone else.

An argument can be made, of course, that it's one thing to succeed at the lower level, against players who are not very good against spin. How does he go against higher class opposition.

To answer this I looked at just his statistics in matches against teams with a heritage of spin, or from an area known for spin bowling. Generally a player who has grown up in one of these areas is likely to have developed a better technique against spin bowling. The teams that I have counted as good against spin are Guyana, Deccan Chargers, Ruhuna, Mumbai Indians, Chennai Super Kings, Bangladesh A, India A.

Against these teams he has bowled 36.5 overs and taken 8 wickets for 202 runs. That's an economy rate of 5.48. Worse than his career average, but still remarkably good. Of the bowlers who have bowled more than 100 overs, only Sunil Narine has a lower economy rate.

Likewise if we only look at his numbers against international teams he has bowled 35 overs, (some for West Indies, some for T&T in tour matches) and taken 7/182. That's a economy rate of 5.2. This would put him ahead of Narine, despite only counting matches against international teams.

Before the match Australia said that they were going to try and target Badree. That resulted in both of their openers ending up back in the shed. Bowling to Sri Lanka is a different prospect to bowling to Australia, but going by current form it seems unlikely that even the might of Sri Lanka will have an answer to scoring quickly off Samuel Badree.

He might be boring, uninspiring and easy not to notice, but his numbers are remarkable. At the end of the day a bowler's job is to take wickets and not concede many runs, and this is exactly what Badree excels at.

CricketGeek Player Profile: Elias Sunny

In July this year, Elias Sunny became the first person to be named man of the match on debut in two different formats when he took 5/13 against Ireland at Stormont. It was another notch in what has become a stellar start to his cricketing career. He also took 6/94 on test debut.

Sunny is a slow left arm bowler, but he bowls with quite an open action, so the ball comes from a slightly different angle than an orthodox left-arm spin bowler. This has given him an ability to get left handed batsmen out with more regularity than most left-arm spinners. He also turns the ball quite sharply, and tends to bowl a slightly different length than most orthodox spinners. These combine to make him a real danger man for teams playing against Bangladesh.

His different angles mean that he's likely to be a particular threat to batsmen who have not faced him before, although he has shown the ability to get out some batsmen repeatedly, notably compatriot Mahmudullah, who he has dismissed a number of times in domestic cricket.

His international T20 record is remarkable, averaging 12.22 with an economy rate of 5.50, but that is somewhat artificial, given that he has only played against Ireland, the Netherlands and Scotland. However his overall T20 record is still very good, and includes being the local player of the Bangladesh Premier League. Here is a graph of his career averages.

We can see he is settling in to an average of under 20, and an economy rate close to 6. If he can translate that to international cricket he will be a massive asset to Bangladesh, and could be part of the catalyst that they need to go to the next level.

This tournament is likely to be a good litmus test for him. We may get the chance to see if he has just had a good start, or if he really is as good as his figures would indicate.

CricketGeek Player Profiles: Jeevan Mendis

When talking about Mendis, the first name that comes to mind for modern cricket fans is Ajantha, the mystery spinner. For slightly older fans, there could be a number of players thought of, as there have been over 30 players called Mendis play first class cricket in Sri Lanka (and one Gehan Mendis play 366 first class matches in England). The subject of this profile, however is Jeevan Mendis.

At schoolboy level Mendis was a star with both the bat and ball for the prestigious St Thomas' School. He got a call up to play in the Under-19 team, and he continued to shine, having respectable averages of 51 with the bat and 13 with the ball.

It has taken him a while to become a regular player for the national side, but he is starting to establish himself now. In his recent domestic T20 matches he's averaged about 30 with the bat and about 24 with the ball. If he can keep this ratio up in the international level, he could become an indispensable bits-n-pieces players, like Albie Morkel, Scott Styris or Abdul Razzaq.

He relies more on placement than power with the bat, but he has a good reverse sweep, so he has the ability to create headaches for the fielding captain by hitting the ball to unusual places. He bowls leg-spin, but with a slightly unorthodox grip that make it difficult to read him out of the hand. Accordingly he should be the sort of bowler who can get out the tail quickly, which might be a very useful skill in the first game for Sri Lanka. He might not be a bad player to have in your fantasy team for the match against Zimbabwe.

Preview West Indies v New Zealand in Lauderhill

I feels odd to be talking about a match in USA. Despite the fact that USA is actually a much bigger cricket audience than people realise, it still is not known for cricket. But for the second time in the last 2 years, New Zealand are heading to Lauderhill to play a couple of T20 matches. This time the opponent is the West Indies.

The last series was played in particularly benign conditions. There was nothing in the pitch for either the bowlers or the batsmen, and as a result the scoring was at or under 6 an over for every innings in the series.

There has been a lot of work at the Central Broward Regional Park Stadium, and it looks amazing on Google maps, but preparing cricket pitches is a dark art, and not one that is particularly easy. If they manage to get a good pitch in only the 3rd and 4th real match there it will be quite an accomplishment.

The headlines of this tour will all be about the likes of Narine, Gayle, Pollard, Guptil, Taylor and Southee. However given that it is quite likely to be low and slow, the match is likely to be decided by the skiddy spin bowlers and crafty medium pacers. The players who I'm going to be expecting to play a big role are Marlon Samuels, Nathan McCullum, Jacob Oram and Darren Sammy.

Making the ball arrive at a different time to what the batsman expects is the key to this sort of pitch, and these 4 bowlers are all very good at that. All have a good recent record with the ball too.

Bowling over the last 2 years in T20I:

Bowler	Matches	Wickets	Average	Economy
MN Samuels	7	6	8.66	5.37
NL McCullum	10	13	13.69	6.59
DJG Sammy	8	6	26.00	7.03
JDP Oram	2	2	26.00	7.42

The other bowler that I look forward to watching is Roneel Hira. Probably my favourite player who is currently playing, Hira is a heady bowler, dynamite fielder and effective batsman. He had a great HRV Cup in the New Zealand domestic season, and he will need to really step up in this series as Daniel Vettori has made himself available for T20's again, and he needs to show that he offers enough for the selectors to be prepared to run two left arm orthodox bowlers.

The other one that I am interested to see is Samuel Badree. I watched him bowl for Trinidad and Tobago, and he looked like he was quite tricky. On a slow pitch he could be a difficult prospect also.

So those are a couple of things for those of you watching this match to look out for. Hopefully it will be a pitch that provides plenty for both bat and ball. If it does this could be a fantastic series, but either way both teams are an interesting mix of crafty cricketers and outstanding athletes that could make this an absorbing match even on a bad pitch.

Penny-pinching Misers

I've recently watched the movie Moneyball. The idea of a killer stat is interesting, and it is interesting if such a thing exists in cricket.

In baseball getting on base is the primary objective when batting. There are times that other things are ideal, but getting on base is always a good thing. Compare this with batting in limited overs cricket. If the team needs 8 of the last 2 balls, and you hit a single, you are making it extremely unlikely for your team to win the game. (Unless you have Andre Adams at the other end, and Graeme Aldridge is bowling). However if you need 2 runs off 7 balls, and Bruce Reid at the other end, a single is a great thing.

Likewise if you are chasing 324, scoring 110 off 155 deliveries is really making it difficult for your team to win. But scoring 101 off 143 when your team is chasing 197 on a tricky pitch is an outstanding effort.

However it is rarely true in recent times that a bowler can bowl 9 or more overs and concede less than 50 runs and it be a bad effort. If a bowler stops batsmen from scoring runs, they are doing their job. Over the past 5 years when teams restrict their opponents to 250 or less they win roughly 2/3 of the matches. To put that in perspective South Africa has the 2nd best winning record in that time, winning about 2/3 of their matches. To put it another way, If Bangladesh managed to keep their opponents to 250 or less every match they would be likely to have the best winning record in Asia.

As a result, bowlers who can regularly keep their runs conceded under 50 are very valuable for a team. Which leads to the question: who are the best at doing it?

Player	Bowled 9 or more overs	Conceded 50 or less	Percentage
Mohammad Hafeez (Pak)	24	22	91.7%
GP Swann (Eng)	38	33	86.8%
DL Vettori (NZ)	53	45	84.9%
J Botha (Afr/SA)	41	34	82.9%
RW Price (Zim)	54	44	81.5%
Shakib Al Hasan (Ban)	68	52	76.5%
KMDN Kulasekara (SL)	37	28	75.7%
M Muralitharan (SL)	41	31	75.6%
B Lee (Aus)	28	21	75.0%
BAW Mendis (SL)	31	23	74.2%
Saeed Ajmal (Pak)	37	27	73.0%
NW Bracken (Aus)	33	24	72.7%
P Utseya (Zim)	54	39	72.2%
DJG Sammy (WI)	28	20	71.4%
Shahid Afridi (Pak)	78	54	69.2%

In that list of 14, there are 10 finger spinners. Some of them don't often bowl that many overs, and only get to bowl that many if things are going well for them, such as Mohammed Hafeez, Nuwan Kulasekera or Darren Sammy, however the other 9 finger spinners are in the 13 most likely bowlers to bowl 9 or more overs.

If we give in to conventional wisdom that we need pace bowlers in a team to give the bowling line up balance, we need to know who are the most reliable pace bowlers. Here are the equivalent numbers for the quick(er) bowlers.

Player	Bowled 9 or more overs	Conceded 50 or less	Percentage
KMDN Kulasekara (SL)	37	28	75.7%
B Lee (Aus)	28	21	75.0%
NW Bracken (Aus)	33	24	72.7%
DJG Sammy (WI)	28	20	71.4%
Z Khan (India)	52	34	65.4%
MG Johnson (Aus)	54	34	63.0%
Mashrafe Mortaza (Ban)	37	23	62.2%
KD Mills (NZ)	35	21	60.0%
SL Malinga (SL)	44	24	54.5%
JM Anderson (Eng)	56	30	53.6%
SCJ Broad (Eng)	53	27	50.9%

An equivalent table for wrist-spin bowlers is rather redundant, as it would only contain Shahid Afridi, as the only wrist spinner to have 20 or more innings where he has bowled 9 or more and conceded 50 or less in the past 5 years.

Perhaps this would suggest that if we were going to pick a stats-based world team for an ODI, our bowlers might be best to have Kulasekara and Lee opening the bowling, Hafeez and Sammy as our all-rounders and Vettori and Swann as our pure spinners. It would be a very difficult line-up to score off indeed.

Valentine's Day

In 1950 the West Indies toured England. Surprisingly they picked two unknown spinners in their squad, Sonny Ramadhin (a right arm off-spinner who had a ball that spun the other way - would now be called a doosra) and Alf Valentine (a classical slow left arm bowler). They had each only played 2 first class matches before getting picked for the tour. It was a bold piece of selecting.

On the 8th of June they both made their test debut.

England won the toss, and chose to bat. They made a reasonable start, and were on 22/0 when Hutton got hit by a sharp delivery and had to retire hurt. The next over Goddard brought on Alf Valentine.

33 overs later it was lunch. England were 88/5 and Valentine had 5/34.

He went on to take 8 wickets in the first innings, as England were rolled for 312 inside the first day. He picked up 3 more in the second innings to complete 11 for the match.

The 8th of June turned out to truly be Valentine's Day, his 8/104 is the 2nd best 1st innings bowling figures by a player on debut, and he went on to be one of only 15 to take a 10 wicket bag on debut.

Was it a turning track? Jim Laker (possibly the best spinner in the world at the time) was playing for England, and took 1 wicket for 86 runs off 31 overs. This suggests that it was probably not a particularly helpful track for the spinners.

That day changed the focus of West Indian cricket for the next 30 years, before a similar revolution heralded the start of the 4-pronged pace era.

Before the 2nd world war, 37.3% of West Indies overs were bowled by spinners. Ramadhin, Valentine and later Lance Gibbs had such an impact that over the 30 years after this match 48.6% of West Indies overs were bowled by spinners.

Their next three matches saw three West Indies wins, and spawned this classic Calypso song Cricket, Lovely Cricket.

I hope everyone had an enjoyable Valentine's Day

Preview - Pak Eng 1st Test Dubai 11/12

The two top performing sides from last year meet in a mouthwatering match up.

The attacking England vs the conservative Pakistan. It seems like a role reversal from recent years.

England have an interesting choice. I feel it's between Eion Morgan and Monty Panesar. Prior, Broad and Swann are a fantastic 7,8,9 but they would actually still be a very good 6,7,8. Having the extra bowler to spread the load, and particularly having an extra spin bolwer (and one who is in form) is not a bad look. However England got a lot of bowling out of Pietersen and Trott last year, and they might be keen on relying on them again, and keeping their line up as similar as possible.

Pakistan are likely to go into the match with 3 front line spinners, Saeed Ajmal, Mohammed Hafeez and Abdur Rehman. This will be interesting, as it will provide a good examination for England's batsmen new found confidence against spin. They have been improving solidly over the last few years against spin, but the conditions in Dubai might provide a point of difference.

England vs spin last 4 years:

Year	Average
2007	37.81
2008	38.54
2009	46.03
2010	51.06
2011	82.73

It is hard to see where the wickets are going to come from, other than patience. In the last couple of years that matches have been played in UAE, only Junaid Khan has averaged under 30 with a strike rate under 60. (Welegedara got close). There are likely to be some big scores, particularly from the patient batsmen like Misbah-ul-Haq and Alister Cook.

Things to watch for:

1. Mohammed Hafeez. He has bowled like a genius recently. He doesn't have all the tricks like Saeed Ajmal, he just bowls really well. However his batting has slipped. Will he continue on his Dipak Patelesque journey from batsman who bowls a bit to bowler who bats a bit, or will he step up with the bat too?

2. Swann vs Ajmal. Two very different spinners, both capable of doing a lot of damage with the ball. Who will come out on top?

3. Wahab Riaz and Umar Gul. When they are on, both can be devastating bowlers. The Emerati air is not likely to help with the swing too much, but any assistance that is offered they will be sure to take advantage of.

4. Who faces the first ball for England? When he's been captain, Strauss has averaged 23 less when he faces the first ball than when he doesn't. It possibly takes him a while to switch out of the more macro captain thinking into the more micro opener thinking.

Betting tips:

1. Top England batsman - Jonathan Trott $4.50. He averages 85 in the first match of a series. He likes to lay down a marker. He also averages 67 against Pakistan. Probably about a 30% probability.

2. Top Pakistan batsman - Younis Khan. $4.50, Misbah-ul-Haq $5.50. I'm actually going to take both here because I think that one of these two will be the top scorer. The conditions are likely to suit Misbah, but Younis has not averaged under 50 for a year since 2004, and he often does well in the first two games of a series. My split will be 20 on Misbah and 25 on Younis. It will return slightly more on Younis Khan, because I think he is slightly more likely to be top scorer.

3. Younis Khan to outscore Maohammad Hafeez $1.83. Seems easy money to me. Hafeez scored 143 against Bangladesh, but that is a slightly different prospect to playing Anderson, Broad and Tremlett with the new ball.

4. Pakistan not to win. $1.22. I see a draw as the most likely outcome here, but I can't see Pakistan getting England out cheaply twice.

Bishoo

I have been impressed with Divendra Bishoo. He looks like the real deal. Not many statisticians would say that after he had just bowled 45 overs 1 maiden 1/154, but I'm looking at this as a legspinner rather than as statistician.

There are two things that a leg spin bowler does for a team: 1. They create chances. 2. They tire out the batsmen.

Here's what Bishoo did to those ends.

1. He created at least 13 chances. While there were no dropped catches off his bowling, there were 13 times that I noticed him genuinely beat the batsman. For example he got Dravid to edge one just in front of slip. He got Laxman to play the wrong line and the ball just slipped past the outside edge on two occasions. Dhoni played a leading edge that fell just short of a fielder. Normally about 1 in 3 or 4 chances results in a wicket. He is doing the right things to get wickets. (also remember that the Indian batsmen are probably the best against spin in the world).

2. He was turning the ball sharply at times, varying his flight, speed and particularly spinning it both ways. The result of this is that the batsmen are not able to settle. 3 balls pitching in the same spot would get to the batsman at different times and at different places. While this didn't work well in this test, it will in all likelihood work against lesser players.

For these reasons I am impressed with Divendra Bishoo.

The First Innings Spinner

In the modern game (the era of covered pitches) the role of a spinner has often been to come in when the pitch is starting to break up and bowl out a team. The theory is that a good spin bowler is almost impossible to play on the final day and a half of a test match.

There is one glaring exception to this rule: Daniel Vettori.

With his subtle changes of pace, and the fact that he relies more on bounce than spin, he has often found the pitches at the end of the game less to his liking than the ones at the start.

Less than 10% of his wickets have come in the fourth innings. He only once took a 5 wicket bag in the 4th innings, and that was in his first season, when he was a very different bowler than he is now.

To demonstrate the difference I've compiled a list of bowlers based on their performances first in a teams first innings, then in a teams second innings:

Bowling in a teams 1st innings by a modern spinner. (qual. 90 wickets)

Name	Wickets	Average	Strike-rate	5 Wicket bags
SCG MacGill	112	29.08	53.8	6
M Muralitharan	458	23.94	57.9	39
BS Chandrasekhar	125	29.41	61.1	11
SK Warne	349	28.04	61.3	18
Saqlain Mushtaq	135	30.22	65.4	11
Abdul Qadir	151	32.19	70.1	10
Danish Kaneria	149	37.26	71.1	8
A Kumble	339	32.16	72.5	18
DL Vettori	215	32.61	74.4	13
Harbhajan Singh	219	37.28	75.5	14
Mushtaq Ahmed	104	40.16	79.2	4
Iqbal Qasim	93	31.74	84.7	4
BS Bedi	124	34.43	89.9	6
RJ Shastri	106	44.28	111	2

This puts him in some good company, at a similar level to Anil Kumble, Abdul Qadir and Danish Kaneria, all very good bowlers.

However the next table is for a teams second innings. It is not so flattering.

Bowling in a teams 2nd innings by a modern spinner. (qual. 50 wickets)

Name	Wickets	Average	Strike-rate	5 Wicket bags
M Muralitharan	342	21.08	51.2	28
Mushtaq Ahmed	81	23.74	52.9	6
SK Warne	359	22.85	53.7	19
SCG MacGill	96	28.96	54.1	6
Harbhajan Singh	174	25.01	57	11
A Kumble	280	26.6	58	17
PR Adams	67	30.64	58	1
JG Bracewell	55	25.21	60	4
GP Swann	60	28.46	60.5	5
Danish Kaneria	112	31.5	63.3	7
N Boje	62	30.12	64.6	2
BS Bedi	72	21.79	64.8	4
BS Chandrasekhar	55	28.72	64.8	3
MS Panesar	64	29.31	65.3	6
Iqbal Qasim	78	23.78	65.8	4
AA Mallett	55	29.21	71.6	1
Saqlain Mushtaq	73	29.12	71.7	2
AF Giles	61	36.09	76.5	2
Abdul Qadir	85	33.88	76.8	5
PL Harris	52	30.69	78.1	1
JE Emburey	63	28.61	82.4	4
DL Vettori	129	36.08	82.5	6
PCR Tufnell	58	29.18	82.8	3
ST Jayasuriya	51	35.13	88.7	0

To make matters worse, if we compare the averages, then he moves a step further down the table, with only Ashley Giles below him (and then only by 0.01 of a run).

The contrast between the two tables is quite incredible. He is one of only two spin bowlers to have taken 100 wickets in the modern era, and average worse in the second innings than the first. The other bowler is Graeme Swann, and his averages are only 0.67 apart. Vettori's difference is 3.47.

If he is to bowl out Pakistan in the fourth innings in the current test at Wellington, it will be a performance against the form book.