2012 ODI Team of the year

Last year I came up with a system for picking a team of the year for ODI matches.

Last years team had an extra weighting for World Cup matches. This year there's an extra weighting for matches against top 9 opponents (Bangladesh have performed well enough this year that any results against them are certainly valid) and also for matches away from home.

Openers: Amla and Nasir Jamshed

This is only chosen based on what the players did as openers, and only from players who played at least 5 innings as an opener.

Name	Innings	Runs	Weighted Index
HM Amla (SA)	9	678	77.05
Nasir Jamshed (Pak)	8	462	58.69
G Gambhir (India)	13	570	39.44
DPMD Jayawardene (SL)	12	425	36.52
IR Bell (Eng)	11	549	36.31
AN Cook (Eng)	15	663	34.09
TM Dilshan (SL)	30	1119	33.61

Jamshed probably secured his spot in the team with his big innings against India in the last match of the year. A not out hundred against one of the top teams, away from home at close to a run a ball is certainly a good way to boost your ranking.

Top order: de Villiers, Kohli, Morgan

Name	Innings	Runs	Weighted Index
AB de Villiers (SA)	10	597	105.21
V Kohli (India)	17	1026	59.54
EJG Morgan (Eng)	12	364	53.57
KC Sangakkara (SL)	29	1184	33.92
MJ Clarke (Aus)	13	619	33.66
SK Raina (India)	13	326	31.61
BB McCullum (NZ)	10	416	31.58
LD Chandimal (SL)	26	800	29.31
JP Duminy (SA)	8	273	27.75

When I looked at the batting of players while they were keeping there wasn't much comparison. AB de Villiers was 1st on 116.7, then BJ Wattling on 70.2 and MS Dhoni on 57.4. Given the massive disparity, the next thing that the team needs is an all-rounder who can close out the batting. We already have a keeper, so we need someone who can make a contribution with the ball occasionally.

Closer: Sammy

Name	Matches	Batting	Bowling	Difference
DJG Sammy (WI)	17	33.06	25.75	7.31
AD Mathews (SL)	21	33.56	34.13	-0.57
DJ Hussey (Aus)	15	42.89	53.91	-11.02
AD Russell (WI)	14	26.75	40.29	-13.54

I was expecting Andre Russell to come out on top here, but he actually came out last of the players who had batted and bowled enough to count.

Bowlers: Narine, Abdur Razzak, Morne Morkel, Finn, Roach

Name	Matches	Average	E/r	Weighted Index
SP Narine (WI)	17	17.64	3.66	13.01
Abdur Razzak (Ban)	9	20.75	3.95	16.40
M Morkel (SA)	11	21.15	4.89	16.71
ST Finn (Eng)	14	20	4.2	16.81
KAJ Roach (WI)	8	19.88	5.07	16.98
RS Bopara (Eng)	14	25	3.43	17.16
Saeed Ajmal (Pak)	17	21.12	4.31	17.39
SR Watson (Aus)	14	23.05	4.27	17.46
CJ McKay (Aus)	17	23.88	4.52	18.80

I had to make some decisions on the formula, as neither England or Bangladesh had played away from home, so I used a different formula for these teams. It seems a fairly balanced bowling line up, with Roach, Finn and Morkel bringing the heat up front, and then Narine, Razzak and Sammy to take the pace off the ball later on.

So the full team:

Hashim Amla
Nasir Jamshed
AB de Villiers (w)
Virat Kohli
Eion Morgan
Darren Sammy (c)
Abdur Razzak
Morne Morkel
Steven Finn
Kemar Roach
Sunil Narine

I made Sammy the captain, because I think he is fantastic at getting the best out of his players.

Law 23 and Steven Finn

Here is a snippet from Law 23, Part 4:

"vi) the striker is distracted by any noise or movement or in any other way while he is preparing to receive, or receiving a delivery. This shall apply whether the source of the distraction is within the game or outside it."

The conditions for a dead ball are quite clear. The batsman has to be distracted. If the batsman is not distracted, then the ball should not be declared dead.

The test is not "does the umpire think that the batsman should have been distracted." The test is "was the batsman distracted."

The timing is also interesting. When is the ball dead? A possible argument is that the ball should be declared dead immediately once an umpire feels that the batsman is likely to be distracted. However that's not the test. The test is if the batsman was distracted. The ball also does not have to be declared dead immediately once an incident has happened. See for example Tom Smith's description of how to rule on an injury:

"Example 4
The ball has been hit into the outfield and the fielder, in attempting to stop it, falls and is in obvious pain through a serious injury.
Before calling Dead ball, the umpire should look to see if the ball is continuing towards the boundary. If it is and it will reach the boundary almost immediately, he would not call Dead ball as once the ball crosses the boundary it is going to be dead anyway. By delaying the call he will neither be depriving the batting side of a boundary nor unnecessarily delaying getting attention to the stricken fielder"
(Smith, 2003, p.167)

It is completely within the consistent ruling of Law 23 to see what happens, and then call the ball as dead if necessary.

Which brings us to the Steven Finn breaking the wickets with his leg. The correct ruling here is that the umpire should see if the batsman was distracted or not before calling the ball dead.

If the batsman hits the ball for 4, or 2, then it should not be a dead ball, as the batsman was clearly not distracted. If the ball goes down the leg side for what would have normally been called a wide, then it should be called wide, not dead ball, as even if the batsman was distracted there was no opportunity for him to play a shot to it.

In the South Africa test where the precedent was set the first three were not called. It was only once Graeme Smith approached the umpire saying that he found it distracting that the umpire started to call it dead.

In the Super 8 match James Franklin did not make any such complaint, as as a result the law was applied incorrectly.

Incorrect interpretation of this rule cost New Zealand significantly in the last game. It would be crazy if it continued to be ruled incorrectly throughout the rest of the tournament. This is not something that the MCC Laws sub-committee needs to look at. The law is clear, and just needs to be applied correctly.

Spring Cricket in England

Recently I was having a conversation with someone who was telling me how much more competitive the County Championship was than the Plunket Shield. I found their logic difficult to agree with. It went along the lines of England are a better team than New Zealand - therefore the County Championship is better than the Plunket Shield.

This seems to be a flawed way of assessing a competition to me. It would be like saying that Uruguay are currently ranked ahead of Italy in football, so the Uruguayan Primera División must be better than the Serie A. It might be true, but it seems unlikely. So I thought about how we could assess the strength of different competitions.

One option I thought of was looking at all the players who played in both competitions, and looking at their averages in each, and seeing which was better.

Now it's much too soon to assess the current season, but when I looked at the numbers so far, I did notice something interesting.

There are 5 players (that I know of) who have played in both the County Championship and the Plunket Shield, Andre Adams, Steven Finn, Martin Guptill, Jeetan Patel and Kane Williamson. Here are the collective results:

Batting	Plunket Shield	County Championship
Innings	22	26
Not outs	5	5
Runs	866	729
Average	50.94	34.71
Bowling
Overs	539	334.2
Runs	1390	913
Wickets	50	58
Average	27.80	15.74

On the face of it, the numbers don't tell us clearly which competition is stronger, although there are a number of factors that need to be taken into account here. Williamson and Guptill only played one match each in the Plunket Shield, and both of them scored unbeaten double centuries in their single match. The other 19 innings in NZ produced 360 runs.

It is not fair to compare a partial season to a full one, as there are often phases in a season when it is easier and harder to score runs.

For me the biggest difference is just how much harder batting seems to be in England than in New Zealand. The ratio between averages is similar (the batsmen scored 44% more in New Zealand, and the bowlers conceded 46% less in England)

The pitches just seem to be a lot harder to bat on in the start of the season in England than in New Zealand. It will be interesting to look at these numbers again later in the season and see if the same trend still applies.