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.

You should totally read

Warner-Dravid-Sehwag

Wes has done some good work here. :)

As an aside, I really hope that we don't hear a bunch of stuff about Peter Roebuck that is going to tarnish my thoughts about him. He was truly one of the great cricket writers, and his excellent analysis will be sorely missed. (even if I often didn't agree with him)

Possibility of an upset? Preview India vs West Indies Test 1

Two teams that have had a lot of draws against each other, and also a history of strange results.

India managed two series wins against the all-powerful West Indies of the 70's (in 1970/71 and 1978/79, but overall West Indies have dominated most series. India having won less than a quarter of the matches between the two teams.

There are a 4 things I am going to be watching for in this series:

1. Kirk Edwards vs Pragyan Ojha. Edwards was in dominating form in Bangladesh, but there is a difference between Bangladesh and India. The one weakness that he did show was that he got out LBW to left are spinners a few times. It will be interesting if Ojha sets a plan for this.

2. Divendra Bishoo. Bishoo has been a real star for West Indies, and has certainly managed to get me excited. He takes wickets by turning the ball, not just by putting it on the spot and making batsmen make a mistake. Not many spin bowlers have had any success against India, but Bishoo may be an exception.

3. Ravi Rampaul. It seems a strange decision to leave out Roach for Rampaul, but he was quite effective in the CLT20 tournament, and it will be interesting to see how the different lines that he bowls go against the aggressive Indian batsmen.

4. Yuvraj Singh. Yuvraj has traditionally had a weakness against short-pitched bowling, and this is probably the thing that West Indies is the most famous for. While Rampaul, Bishoo and Sammy are not likely to give him too many concerns, Fidel Edwards will be licking his lips with glee at the thought of bowling to Yuvraj.

Some thoughts on betting: Yuvraj to score less than the line is a good option, likewise Kirk Edwards to get out LBW. Also a draw seems to be the most likely result.

"England vs India" vs "India vs England"

In a series where one team wins comfortably, it can normally be expected that that team would score the most runs. I was interested to see that in the England India series in England that was not the case. In fact, Duckworth and Lewis decided the result of every game except one, and as England was always batting second, they had to score a lot less. England actually faced 421 less deliveries than India, that is about 1 and a half innings normally.

** Trivia Alert **
This was the second ODI series this year where a team got clean swept despite scoring more runs than their opponents - It also happened in the West Indies tour to Sri Lanka.
** Trivia over - back to statistics **

Despite playing shorter innings, England relied on the boundaries less than India, instead getting their runs inside the field. They ran about 58% of their runs, while India ran about 54.5%.

However If we look at the series in India, the results are reversed. India still ran about 54.5% of their runs, but this time England only ran about 51% of their runs. Each series the team that relied the most on boundaries lost the series.

The activity rates were interesting too. In England it was England 0.64, and India 0.54. In India it was England 0.45 and India 0.56. It is interesting, because the difference between the two teams at home and away was largely the running between wickets and fielding. Both of them scored a similar number of boundaries in either series.

It leads me to question if it is harder to judge a run in home conditions or away conditions across the board, so this was the next thing I looked into. Here are some numbers from the last 10 years:

team	run runs (rr)	run outs (ro)	balls faced (bf)	rr per ro	bf per ro
home	119488	682	275772	175.2	404.4
away	117718	746	281803	157.8	377.8

Now this is a quite significant difference, about 10%. It certainly brings up questions for further analysis. It would be interesting to see if this is true for other modes of dismissal, and which teams have the biggest difference between their home figures and their away figures.

A quite remarkable innings

Kane Williamson was somewhat overshadowed again in hitting his second ODI hundred.

His first came in a loss against Bangladesh. He was the last wicket to fall, caught at deep midwicket, with New Zealand needing 9 runs of the last 4 balls. His strike rate was a fairly disappointing 81.81

His second was in the same innings as Ross Taylor scored 119, and it was done without much big hitting or fanfare. Which really made it more remarkable.

His chances of a hundred looked dead and buried when Taylor got out, and Nathan McCullum was in strike in the last over. Williamson needed seven to get to his hundred, and there was only one ball left. But Ncube obliged, bowled a beamer, which Williamson hit for 4, and then (after a change of bowler due to repeated beamers) Williamson manages to run 3 on a push to mid on, requiring a dive to make his ground.

His innings was the second fastest century by a New Zealander (off 69 balls) and the second fastest by anyone to not have a majority of runs scored in boundaries (after MoYo's 68 ball 100 against Zimbabwe in 2002). This was the thing that really impressed.

He scored 11 4's and 1 6, meaning that he got 50 runs in boundaries, and ran 50. His activity rate (runs per ball removing boundaries) for the innings was 0.877 - quite remarkable really. It was a triumph for placement, timing and running between wickets, rather than the less effective brutality coming from the other end.

And yet very few people will remember it, for 2 reasons. 1. It was against Zimbabwe. And they are rubbish. 2. It was in a losing cause, in a dead rubber. But regardless, it was a beautiful innings, that perhaps is a sign of things to come from a prodigious young batsman.

Tigers at home, Pussycats away

It has been said that the Indian team were tigers at home, and pussycats away. The idea was that to beat India in India was a real achievement, but beating them away was in a similar class to beating Zimbabwe or Bangladesh. Now this is obviously an exaggeration, but the current series between India and England looks like two completely different teams to the previous series in England.

England have gone back to their recent history of being rubbish at One Day Cricket (won less than 44% of matches against test playing nations in the last 10 years) and India look like champions again.

So the question arises, is there a statistical difference between their home and away performances?

Over the last 5 years, England have won 27 home matches against test opposition and lost 21, giving a home win/loss ratio of 1.28. Away from home they have won 18 and lost 26, giving an away win/loss ratio of 0.69. Quite different. India have won 34 and lost 17 at home giving them an impressive home win/loss ratio of 2. Away they have won 33 and lost 30 (much better than the stereotype) with a ratio of 1.1. This means both teams are roughly twice as good at home as they are away.

So who are the most 2 faced teams? Here is the list of all teams, and their percentage better at home than away in the last 5 years against test teams:

Team	W/L Home	W/L Away	% change
New Zealand	1.61	0.36	347
Pakistan	2.25	0.75	200
Zimbabwe	0.36	0.16	125
England	1.28	0.69	86
India	2.00	1.10	82
Bangladesh	0.75	0.44	70
Australia	2.25	1.70	32
South Africa	2.90	2.44	19
Sri Lanka	1.36	1.20	13
West Indies	0.53	0.48	10

The big surprise for me was the first team. New Zealand have been appalling on the road, performing worse than West Indies or Bangladesh. But at home they sit in 5th place.

Breaking it down a bit, New Zealand score at 5.78 at home, but only 4.8 away. A difference of almost 1 per over. The days of New Zealand being a place were regularly defended are long gone.

Team	RPO Home	RPO Away	Difference
New Zealand	5.78	4.80	0.98
India	5.79	5.25	0.54
Zimbabwe	4.67	4.14	0.53
England	5.40	5.06	0.34
Pakistan	5.30	5.00	0.30
South Africa	5.70	5.44	0.26
West Indies	4.97	4.86	0.11
Bangladesh	4.46	4.55	-0.09
Sri Lanka	4.90	5.10	-0.20
Australia	5.22	5.45	-0.23

In fact the transition in New Zealand's home scoring rates has been phenomenal. Before 2004 there had only been 2 seasons where NZ scored over 5 rpo at home, Since then they have scored at over 5 every year, and scored over 300 at least once per year. The days of the low slow NZ ODI pitch is long gone.

The dangers of lazy cricket

I have had my first go at coaching a cricket team this year. I have previously coached 3 sports that I know much less about, but never cricket. I found the experience quite rewarding, and also quite frustrating. Most of the players that I am coaching are actually quite good cricketers. They have more athletic ability in their little fingers than I have in my whole body. It is a little upsetting to see me show one of them master something in 2 minutes that took me about 20 hours of net work to almost get. But the most frustrating thing is watching the games.

When I am watching there are three things that I get particularly upset with.

1. I dislike my captain setting defensive fields, and giving away easy singles.
2. I dislike fielders not committing themselves to cutting down a run.
3. I dislike lazy running between wickets, or a batsman hitting a ball hard to a boundary fielder for 1, instead of softly for 2.

These three things were all in evidence from the Indian team in the previous series. If I were Duncan Fletcher, I too would be a grumpy man.

In fact the Indian's were slightly better at hitting boundaries than the English. They hit 7.40% of deliveries to or over the boundary, while the English hit 7.37% While this is only marginally different, in some of the games the difference was quite profound: For example in Birmingham, England hit 7.1% to the fence, while India hit 9.6% and 12.3% of their deliveries to the fence. And still got thrashed.

The big difference was what they did with the other deliveries. While the main difference was that they didn't get out as often, the other thing was that they were much better at getting runs.

A statistic that I look at from time to time is the Activity rate. This is effectively the runs per ball that didn't go for 4 or 6.

Throughout the series India scored 1906 runs, but 1150 of them came in boundaries (over 60%). With the rest of the deliveries they had an activity rate of 0.213.

England scored 2643 runs, and about half of them came in boundaries - 1324. The English were much better at using the balls that they couldn't hit for 4, and their activity rate was 0.322.

Effectively that means that England's batsmen are going to be under less scoreboard pressure than their Indian counterparts.

Even having Tendulkar in your team can not save you from the dangers of lazy cricket.