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.

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.

Why it might be a good idea to pick RP Singh

This is a dangerous post.

In a couple of hours I'll either look like a genius or an idiot.

Throughout the last 5 years the English batting lineup have played really well. Really really well. They have averaged 38.46 overall. The numbers are interesting however when they are broken down a bit:

Average	Right arm	Left arm
Pace bowling	37.63	28.55
Spin bowling	43.76	47.19

You will notice the glaring number in that list - left arm pace. Perhaps that is the kryptonite that will end the reign of the English (read mostly South African and Irish) supermen.

Quick preview 2nd Test Eng vs Ind

Just a couple of things that I notices, and a bit of quick tips for the gamblers out there.

Trent Bridge has been cruel on openers over the last few years, but it has produced lots of runs for batsmen batting at number 7.

Dhoni also has a great record in the second test of a series.

I'd look at Dhoni to score more than 40 here. I'd also look at Pietersen to do badly here, as he normally follows up a big score with a number of low ones.

I'd look closely at Prior to be the top scorer for England, and also for Dravid to be the top scorer for India, as he has good technique, and tends to shine on difficult pitches.

Does keeping influence batting?

My post a month and a bit ago about Matt Prior has generated a significant amount of interest, including one specific comment that I would like to address.

Unfortunately the poster was anonymous, but they recommended Sangakkara as the greatest wicket-keeper batsman, pointing out that he batted at number 3 and often had to come into bat in the first 5 overs. It made me wonder just how hard batting after keeping was. So I had a look at some stats...

I found 5 players who have played at least 10 innings as keeper and non-keeper: Here are their averages:

Name	Inngs keeping	Avg keeping	Inngs not keeping	Avg not keeping
AJ Stewart	145	34.92	90	46.70
KC Sangakkara	81	40.48	81	72.75
AC Parore	109	26.94	19	22.70
A Flower	100	53.70	12	35.45
BB McCullum	85	34.77	12	55.18

The last three in the list probably don't give us enough information to be able to say too much, although both Flower and Parore are curious in that they averaged better when keeping than not keeping. In Parore's case it might have been because he usually batted at 7 or 8 when keeping, and at 3 when not keeping. It also might have been that he was less confident of his place in the side when Lee Germon was the captain, and so did not bat with the same confidence. Another possible explanation was that the matches he didn't keep in were the ones where Glenn Turner was in charge of the team, and his style of coaching might not have suited Parore.

Likewise most of the matches where Flower didn't keep were at the end of his career where there was increasing political tension in Zimbabwe. This was obviously impacting him - and led to the famous black armband incident. (As an aside - Henry Olonga's autobiography, which mentions this incident "Blood Sweat and Treason" is well worth reading.) But he also might have batted better when he got a chance to have a look at a pitch after keeping.

But the overall theme of the statistics is that batsmen bat better when they are not keeping. Sangakkara is particularly astounding. His average of over 70 is impressive, especially as he is such a fluid batsman that all 72.75 of them will have probably flowed in an aesthetically pleasing manner off his bat.

It also goes to underline how fortunate we are to be living in a time with so many great wicket-keeper batsmen. All of Prior, Dhoni, Gilchrist, Flower, McCullum, Sangakkara... have been producing such remarkable numbers that they have transformed the entire position.