Do New Zealand need to bat differently?

New Zealand's top 5 have been criticised by everyone who has a voice on the radio, TV and in the newspapers over the last few days following the Gabba gazumping. The usual suspects have been out: Nash, Crowe, Turner, Boock, all saying that we need to get back to having more spine, and stop trying to play so quickly.

So I though I'd look at how the current batsmen stack up. Rather than looking at their batting averages, I've looked at the median scores at 5 down and 6 down. Medians seem to be the in-thing in statistics at the moment. I've been to a number of university stats seminars recently, and medians are everywhere. There are a couple of advantages to a median in this situation, this really shows us what we can expect, half of the scores are better than the median, and half are lower. Not-out's are also not given special treatment, and extreme values are ignored. In a lot of ways the median is what we can expect a team to get. I've found the average score when the number 7 comes to the wicket, and also when the number 8 comes to the wicket. This shows the contribution of the batsmen, and so it is an interesting statistic for comparison.

Here are the results for all countries over the past 2 years. I've separated Zimbabwe as they haven't played many games, and their results don't seem to be realistic.

Team	5 down	6 down
SA	235	256.5
SL	227	271
Eng	220	257.5
Pak	195	176
Ind	183	240
Ban	167	196
NZ	166	216
Aus	164	206.5
WI	134.5	158.5
Zim	237.5	303
Overall	176	215

There is a bit of a discrepancy there with Pakistan, who average more for 5 down than they do for the 6 down due to having a number of innings finish 5 down with a large score.

New Zealand sit quite low at 5 down, but in the middle of the table at 6 down, due to the Vettori factor. (Vettori has averaged about 40 over the last few years, batting at 7) So the New Zealand top 5 have not exactly set the world on fire, but there are a couple of caveats there. Firstly New Zealand have to play on New Zealand pitches, which tend to swing and seam more with the new ball, making the early batsmen particularly vulnerable (only 16 batsmen in NZ's history have averaged more than 35, and 4 of those spent most of their career batting at 6 or 7)

So a better comparison is New Zealand through the years:

1975-1978	152	180
1979-1982	162	183
1983-1986	149	192
1987-1990	154	174
1991-1994	147	187
1995-1998	133	164
1999-2002	153	193
2003-2006	150	190
2007-2010	158	193

This shows that the last 2 years have been better than New Zealand's history would suggest. Perhaps the era of Wright, Edgar, Crowe and Coney were not quite as golden as they would like to suggest. Perhaps the New Zealand batsmen (despite the recent debacle) are actually not going so badly.

Important Moments and Momentum

Test 1 between New Zealand and Australia was a complete rout on the scoreboard. Australia won by 9 wickets, and left the New Zealand public angry and their supporters bewildered.

But how much did Australia actually dominate the match?

Because I'm a bit of a NZ cricket masochist, I went through the game, mini-session by mini-session. (a mini-session is between a break and drinks) There were 22 of these in this game. Before analysing them I wrote up a set of criteria to decide who had won each mini-session and who had lost it. Some of them were quite close, but most of them were actually quite decisive to one team or the other.

Overall New Zealand won 7 of the 22 mini-sessions, with the most dominant being scoring 49/0 in 12 overs on the second morning, or taking 3/33 at the start of the final session on the third day. Australia won 15, but they slightly edged the majority of the close sessions. If I adjusted the criteria slightly it would probably be 13-9 or 12-10.

The big difference though was in three key mini-sessions The second mini-session, New Zealand lost 3 wickets for 50 runs. The second mini-session on the 2nd day New Zealand lost 5 wickets for 72 runs. And then the first mini-session on the fourth (and final) day where NZ lost 4/48 off 11.

Looking at that session, it was 48/1 off 10, and 0/3 off one over. That over made such a difference, and it was one of a number of moments that really defined the game.

Here are a few others: Ricky Ponting should have been run out for 0, but instead went on to score 78; Michael Clarke was bowled off a no ball on 23, he went on to score another 116 runs; Mitchel Starc was dropped on 0 and went on to score 32. That's 226 runs that were gifted to Australia.

To win a test match against Australia, New Zealand need to win the key moments. They can't afford to lose them, or else they will get beaten up again.

Same old...

4 dropped catches, 75 deliveries per wicket. Poor, poor cricket.

Preview - NZ Aus 1st Test

So it's time for the Trans-Tasman Trophy. I has been a long time since New Zealand actually beat Australia, but with the current Australian bowling lineup there is a slow dawning of hope in New Zealand that the boys can taste some success on the West Island.

The question is: how realistic is that hope?

New Zealand has been a graveyard for quality batsmen. There just have not been many come from here. At time of writing, only 10 players have played 10 or more games for NZ and averaged over 40. The rest of the world have produced 183. However of those 10, 2 are in the current team, as well as 2 more in the next 8 players. This is possibly the best batting line up New Zealand has ever had. The only possible exceptions are the team that contained Richardson, Fleming, Astle, McMillan and Cairns, or the team that contained Crowe, Reid, Wright and Coney. They are also all in form. In the last 2 matches every one of the top 6 have scored at least one hundred, and most have scored a fifty also. I read somewhere they over the last 4 innings they average 74. (I haven't checked this, but I'll trust the newspaper to be correct)

At the same time as New Zealand's batting is strong, Australia's bowlers are so inexperienced that some of the commentators are struggling to tell them apart. Because they have lost so many players it is hard to know how well they are going to play. What we saw in the warm up match was that despite New Zealand really going for their shots and playing risky shots they managed to score over 400 both innings. It will be interesting to see how this battle will go.

The other side is more settled. The Australian bating lineup has a couple of new faces, but is a lot more settled. The New Zealand bowling line up really only has one new face with only one of Bracewell or Boult likely to play. Bracewell has started his test career off encouragingly, while Boult has yet to make a debut, but has some good form in domestic cricket behind him. Southee enjoyed Brisbane last time, and is a much better bowler now. Martin has not been in a good run of form, but he has a very good record against left handers. Given that 4 of the top 6 batsmen in Australia are left handed, he might not be as ineffective as he has been in recent matches.

The Australian batsmen are generally high quality but under pressure. The scepter of all out for 46 will be hanging over their heads. Two of their batsmen (Hughes and Khawaja) average below 40, which is not something that we are accustomed to seeing from players that play the majority of their cricket in Australian conditions. The New Zealand bowlers will be smelling blood. However they may be going in confident, but they have not really demonstrated an ability to bowl teams out quickly. Over the last 2 years they have taken a wicket every 81 deliveries. To put this in context it means that it takes about 135 overs to bowl out a team. Given that there is about 450 overs in a test match, if New Zealand take 270 overs to bowl out Australia, there are only 180 left in the match for New Zealand to bat.

To add to this there is a forecast of rain for at least 2 of the days. If this forecast is correct the I see a result being entirely pitch dependent. Both teams having reasonable batting line ups and average bowling line ups means that they are both going to be unlikely to bowl each other out. Unless there is some real venom in the pitch then I think that $2.60 that Bet365 are paying for the draw is good money.

If I was looking for another couple of bets I'd look at Michael Clarke as the top run-scorer in Australia's first innings. He is right handed so nullifies Martin and (to a lesser degree) Boult. He bats at number 5, a position that New Zealand has great difficulty dismissing in recent time, and he has a great record against New Zealand, averaging over 60.

I would also look to put money on Williamson overs once he reaches 10. He gets out under 10 in more than half of his innings, but once he gets going it is rare for him to get out under 50.

So those are my thoughts and where I'm putting my 20c.

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.