A quick look at the Anderson innings

Corey Anderson has been talked of as the big hope for New Zealand cricket for about 7 years.

He was signed to a national contract when he was still at school to make sure he didn't chose to play rugby, a sport in which he also excelled.

He was one of only a few New Zealand players to play first class cricket while still at school since the Second World War.

And yet so far in his international career he has failed to make a splash. Until today.

Today he broke Shahid Afridi's record for the fastest ODI hundred by smiting the West Indies for 131* off 47 balls. The first 101 of which came up off only 36 balls. I honestly thought Afridi's record would never be broken, but I guess you should never say never.

Here's the full 47 balls, for those of you who are interested:

1 . 4 1 . 1 6 1 . 2 1 4 6 1 6 6 . 6 . 6 1 . . 6 6 6 6 6 1 . 1 4 4 1 1 6 6 4 1 2 4 1 6 1 2 2 1

The first question that came to my mind was how does this innings compare to other great innings of the past.

I came up with a formula that I've used a number of times before to quantify how good a limited overs innings is. Basically the score is either squared if they are out or multiplied by 5 more than itself if they are not out, then divided by the balls faced. It rewards both big scores and quick scoring. It isn't perfect, as it doesn't take into account the state of the match, the quality of the opposition the importance of the game or the conditions that the match is played in. However, it is the best simple system that I know of, so it's the one that I use.

I put Anderson's innings into the formula and then compared it to all other big innings that were scored quickly. For this comparison I looked at every innings where a batsman scored more than 75 at a strike rate of more than 110.

Here are the top 20:

Player	Score	vs	Year	Modified	Viv Points
Corey J Anderson (NZ)	131* (47)	v West Indies	2014	379.06	144.6
SR Watson (Aus)	185* (96)	v Bangladesh	2011	366.15	139.7
MV Boucher (SA)	147* (68)	v Zimbabwe	2006	328.59	125.4
V Sehwag (India)	219 (149)	v West Indies	2011	321.89	122.8
SR Tendulkar (India)	200* (147)	v South Africa	2010	278.91	106.4
RG Sharma (India)	209 (158)	v Australia	2013	276.46	105.5
ST Jayasuriya (SL)	134 (65)	v Pakistan	1996	276.25	105.4
HH Gibbs (SA)	175 (111)	v Australia	2006	275.9	105.3
IVA Richards (WI)	181 (125)	v Sri Lanka	1987	262.09	100
Shahid Afridi (Pak)	102 (40)	v Sri Lanka	1996	260.1	99.2
Saeed Anwar (Pak)	194 (146)	v India	1997	257.78	98.4
Shahid Afridi (Pak)	124 (60)	v Bangladesh	2010	256.27	97.8
RT Ponting (Aus)	164 (105)	v South Africa	2006	256.15	97.7
Yuvraj Singh (India)	138* (78)	v England	2008	253	96.5
CK Coventry (Zim)	194* (156)	v Bangladesh	2009	247.47	94.4
L Vincent (NZ)	172 (120)	v Zimbabwe	2005	246.53	94.1
BB McCullum (NZ)	80* (28)	v Bangladesh	2007	242.86	92.7
Ijaz Ahmed (Pak)	139* (84)	v India	1997	238.29	90.9
MS Dhoni (India)	183* (145)	v Sri Lanka	2005	237.27	90.5
ST Jayasuriya (SL)	157 (104)	v Netherlands	2006	237.01	90.4

The first name on the list is Corey Anderson's. This innings overcame Watson's demolition of Bangladesh from 2011.

I've also included "Viv Points." This is a comparison with what many people still consider the greatest innings of all time, Viv Richards vs Sri Lanka in 1987. 100 points means that it was equivalent to Viv's innings.

Incidentally at 43rd on the list was the innings that happened at the other end, Jesse Ryder's 104 off 51 balls. It was also one of the greatest innings in ODI history, but it was completely overshadowed by the outstanding innings from Anderson.

It's still early days in Corey Anderson's career. There have been plenty of players who have had a very good day in an international match (You may notice Charles Coventry and Lou Vincent's name in the above list as evidence of this) but he has now shown that the potential that the selectors saw all those years ago when he was a teenager is closer to being realised.

There are lots of things that can be said about this innings. Poor bowling, small boundaries, big bats etc, but they can't take away from the incredible pace that Anderson managed to score at. It really was a sensational innings.

Kallisculator

I'm sure that there will be tributes to Jacques Kallis all over the web at the moment. I wanted to do something uniquely CricketGeeky. So I've put together an interactive calculator, similar to the Tendulkulator that I did when Tendulkar retired. You enter in the runs and say if they are out or not out, then the basic bowling figures and it will tell you where he will end up on the all time batting and all-rounder's average leader board. You will need to scroll to the right to see the full all-rounder's numbers


I've done my best to lock it down, but it is a shared file, so if you find a way round the security, please don't vandalise it. Let everyone else play too.

When not going for the victory is an act of courage

South Africa chose to defend the last 4 overs, rather than try and score 16 runs for victory. At first glance this seems like an act of either stupidity or cowardice, but I think it was neither.

They missed out on a chance to make history, by becoming the only team to have successfully chased over 450. But they also missed out on losing a match that would have meant that the series was unwinnable.

Instead Steyn and Philander looked at the options and decided that they were a better team than India, and backed themselves to win the next test. If they went 1-0 down in the series, the best possible outcome was a drawn series, but if the match was a draw, then it was still possible to win the series.

Imran Tahir was probably the next man in. In roughly 2/3 of his innings he has lasted less than 10 balls. That is not the player you want to have saving a test. Morne Morkel is more competent, but it's difficult to bat with only one leg working. It was entirely likely that those two could have been dismissed in the space of an over.

Given that restriction, it made sense that the South Africans decided to be positive with regards to the series, and back themselves to win the second match. It certainly would have been frustrating for them and for any South African fans, but it was probably the correct call.

It appeared to be an act of cowardice, but really it was an act borne of a confidence in their ability to win the second test.

Mini-session Analysis, 3rd test, NZvWI, Seddon Park, Hamilton

Here is the final mini-session analysis for the third test between New Zealand and West Indies at Seddon Park, Hamilton

A mini-session is (normally) half a session, either between the start of the session and the drinks break or the drinks break and the end of the session. Occasionally a long session will have 3 mini-sessions where it will be broken up with 2 drinks breaks.

Is the Southee - Boult partnership greater than the Hadlee - Chatfield partnership?

There is a theory that bowlers are supposed to hunt in a pack. That the two bowlers are supposed to work together to get the batsmen out.  There are some proponents of this theory, and some who feel that it is rubbish, and that each bowler is wholly responsible for their own figures.

In the light of their recent performances I've been looking into the opening partnership of Boult and Southee and then I've compared that to others opening partnerships throughout time. They are a fairly new pair, but they actually stack up quite well.

Warner in Perth

I have written before about how impressed I am with David Warner's running between wickets. I genuinely believe that he is one of the best at judging a run that I've seen.

Accordingly I was surprised to see that he had scored the same number of singles as boundaries in the second innings at Perth. I also heard the commentators describe it as a typical innings from Warner. It made me wonder if it actually was a typical innings.

First of all I looked at how Warner compared to other batsmen.  The method I chose to look at was to compare the boundary percentage (boundaries per delivery) and the activity rate (runs scored per non-boundary delivery). I filtered out any batsman who hadn't faced more than 650 deliveries since 2000, hadn't hit more than 50 fours and hadn't played in the past 2 years. I then put the rest of the batsmen on a single graph.

I divided up the batsmen into 4 categories. Aggressive, Block Bash, Pushers and Defensive. Close to the extremes of each group were players who have been reasonably successful.

In the defensive group are players like Rahul Dravid, Peter Fulton, Tino Mawoyo, Ed Cowan and JP Duminy.
Block Bash contains Angelo Mathews, Shane Watson, Chris Gayle and Yuvraj Singh.
Pushers includes Kane Williamson, Shiv Chanderpaul, Jonathan Trott and Thilan Samaraweera.
Aggressive include Ricky Ponting, Sachin Tendulkar, Darren Sammy and David Warner.

Warner has a higher activity rate than anyone in the list. But he also hits more boundaries than most batsmen.

 

Warner's activity rate for his career is 0.353 and his boundary rate is 9.3%. His innings in Perth lasted 140 deliveries. We would expect 13 boundaries, perhaps 12 fours and 1 six. Off the other 127 deliveries we would expect him to score 45 runs. Overall we would expect that he would be on about 99, rather than 112, so he scored slightly faster than we would expect, but the big difference was the make up of the innings.

Warner scored 80 runs in boundaries. That's about 40% more than we would normally expect him to get.

I used the same graph as above, to analyse Warner's other innings. I've included every innings where Warner has scored more than 30. I've drawn in lines to show which group the innings would have fit in.

We can see that Warner's innings does fit in with some of his other innings, but really is closer to the Block Bash quadrant than almost any of his other innings.

It was an interesting innings, because of the context and the opponent, but also because of the way that he scored the runs.

Sharp work

Here's a little video I noticed recently.  This was from yesterday, day one of the four day match between Auckland and Canterbury.

Auckland had just been bowled out for 165 and Canterbury were at 6/1 in the 7th over. George Worker is facing Matt Quinn. Jeet Raval is out of shot, but he is at short leg, under the helmet.

 

There are three impressive things here.

Firstly the awareness of Raval to try for the run out. It's easy to just appeal. Especially when a player isn't that far out of his crease. But instead Raval, who must have been only just out of shot, was aware of the possibility of the run out.

Secondly how quickly and accurately he got the ball in. The stumps are hit about 1 second after the batsman hits the ball. It means Raval has gathered the ball and then released it to throw down the stumps in about a third of a second. That's scarily fast.

Thirdly the outstanding umpiring. Worker was given out without a replay. When I went through the video frame by frame, the bat appears to be on the line as the ball dislodges the bails. One frame later and the bat is in the crease. That's either some poor benefit of the doubt, or some very good umpiring. I think it's kinder to assume the latter.

Below is the frame where the ball dislodges the bails. Do you think it's out?