Are the best cricketers of our times born with talent or have they been unwittingly dealt the best hands in life, courtesy of their lucky birth date? Millions of people around the world believe in astrology and auspicious dates but could it be much simpler than that? How many potentially great cricketers were never heard of, lost to the game before their talent was allowed to blossom?
In his best-selling book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell explores the playing rosters of many American and European team sports (ice hockey, basketball, football) and discovers the amazing coincidence of birth dates. In a system that has a junior selection system based on a calendar year (January 1 to December 31), his statistics show that an extraordinarily high percentage of athletes’ birthdays are from the first few months of the year.
His theory is that in junior sport these boys naturally tend to be bigger, stronger and physically more advanced than boys who are born later in that year. At a young age, this is a significant advantage and leads to the same group of boys dominating their junior teams, being regularly selected for the top teams, getting the best coaching and widening the gap between those born later in that 12-month cycle.
His is a convincing argument which also suggests that the younger kids get discouraged by that disparity in physical maturity (and not getting selected for junior rep teams) and they tend to drop out of that sport, thereby fulfilling the prophecy of the older boys who continue to make all the top teams through to adulthood.
It made me wonder if cricket has a similar story to tell. Do the best international cricketers owe something to their birth dates and the natural advantage it gave them at a young age? Does physical maturity and size matter for a non-contact sport like cricket? After all, most of the best batsmen are relatively small fellows (Brian Lara, Sachin Tendulkar, Don Bradman, Allan Border, Ricky Ponting, Sunil Gavaskar etc).
In order to test this theory in a very non-scientific way, I decided to look at the current World Twenty20 squads of every major cricketing country and see how many of the 15 squad members were born in the first or second half of the year. Here are the results:
Current World Twenty20 squads
Team
January-June
July-December
Australia
5
10
New Zealand
5
10
South Africa
9
6
England
11
4
West Indies
7
8
Bangladesh
7
8
Sri Lanka
8
7
Pakistan
6
9
India
1
14
Oh well, there goes that theory I thought. Most countries, England apart, are inconclusive or lean strongly towards the reverse of Gladwell’s theory. No advantage in being born earlier in the calendar year.
It then occurred to me that most countries, England apart, have cricket seasons that mirror the Southern Hemisphere summer. At junior levels, do they select age-group squads from a July or September cut-off date? If so, does that go some way towards explaining the bias in countries like Australia, NZ, Pakistan and India towards boys born in the second half of the year? India especially has an amazingly high ratio, 14/15 of their current T20 squad born between July and December.
Now I’m the first one to admit that looking at a single Twenty20 tournament only tells a tiny fraction of cricket’s long history. And I’m not even sure if these countries do indeed have junior cut-offs that runs from say September 1 to August 30 for example. I’d be fascinated to hear from people around the world who may be able to shed some light on this question. Perhaps there’s more to this theory after all!
And if England’s junior age cut-off operates according to a calendar year, that makes it even more interesting…..are we on to something here? Their stats show a leaning towards players born in the first six months.
Going back in time, let’s look at the World Cup winning teams and runners-up (if it involves Australia, New Zealand, England or the subcontinent) from 1983 to 1992. This safely eliminates anybody currently playing in the World Twenty20. I’ve looked at New Zealand’s semi-final team from 1992 too.
World-cup winning teams and runner-ups
Team
January-June
July-September
India 1983
3
8
Australia 1987
7
4
England 1987
6
5
Pakistan 1992
5
6
England 1992
6
5
New Zealand 1992
3
9
The pattern still seems to be (largely) holding true. England’s statistics from that period are slightly misleading because so many of their players from that era were not born in England and may have started their junior careers under some other country’s system (Gladstone Small, Graeme Hick, Allan Lamb, Chris Lewis, Philip DeFreitas and many more). If you take out those ‘foreign born’ players, the figures support this theory even more.
Confining my analysis to these four countries (India, Pakistan, Australia and England), I had a quick look at the top 10 players in the current ICC rankings for Tests and ODI’s. For players from these nations, batsmen and bowlers, the trend is still consistent:
Teams with players in the top ten in the Test and ODI rankings
Country
January-June
July-December
India
0
5
Pakistan
1
1
Australia
2
6
England
2
1
Even if the cut-off dates do not support my theory, it is quite odd that all countries that play cricket between September-March seem to have more cricketers born in the second half of the year. Why is that? Unless there's some unusual factor in play, the results should be roughly 50/50 but India especially has nowhere near a 50% ratio. It's massively skewed in favour of players born in the second half of the year. What's the reason?
Another interesting fact is that when a player defies the broad trend for his country, it is usually a child protege, someone who was always destined to make it. These are the rare talents who were always likely to be much better than their age cohorts. It didn’t really matter if they were competing with older boys. Shahid Afridi, Michael Clarke, Tendulkar, Hasan Raza and Vinod Kambli for example are all born in the first half of the year (opposite to the trend). Their genius (at a young age) was never going to be denied by anything, least of all a favourable birth date.
Gladwell’s examples aren’t just restricted to sport. He cites numerous research studies in mathematics, science, reading and university education where the statistics are significantly skewed in favour of the oldest children of that year batch. It’s a natural advantage that seemingly begins at a young age and keeps repeating itself over a person’s lifetime as they continue to benefit from the common mistake of comparing maturity with ability at too young an age. There is no doubt that in most aspects of life, a child is advantaged by being the oldest in his/her age group and if this means they keep getting selected in the ‘gifted’ stream or team, their improvement continues with the best coaching, encouragement and opportunities. Their inevitable success is almost a fait accompli.
If this phenomenon is actually true in cricket, the long-term answer might be in having a rolling cut-off date for junior cricketers. It might be Jan 1 followed by July 1 the next year and so on. Theoretically, this should give all youngsters a fair chance to compete with boys of their own size and maturity. It could mean that we have twice as many talented kids to choose from once that maturity/size factor evens out.
For Australia and New Zealand with small populations where cricket competes with other sports for the best athletes, this may be a crucial tool in talent retention. For India with a billion-plus people to whom cricket is clearly the number one sport, perhaps it doesn’t really matter. From what I’ve seen on the maidans and alleyways in India, a shortage of talent is never going to be a problem in that part of the world!
The age group system in England operates from Sept 1st, so you would neeed to consider players born Sept to Dec having the advantage ?
Posted by: Ashwath at June 3, 2009 10:49 AM
I, too, read Outliers and I'm glad to see some follow-up on the material there in the context of cricket! Even if this isn't the most scientific of studies, it's still interesting stuff.
Posted by: adrian at June 3, 2009 10:54 AM
England's junior sporting year tends to run parrallel to the school year which goes from 1 September to 31 August. This would make the junior cut off date for the next year group 1 September rather than 1 January. Do the stats show any difference if that cut off date is applied to your criteria?
Posted by: Shar_17 at June 3, 2009 10:57 AM
Interesting article!
Yes, you're right, in India, schools start an academic year in June-July. Inter-school tournaments are also held in this period. So e.g., someone born in April 2000 would be in the same year(class) as someone born in July 1999.
Posted by: Andy at June 3, 2009 11:02 AM
You would be right in thinking southern hemisphere countries have a different cut off date. In NZ at least, it is beneficial to be born in Sept-Dec to be the 'bigger lads' in the age group.
Posted by: Vijaykumar Patil at June 3, 2009 11:34 AM
Date of birth doesn't really matter in cricket. I do not think it is required to even check which month who borned. What really matters in cricket is ability to overpower the oposition by ur physical and mental power.
Posted by: Rehan at June 3, 2009 11:50 AM
South Africa is confused. It changes between different sports and even different competetions. Sometimes its Jan 1 and sometimes its Sep 1.
Posted by: Greenstone Lobo at June 3, 2009 1:01 PM
Interesting article.
Instead of just analysing the birthdates, if you also include the year and do the complete horoscope analysis...you can actually get accurate results.
I have been doing the same since long and have got good results.
You can see most of my astrological predictions on Cricket and Football in my website www.knowurpeople.com
I would be posting a prediction on who will win the ICC Twenty 20 cup, this sunday.
Posted by: chaim at June 3, 2009 1:33 PM
with the age groups systems in effect, boys born in the latter part of the year will go into school later. Eg boy born in May 1993 will go to school beore a boy born in Nov 1993. This will give them the age advantage and get them into older squads
Posted by: Rishi Singh at June 3, 2009 2:27 PM
While you are at it, you can look at what colour underwear the players used when they were growing up!!
Posted by: ashish at June 3, 2009 3:47 PM
Picking up how most great batsman are short, i think it stands for most sports- all of these greats are/were under 6'
bradman 5' 7"
pele 5' 8"
nicklaus 5' 10"
Sobers 5'11"
Best 5' 8"
maradona 5'5"
Lara 5' 8"
Tyson 5'11"
viv 5'10"
Marshall 5'10"
Having said all that what about
Woods? 6'1"
Ali? 6'3"
B Ruth? 6'2"
British legendary boxer once said 'a good big one is always better than a good little one'
what do you think?
Posted by: Roz at June 3, 2009 8:51 PM
This theory would also apply to academic achievements. In the UK is is definitely an advantage to be born between September and January, any later is certainly a disadvantage. The same applies to racehorses. Their official birthdays are the first of January, this is regardless of when they may actually have been born. So a foal born in February or March has a distinct advantage over a May foal. So there is no reason why the same should not apply to young people in the sports arena.
Posted by: myth_buster at June 3, 2009 11:11 PM
The essence of Gladwell is completely lost on the author.
1) Need to take a basic statistics course, to present hypothesis & prove/disprove them scientifically (statistical significance and what not) instead of eyeballing them.
2) In the sub-continent, cricketers don't come out of a structured school program. Almost all of them come out of gallis or local coaching camps where birthdays make absolutely no sense.
Posted by: Ruschil at June 3, 2009 11:19 PM
Unique topic! As someone else did mention, school terms run from June-September. It could validate the theory. However, could we compare the results against demographic data such as average no. of births per country in the first vs second half of a calendar year? Or is the data set too large, such that we assume it to be evenly distributed? I typically find that there are more births in the latter half of calendar yrs...probably because Valentine's day falls in Feb!
Posted by: Brian at June 4, 2009 1:41 AM
A lot of the top test cricketers were born in the latter months of the year and a lot were born in the month of October. Some examples of top test cricketers include: Richie Benaud Oct 6, Tony Grieg Oct 6, Ray Lindwill Oct 3, Geoff Boycott Oct 21, plus numerous others.
Posted by: Sanjay at June 4, 2009 1:50 AM
Well put forward I should say, at the first glance I started laughing at the heading, but now I am convinced :D
Posted by: KRFTW at June 4, 2009 6:53 AM
I have read the book Outliers and I completely accept this theory to be true. It is interesting that the birth date in cricket is reverse to Gladwell's theory. This could be because of the season that cricket is played in. Since cricket is played in the summer and the cut off date is in the summer, the players who are born in winter, which is reverse for the northern and southern hemisphere, thus explaining england's exception, would allow them to grow for longer than summer born children.
Posted by: Michael Jeh at June 4, 2009 8:12 AM
Thanks for the comments thus far. England's stats may confuse the overall trend so I can't pretend the theory holds true for them. In fact, I'm not totally convinced that my proposition has any scientific merit for any country but with India, Australia and NZ, it's either a big coincidence (which can happen) or there's some reason why it's skewed so heavily in one direction. In hindsight, I probably should have looked at Sept 1 to Feb 28 and then March 1 to Aug 30. It might have told a more interesting story.
In Australia, kids do start making rep teams at U13 sort of age and most of them keep making rep teams till U19 age. I'm not sure how the Indian system operates so I'm only guessing that there must be some sort of cut-off for junior squad selection. Is there?
No one denies that the guys who make it have talent. The question is: did the gap widen through more opportunities and did we lose a lot of talent when younger boys got discouraged and left the game? We'll never know.
Posted by: Ranjeet at June 4, 2009 10:01 AM
we can't compare the talent according to there dob,talent comes from hard work,dedication and individuals commitment.All the great players achieved success because of there hard work not just because of there dob.
Posted by: GP at June 4, 2009 12:13 PM
What about individual dates. Being born on November 24th seems to be a good start in life if Ian Botham, Ken Barrington, Herbert Sutcliffe, Fred Titmuss, Neil McKenzie, Romesh Kaluwitharana...and me(!) are anything to go by! But as many have said, in England there is a distinct advantage to being born after September 1st, both academically and in a sporting sense when age group sport is governed by the school year.
Posted by: Prakriti at June 4, 2009 1:25 PM
I do not know, but perhaps a further analysis could help on zodiac signs? Three of India's best captains have been Cancerians. Sunil Gavaskar. Sourav Ganguly. MS Dhoni (on his way). Something to that theory?
Posted by: Vamshee at June 4, 2009 3:23 PM
I agree, the essense of Outliers is the same i.e., statistical and analytical the more you work hard more you succeed and all it says is practice, practice and only practice. Best example is Sachin Tendulkar even after 20 years in international cricket he plays with the same intensity and interest and above all practises a lot. Ofcourse there is little bit of luck factor but enthusiasim and interest is the key.
Posted by: Anonymous at June 4, 2009 4:10 PM
too small of a sample group to draw any meaningful conclusions from.
Posted by: Nirmal Jayaram at June 4, 2009 6:07 PM
In case you have heard of something called a Paired t-test, I did one on your sample of current squad ages. Turns out there is inconclusive evidence that cricketers are born during one period or the other (for null hypothesis: there is no true difference in the mean number of cricketers born during either period; p-value = 0.35 - can't reject null hypothesis). Not to say the current sample may not 'visually' indicate that. Just not statistically useful :(
Posted by: Raka at June 5, 2009 12:10 AM
Excellent article. I've read the book and seen Gladwell present the Hockey cutoff theory live. Nice to see it being done in terms of cricket. The only problem in countries like India, Bangladesh, South Africa, Windies, etc. is that the general poverty level of most of the cricket playing populace overshadows the advantages of DOB.
Posted by: Raj at June 5, 2009 2:30 AM
In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell discussed a correlation between date of birth and the SYSTEM that is used to select athletes, in hockey, for example.
To take the date of birth in isolation and out of this context, is not to use it the same way Gladwell used it.
Posted by: Salman Akbar at June 5, 2009 4:19 AM
Yes its not suitable to compare the performance with the DOB, because for achieving success need sincerity, passion devotion, hardwork, consistency and all these could not be achived by luck, birth and DOB
Posted by: Vikram Maingi at June 5, 2009 7:05 AM
Agree to what Ranjeet has said, but some people have god gifted talent and some inherit it too.
Posted by: Anonymous at August 5, 2009 8:54 AM
7th Cross
Posted by: sean at September 10, 2009 11:00 AM
The cut off date for junior cricket in Victoria, Australia is September 1.
Samir Chopra lives in Brooklyn and teaches Computer Science and Philosophy at the City University of New York; his academic interests include the philosophical foundations of artificial intelligence and the politics of technology. In his third undergraduate year, he captained Mathematics in the departmental cricket competition (and lost to Chemistry in the first round). Samir played C-grade cricket in Sydney and makes guest appearances for his old club when possible (and desirable). Samir runs the blog Eye on Cricket and the cricket page at The Faster Times.
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