
November 18, 2009
Least number of absences over a long career
Posted by Ananth501 -
2 days, 13 hours ago in Trivia

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Allan Border missed only one Test during a period in which Australia played 157
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| A chance remark by Shankar Narayanan of New Delhi provided the spark for this article. He wanted me to look at the fact that Dravid was rarely injured and almost never missed a Test. I started thinking about and it struck me that I could not even tell when Dravid missed a Test, if ever he did. I knew that Kapil Dev missed a single Test, courtesy Gavaskar, and I started work. Thanks to Shankar for providing the spark.
I decided that I would do this analysis for both Tests and ODIs. And as I started the work, the idea of doing a combined Test+ODIs analysis also seemed feasible especially as I have already done done a lot of work regarding the forthcoming combined batting/bowling analyses.
First let us see why players miss matches.
1. They are injured. This is the most common reason.
2. They opt out. Dhoni did that during the tour of Sri Lanka and a host of English and Australian players have done so for subcontinent tours during the early days. Not now, though, with so much money being available here. Continue reading "Least number of absences over a long career"
Comments (16)
November 6, 2009
What's a reasonable winning score in ODIs?
Posted by Ananth501 -
2 weeks ago in ODIs

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Sachin Tendulkar's outstanding 175 against Australia in Hyderabad meant another huge total was almost chased down
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I did an analysis on a winning target score in T20s and many subsequent matches showed how close the results of my analysis were. So I have embarked on doing a similar analysis for ODI matches. For ODIs there are a lot more matches available for analysis.
First some exclusions. For obvious reasons, I am going to exclude "Abandoned" matches, "No-result" matches (100 in all), matches which were decided on previous "revised score" rules (56 matches ), the more recent "Duckworth-Lewis" rules (101 matches) and a few incomplete innings. The reason is that the D/L and similar situations distort the scores quite a bit. If a team scores 300 and loses to another team which scores 150 in 20 overs, nothing can be inferred from the match. That leaves us 2659 matches for analysis.
I have taken the first innings scores, grouped these into run ranges and tabulated the results. Then I have derived some conclusions on winning target scores by inspecting and interpreting the results. Continue reading "What's a reasonable winning score in ODIs?"
Comments (26)
October 26, 2009
Analysing bowlers in Test wins
Posted by Ananth501 -
3 weeks, 4 days ago in Tests - bowling

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Muttiah Muralitharan has taken more than 40% of Sri Lanka's wickets in the Tests they've won
© AFP
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| A few days back I posted an article on the runs scored by batsmen in winning cause. A number of comments were received which indicated that the batting averages in winning Tests is a very important indicator. I have done the work but will post the tables in a later article since I want to do justice to the bowlers. In fact the bowlers' analysis is as different from the batsmen analysis as chalk and cheese.
The reason is very simple and fundamental. Look at the following two Tests.
In 1932, Australia scored 153 runs in the match and WON.
South Africa:36 & 45.
Australia: 153.
In 1921, England scored 817 runs in the match and LOST.
Australia: 354 & 582.
England: 447 & 370.
The common thread running through these two extreme matches is that the winning team captured 20 wickets. This is the mandatory requirement of all wins, barring a few matches in which there might have been declarations or retired-hurt situations.
Continue reading "Analysing bowlers in Test wins"
Comments (17)
October 12, 2009
How far ahead is the top one - part II
Posted by Ananth501 -
on 10/12/2009 in Tests - bowling

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Dale Steyn has the second-best strike rate among bowlers with at least 100 Test wickets
© AFP
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| How far ahead is the top player in any list is a key point to answering the question of whether a high mark set by a player will be reached. I had earlier done a similar analysis for batting. Now I have taken a few Test bowling measures and created a table of the Top-100, subject to qualifying criteria, and assigned each position a percentage relative to the top position. A perusal of these tables will give an idea of the degree of permanence of the top places.
If an active player is at the top of an all-time list, he keeps on widening the gap on the second placed player, unless otherwise the top two or three are also active. This true of the aggregate type of measures. On the other hand in performance related measures, it does not matter since it is possible for later players to catch up with the particular measure. Continue reading "How far ahead is the top one - part II"
Comments (24)
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