Cricket, more than almost any other sport, lends itself perfectly to analyses by numbers. The game has enough stats to satiate the most voracious appetite but there are so many delightfully different ways of looking at them that there’s always scope for debates, arguments and opinions. It Figures is a forum to rake up all those arguments, but also to delight in the quirks of all the trivia that so much stats can throw up. Read on ...
A great addition to Cricinfo. I love trivia, especially when it comes to cricket trivia. S Rajesh does great analysis on the site and I look forward to more number crunching of obscure and interesting factoids and trivia at this blog in the future.
Posted by: Paul at January 15, 2008 9:06 AM
I'm not a statistician by any means, so this may be faulty for any number of reasons, but I've always wondered whether there is a statistical way to analyse disputes about bowlers who are argued to have taken "easy wickets" either against the tail or weaker teams.
Could this be done by calculating the mean of the career averages of each batsman dismissed by a given bowler to give a "wicket value" figure, and then multiplying by career wickets for that bowler? Career batting average seems the fairest approach, as opposed to the batsman's average at the time of dismissal, as it will iron out some of the anomalies of dismissing people in their first innings in cricket (and should make the number crunching somewhat easier).
Admittedly, you can't get the final figure for any bowler until not only they have retired, but every batsman that they ever dismissed as well, but presumably you could analyse the current figures for all bowlers with 400+ career wickets.
Posted by: Prakash at February 11, 2008 9:55 AM
Is it possible to quantify who were the better fielders are based on the statistics that are available? ie catches, stumpings and possibly run outs
Y Anantha Narayanan has over 35 years of IT background. Over the past 15 years, he has been concentrating on Cricket analysis and software development. He has been involved with StumpVision, Wisden, Hallmark Software and his own site www.thirdslip.com during this period.
David Barry was cricket-starved when teaching English in France, and
study of cricket stats was his only way to stay sane. He is now back
in Brisbane, Australia, and working towards a PhD in Physics. He once
played for the worst team in the G-division of Muscat's cricket
league.
After doing an MBA in marketing and working in an advertising agency, S Rajesh decided that his skills might be put to better use by number-crunching on cricket. He hasn’t regretted that decision in the last six years, and edits the Numbers Game column on cricinfo.com every Friday.
Andrew Samson had his moments with bat and ball, once scoring 43 and taking 3 for 14 with his legbreaks, but he was much better at arithmetic, which explains why he is where he is today. Andrew has been keeping cricket stats since the days when it used to be done with pen and paper, and has been involved in scoring/stats for Radio and TV since 1987. He has been Cricket South Africa's official statistician since1994.
A former scientist and occasional TV quiz champion, Charles Davis now works full time at sports statistics in Melbourne.
His only real contribution to the Test record books came at age 4, when he formed part of the record 90,800 crowd
who saw West Indies at the MCG in 1961. He has two books to his credit, and claims to be the only cricket statistician
ever who has been quoted in the New York Times and in Australian Federal Parliament on the same day. Not to be
confused with the West Indian batsman Charlie Davis, especially in terms of ability.
Having just taken early retirement as a Mathematics teacher in Hobart, Ric
Finlay now fully devotes his time to recording cricket, both past and
present, for the popular CSW cricket database, along with his colleague
David Fitzgerald (www.tastats.com.au). His interest in the game is
inversely proportional to his ability as a player, but he did once score a
century after being dropped at 3 and running out three of his team-mates.
His first memory of international cricket is the 1962-63 MCC tour of
Australia, described as one of the most boring ever. Totally fascinated, he
was instantly hooked, and has never looked back. Author of three books on
cricket of a historical nature, he has provided statistics and scored for
radio and television cricket coverage since 1983.
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