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Muttiah Muralitharan: on top of the charts
© AFP
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The post on "Bowler Consistency" received many comments, some silly, some sceptical, some dismissive, some appreciative and some happy at the thinking process it initiated. There were many relevant comments, which warrant a follow-up post.
First of all, an apology to the readers. I used "spell" when I really meant "innings spell". A spell is an uninterrupted stint of bowling. What I really meant was the bowling done during an innings. So I have coined an alternate term called "innspell" which is exactly what it means, the complete bowling effort during an innings, often consisting of multiple spells. Many thanks to the readers who took me to task on this issue.
There were many relevant comments on bowler strike-rates and other pertinent measures such as bowling support, pressure situations, bowling accuracy etc. I do not want to mix up the criteria. Bowler strike-rate is not to be confused with the ability of bowlers to be more consistent. That is one of the most important of bowler measures and warrants a separate post. A similar situation exists with the other measures as well.
I am also determined that I will keep the analysis as simple as when the post started. Finally, one factor should not be forgotten: what I have stated is that if a spin bowler bowls 11 overs or above and takes at least a wicket, this innspell is considered to be a success as compared to a bowler who bowls a similar innspell and comes out wicketless. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with this statement.
However the one comment which also impressed me a lot was the suggestion to reward bowlers for taking more than one wicket in an innsspell. Hence I have added a simple linear weightage factor to a successful innsspell. For each wicket captured, a weightage of 10% is given. Thus a 1-wkt capture makes this value as 1.1, 2-wkt capture as 1.2 and so on upto the two 10-wicket captures of Laker and Kumble as 2.0. This tweak should satisfy most readers. The Bowler Consistency Index value is computed as a % of "number of relevant spells x 2.0".
Readers will note that this method will increase the consistency ratings of bowlers who have captured more wickets in their career. An alternative would have been to consider a one-wickett haul to have a value of 1.0 and anything more as 1.1. This would still have left the disparity between insspells which fetched two wickets, and those that fetched more than two.
The most significant comment was that 30 innspells are not sufficient. The lowering of the bar has allowed quite a few relatively insignificant bowlers to walk through at the expense of bowlers who have served for longer periods. Hence I have raised the bar, and considered only the bowlers who have bowled a minimum of 50 innspells, which translates to around 30 Tests, possibly 4-5 years of Test cricket. A total of 143 bowlers have qualified under this criteria compared to 276 bowlers with the lower cut-off.
There were a few (mostly unwarranted) comments on Mervyn Dillon. He has taken 131 wickets in 38 Tests, not a bad haul. Just taking a "wickets per Test" criterion, he is ahead of more well-known bowlers such as Derek Underwood, Kapil Dev, Vaas, Zaheer Khan, Daniel Vettori, Sarfraz Nawaz, Michael Kasprowicz and S Venkataraghavan. Comments should be made only after verifying facts and making allowance for his playing in a weak West Indies team all his career.
The revised table is given below.
Bowler Consistency Analysis (Revised with weightage) - Min 50 relevant spells
<----Innspells---->
SNo Bowler Bow Ctry Mat Relevant Successful BCIdx Wkts Wkt/IS
Total
1.Muralitharan M ROB Slk 118 201 267.3 66.49 723 3.60
2.Grimmett C.V RLB Aus 37 66 84.6 64.09 216 3.27
3.Kumble A RLB Ind 125 215 262.4 61.02 604 2.81
4.Hadlee R.J RFM Nzl 86 138 168.1 60.91 431 3.12
5.Bedi B.S LSP Ind 67 107 129.6 60.56 266 2.49
6.Warne S.K RLB Aus 145 250 302.8 60.56 708 2.83
7.Donald A.A RF Saf 72 124 150.0 60.48 330 2.66
8.Trueman F.S RF Eng 67 115 138.7 60.30 307 2.67
9.Lillee D.K RF Aus 70 124 149.5 60.28 355 2.86
10.Gupte S.P RLB Ind 36 54 64.9 60.09 149 2.76
11.Dillon M RFM Win 38 55 66.1 60.09 131 2.38
12.Imran Khan RF Pak 88 125 150.2 60.08 362 2.90
13.MacGill S.C.G RLB Aus 42 76 91.3 60.07 203 2.67
14.Wasim Akram LFM Pak 104 161 192.4 59.75 414 2.57
15.Danish Kaneria RLB Pak 51 84 100.0 59.52 220 2.62
16.Croft C.E.H RF Win 27 50 59.5 59.50 125 2.50
17.Chandrasekhar B.S RLB Ind 58 87 103.2 59.31 242 2.78
18.Saqlain Mushtaq ROB Pak 49 78 91.8 58.85 208 2.67
19.Gough D RF Eng 58 91 106.9 58.74 229 2.52
20.Laker J.C ROB Eng 46 77 90.3 58.64 193 2.51
21.Trumble H ROB Aus 32 53 62.1 58.58 141 2.66
22.Ambrose C.E.L RF Win 98 164 191.5 58.38 405 2.47
23.Marshall M.D RF Win 81 147 171.6 58.37 376 2.56
24.Bishop I.R RF Win 43 67 78.1 58.28 161 2.40
25.Cork D.G RFM Eng 37 57 66.1 57.98 131 2.30
(Click here for the full table.)
Muralitharan is on top, followed by Grimmett, Kumble, Hadlee and Bedi. This is not a bad quintet. The next five bowlers are Warne, Donald, Trueman, Lillee and Subash Gupte. There should be no complaints there either. The top 25 table now includes most bowling stalwarts, which should satisfy most readers. The weightage of values and raising the cut-off bar has taken away most of the lesser, shorter-duration bowlers.
I have added another variable, the average wickets per innspell, which is indicative of the bowler performance. Muralitharan is way ahead of the other bowlers, having taken 3.6 wickets per innspell. Compare the numbers for some of the other greats. Donald - 2.66, Kumble - 2.81, Pollock - 2.30, Warne - 2.83, Lillee - 2.86 and Ambrose - 2.47. It shows what a wonderful wicket-taking bowler Muralitharan is, even if you concede that the bowler at the other end was not always competing with him in taking wickets. Note also that Flintoff is the only bowler in the top-50 whose wickets per innsspell figure is less than two.
The unfortunate aspect of increasing the cut-off is that this has excluded the pre-World War I all-time greats such as Sydney Barnes, George Lohmann etc. In order to be fair to these great bowlers I have given below a list of five such pre-WW I bowlers.
Barnes S.F RFM Eng 27 48 64.9 67.60 189 3.94
Lohmann G.A RFM Eng 18 32 40.2 62.81 112 3.50
Giffen G ROB Aus 31 35 43.3 61.86 103 2.94
Briggs J LSP Eng 33 42 51.8 61.67 118 2.81
Blythe C LSP Eng 19 35 43.0 61.43 100 2.86
Look at Barnes' wickets per innspell figure - it is higher than Muralitharan's.
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Shane Bond has never gone wicketless in an innings in Test cricket
© Getty Images
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The batsmen tend to get analysed lot more and it is now the turn of Test bowlers. Two not-so-normal measures will be discussed in the next two posts.
Bowler consistency
How does one measure a Test bowler's consistency. Complex statistical measures will neither indicate the real consistency nor be understood by all. If I pepper this article with words such as Sigma, Skew, Mean deviation or Variance, I would have lost more than half the readers. What is needed is a cricketing definition of consistency and a simple easy-to-understand methodology which will be understood by all readers.
What makes a consistent bowler? The answer is easy: one who bowls good spells most of the time. How does one define a good spell? There are many definitions, most of which would be too subjective. The only objective measure we have is the "wickets captured" information. The importance of taking wickets in Test matches is also incorporated in this computation.
Taking the 1860-plus Tests which have been played so far, on an average a pace bowler takes a wicket every 66 balls, while the strike-rate for a spinner is 80 balls. At the two extremes are George Lohmann, with a strike-rate of 34, and Carl Hooper with a strike-rate (if you can define it thus) of 120. Taking all these factors into consideration, I have taken 66 balls in an innings for the pace bowlers and 78 balls for spinners as base figures to determine whether a bowler has bowled a relevant spell or not.
First we determine the number of relevant spells, which is defined as an innings in which a bowler has - depending on whether he is a spinner or a fast bowler - bowled at least 78 or 66 balls, or an innings in which the bowler has captured a wicket or more. Then we determine the number of successful spells - the bowling stints in which the bowler has taken at least one wicket. We then derive the Bowler Consistency Index. In ODIs, a wicketless spell, such as Kapil Dev's 7.0-4-4-0 against West Indies could be an outstanding one because of the economy factor, but not in Tests. A bowler such as Bapu Nadkarni in 1964 in Chennai with a spell of 32-27-5-0 would today be booed off, as also Ken Barrington and Brian Bolus, the immobile batsmen.
Let us see the table. These are current upto the fourth test between Australia and India in Adelaide.
Bowler Consistency Analysis - Min 30 spells
No Bowler Bow Team Mat <------Spells-----> Consistency
Relevant Successful Index
1. Bond S.E RFM Nzl 17 30 30 100.00
2. Jones S.P RFM Eng 18 30 30 100.00
3. Reid B.A LFM Aus 27 39 38 97.44
4. Muralitharan M ROB Slk 118 201 195 97.01
5. Miller C.R ROB Aus 18 30 29 96.67
6. Dillon M RFM Win 38 55 53 96.36
7. Bedi B.S LSP Ind 67 107 103 96.26
8. Barnes S.F RFM Eng 27 48 46 95.83
9. Grimmett C.V RLB Aus 37 66 63 95.45
10. Briggs J LSP Eng 33 42 40 95.24
11. Adcock N.A.T RF Saf 26 41 39 95.12
12. Donald A.A RF Saf 72 124 117 94.35
13. Blythe C LSP Eng 19 35 33 94.29
14. Giffen G ROB Aus 31 35 33 94.29
15. Vincent C.L LSP Saf 25 35 33 94.29
16. Flintoff A RFM Eng 67 101 95 94.06
17. Croft C.E.H RF Win 27 50 47 94.00
18. Kumble A RLB Ind 125 215 202 93.95
19. Lever J.K LFM Eng 21 33 31 93.94
20. Trueman F.S RF Eng 67 115 108 93.91
21. Wasim Akram LFM Pak 104 161 151 93.79
22. Steyn D.W RFM Saf 18 32 30 93.75
23. Tauseef Ahmed ROB Pak 34 47 44 93.62
24. Robins R.W.V RLB Eng 19 31 29 93.55
25. MacGill S.C.G RLB Aus 42 76 71 93.42
(Click here for the full table.)
The two injury-prone speedsters Shane Bond and Simon Jones have bowled 30 successful spells in their career, a 100% record. In fact Bond has the unique distinction of never having gone wicketless in an innings in his entire career: his three sub-11-over spells have also been fruitful. Muralitharan has bowled over 200 spells and has gone wicketless in only six of these, which is the very definition of consistency. Then we have a few vintage greats. Bishan Bedi Allan Donald are in the top 15. Andrew Flintoff, Anil Kumble, Wasim Akram and Stuart MacGill are in the top 25.
Note the very high degree of consistency of otherwise pedestrian bowlers like Mervyn Dillon, Colin Miller and Tauseef Ahmed.
Just as a matter of interest, the last five bowlers in this group are listed below. The last two places are filled, as expected, by one part-timer from West Indies, known more for his batting prowess, and an Australian spinner of limited skills.
Julien B.D LSP Win 24 40 27 67.50
Mackay K.D RFM Aus 37 39 26 66.67
Whittall G.J RFM Zim 46 38 25 65.79
Hooper ROB Win 102 99 64 64.65
Bright SLA Aus 25 31 20 64.52
The six unsuccessful spells of Muralitharan are given below. Note the long gap between such rare instances, especially between 1999 and 2006, when he went 55 Tests without missing out even once.
1306 1995 Pak 17.0 3 53 0
1358 1997 Nzl 33.0 6 136 0
1387 1997 Ind 46.0 9 137 0
1416 1998 Nzl 23.0 9 33 0
1474 1999 Zim 24.0 6 51 0
and after 7 years
1796 2006 Pak 13.0 3 46 0
In view of the number of comments made, I have tried to answer these in the blog itself.
1. This is only an "invented" common-sense based analysis. Do not read more into this than that.
2. If we do a list of triple-centurions, we will have Lawrence Rowe, Bob Cowper and John Edrich in that list. We will not have Tendulkar, Dravid, Ponting and Richards there. Does it make them any less greater batsmen. Take this list like that.
3. Maybe 30 spells is too low. It shoud be increased to 50 spells. However I could not resist the temptation to include Bond (for his pure career).
4.What I have written here is a simple definition of consistency which is totally different to strike rate or bowling average or bowling accuracy. If a batsman scores 100 and 0, and another batsman scores 40 and 40, the later would be considered more consistent while the former's average would be higher. Similarly a bowler who has captured 20 wickets in 5 tests at the rate of 4 wickets per test would be considered more consistent than one who captures 8, 0, 8, 0, and 8 wickets even though the later might have captured more wickets at possibly better strike rate.
5. I have used "spell" to denote the bowling effort during an innings for want of a suitable word. A more apt word might be "Innings analysis".
6. The next blog will answer some of the questions raised.
7. A full list of qualifying bowlers will be made available shortly so that readers can check all the bowlers themselves. The list has been mailed individually to readers whose comments indicated a need to look at such a list.
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