The idea of comparing a player's strike rate to the strike rate of others during the duration of their career is a great way to control for a lot of factors. I'm excited to see the new avenues that opens up for comparing other measures, like you mentioned. You must have quite an extensive database if you can whip up an analysis like this.

Keep the great posts coming, Ananth!

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Aneesh
If I get two such ideas per article, I am ready to receive and process 200 other mails which do not contribute anything. I remember your earlier mail on Standard Error of the Mean which explained quite a bit.
I have built up a new Database segment dedicated to the Peer Career values and can do quite a lot with that. Once again my thanks to Abdulla.
Ananth:
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Great analysis... and good to see two fearless Indians in top three. This truely proves that Kapil could hit it better than others, and also proves that Sehwag is a true modern great

Hi Ananth,

I think you can create another table showing the change in RPO of team with/without contribution of individual player. eg. In matches shahid afridi played, say pakistan's RPO is 4.86. If we remove his contribution, that might drop to 4.60. This table will show the contribtuion the player alone has made in increasing(or in rare case decreasing.eg.Geoff marsh) the RPO of his team. I think topping this will be proper batsmen whose scoring rate is high eg.Richards, Sachin, Gilcrist etc.

Arjun.
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Arjun
My first table is a similar one in that it showed the comparisons in matches between batsman's scoring rate and others' scoring rate. It might not be presented in the way you have indicated but the key elements are there.
Ananth:
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It's great to see Zaheer Abbas recognised - I think he's one of the most under-rated batsmen of my lifetime.

If and when you do get around to expanding the analysis to include average (or ideally Ball per Dismissal) then I would not be at all surprised to find that Abbas moves up to 2nd place behind the incomparable Viv Richards.

Thanks for the analysis.
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Jeff
When the rest of the world, barring couple of players like Richards/Kapil, were scoring at -70+, Zaheer scored at around 80, almost all the runs with that silken touch of his.
Ananth:
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Hi Ananth,

The table i was saying goes like this.
Shahid Afridi. OB Runs-49132, OB Balls-65461. TeamRR without is 4.50.
After adding his contribution, Team runs -54774, Team balls-70544, TeamRR with is 4.66.
Diff. is +0.16.

For Viv Richards, TeamRR without is 4.00, TeamRR with is 4.23. Diff. is +0.23.

This list will show Viv Richards above Shahid Afridi even though Afridi's SRate is 20 runs more than Richards.

Arjun.
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Arjun
Will study this in detail and maybe do a later post.
Ananth:
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i think Arjun's idea is very appropriate. It will show the contribution of greats like Viv, Sachin and Sanath , whose fast run scoring has really made a difference, as opposed to Shahid or Kapil ( of course Kapil could really BOWL and was a great all rounder and watching Shahid is a lot of fun...)
Plus your analysis of Player strike rate vs Striking rate of his peers is also a great idea,shows how far ahead Viv was of his pears and how Sanath's hitting totally changed the game.

These new tables are very good indeed , certainly better than the last one. Its good to see that a player like steve tikolo who figured close to the top in the previous table inspite of a strike rate of .76 due to his presence in a poor team has been pushed downwards in the new table. Also contemporaries in the same team such as sehwag-yuvraj and gilchrist-symonds have gone up the table as they were bringing each other down in the previous analysis.

keep it up ananth!!!

talking about arjun's posts, it certainly is an interesting observation. it probably has to do with the fact that each viv richards' innings lasts about 50 balls whereas afridi hangs around for a mere 21 balls on an average. thus richards contributes much more runs to the team total though with a lower strike rate than afridi and hence has a larger impact on the team's overall runrate
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Pradeep/Anuraag
I agree on the intrinsic quality of Arjun's suggestion. As I have mentioned in my reply to Arjun, let me look at it later. I have delayed the Test Bowler post long enough. Cannot delay it any longer.
Ananth:
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Hi Ananth

Thanks for incorporating the suggestion I made. I certainly opens up avenues for further analyses in terms of batting averages, bowling averages, strike rates etc.

as pointed out by anurag as well, this list pushes down the players like tikolo, who were high up on the list just because they played in a weak team, while it has helped players like gilchrist etc. to move up the table.

your analyses are always a joy to read. cant wait for bowlers' analysis

Arjun, Ananth
The v.good idea by Arjun needs to be expressed as a percentage.
It gives a much better indicator of the impact of individual strike rate on team.i.e. in the Afridi e.g. The diff. of 0.16 requires to be expressed as a percentage of 4.5. Just the No. “0.16” on its own will be insufficient. This provides an indicator of the “value added” by individual player strikerate to the team.
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Al
You are correct. Maybe both comparisons are needed. I will also look at doing this for the Bowlers' RpO measure also, in a future article.
Ananth:
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'Kartik' and 'Karthik' are different readers, I am the one who provided that suggestions - no 'h' in my name. Anyway, thanks for thinking of my suggestion.

Actually, these changes do make a huge difference for India, as Yuvraj and Dhoni have leapt into the Top-20. India's ODI batting lineup in the last few years has been among the very best ever, routinely covering the fact that India's fielding costs it another 30 runs per opposition innings relative to Australian or South African fielding.

This type of analysis finally give credit to Kapil Dev. What was remarkable was that his ODI strike rate was the highest of any pre-Afridi player, but simultaneously his bowling economy rate was just about the BEST. Only Hadlee, Garner and a couple of others were better. No other player comes close in terms of batting strike rate vs. bowling economy rate. He really was the perfect ODI player, on BOTH ends. A batting strike rate of 93% vs. a bowling economy rate of 62%. Stupendous.
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Kartik
I myself have been guilty and must take care.
Ananth:
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Inevitably the list is dominated by power hitters(those who can't play long innings but hit balls with sheer power) or openers.

So special credit goes to Sir Viv and Yuvraj Singh. They are not openers and played long innings and still in the list.

hiii ananth, again u made a good extension to very good analysis. thank you very much.. Would you pls give us same analysis with average as a criteria...
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Kalyan
The availability of the Peer Players' Figures Database segment has opened up a whole lot of very interesting analysis on a P2P basis. Will do these over the next few weeks.
Ananth:
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Does this list rewards wooden-headed players who swing at everything without any responsibility?I don't think so but at a pinch, i can locate 5 to 6 of them at least in the top 10.Afridi, Kapil & Powell for starters. How many of Afridi's 16 dismissed off 8 balls that lost the game for Pakistan have been rewarded in this analysis when the team needed to score at only a "Yousufusque" 4.5 RPO to win the game.Would it be better to bring in some factors that acknowledges some player responsibility ? May be weights for strike-rates batting first or chasing a score. And benchmarking strike-rate to batting position.Sehwag's 101.9 may not be 36.5% better than others if his numbers are compared with the strike-rate of other opening batsmen, who also had similar license to slog the first few overs through a contrived set-piece formation.Having said all of this, there is no intention of trying to complicate things further
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Sky
This is a simple one (ir possibly two) dimensional analysis looking only at one aspect of ODI batting. Any further and it will slowly move into the best innings or best batsmen domain.
Witj people like Afridi one gets exasperated at his not stopping to think for a minute or two. However see the way he did that in the last two matches of the T20 WC. He and Kapil have their wonderful bowling acts to be considered.
I would say that if Afridi won one in 8 matches with his batting, it would be great since he is likely to win another in 8 matches with his bowling making it a 25% hit, a great achievement for a player.
Ananth:
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Ananth - Pls see if you can rate the batsmen according to the following "Distructiveness" measure: runs scored*strike rate. After all, an 80 ball 80 could be as damaging to the opponent as a 20 ball 40.
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Alex
One day when I do a ODI innings analysis this should be done.
Better idea would be 80 x (80/80) x (80/50) = 128 as against 40 x (40/20) x 1 = 80. The 50 is a line beyond which such credit is given. This could also be only for run-a-ball or better innings.

Ananth:
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Ananth - I had thought about the 50's factor but felt that it was not needed. For example, it dilutes the value of, say, Klusener's 30-odd run knocks in the '99 World Cup; those were absolutely crucial.

I do not think that the run-a-ball innings criterion should be applied since the pitch and playing conditions affect the strike rate.

hi Ananth.........i loved your original and re-worked test batsmen analysis and have been waiting weeks in excitement for the bowlers turn.
However have you considered this. Apart from the different time periods (which may or may not take into account pitch differences, equipment, fitness levels, frequency of matches etc) Have you decided to looked at or break down the different types of bowling. Unlike the batsman, bowlers are a very different breed. Your findings may well put Murali at the top of the pile but i would find it a little strange to see a table with... example Murali 1st Marshall 2nd Warne 3rd...etc. Fast bowling and spin bowling, i believe should be judged differently as they require different strengths and skills. This is completely different to the skills of an opener or a number 5 bat.

what you think.

best wishes as always.
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Eddy
I am sure you know my problems. Too many tables will certainly make the article difficult to read.
I will do one thing. In addition to the three tables I will have two tables, separating the spinners and others. That way people interested in looking at such a separation will be satisfied.
Regards
Ananth:
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Ananth - pls see if you can use my suggestion of the "distructiveness rating" and use it, as opposed to the rel. strike rate, in the exercises you did for Abdullah and Kartik/Karthik.
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Alex,
The great thing with my measure, and enhanced by Abdulla/Kartik is that it is a 100% comparison measure and all other measures do not enter the equaltion. The comparison is on a perfectly matches scenario, be it the pitch, bowlers, strategy, match conditions et al.
Your "Super-score" (have re-christened the same) measure has great relevance when determining the value of individual innings and then on to great batsmen et al. However it has to be added up over x no of innings, divided by x and then becomes like Batting average. Subject to the variations in relevent factors. Also the comparison can be only between batsmen not between batsman and team/match/peers as the current calculation does.
Ananth:
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Sometimes it's really that simple, isn't it? I feel a little stupid for not thinking of this myself/earlier, though.