Adam Gilchrist vs Herschelle Gibbs?

Our expert delves into some interesting player comparisons and brings you an analysis of a batsman’s ‘beta’ value.

This is a misleading title, but I hope it is at least intriguing.

What sort of comparison can we make between Adam Gilchrist and Herschelle Gibbs? Well, both are aggressive openers, both have left their very best days behind them, and both open for Deccan Chargers leaving poor old VVS Laxman behind.

So let’s talk of their brand of aggression. Gilchrist likes to get on from the very first ball; if Gilchrist scores a century, you expect his first 50 to be a lot faster than his next 50. Also, the longer Gilchrist stays at the crease, the more likely he appears to get out. With Gibbs, the opposite is likely to be the case. He looks vulnerable to start with, but the longer he stays, the less likely he seems to get out.

Gilchrist explodes early, Gibbs tends to explode late. Remember the amazing momentum Gibbs gave South Africa in their record-breaking ODI chase?

And remember how Gilchrist blew away a wonderful opportunity to hit the first ODI double century long before Sachin Tendulkar reached that pinnacle?

Let’s consider another ODI comparison: Ricky Ponting vs Sachin Tendulkar. Ricky Ponting tends to kick off much faster: he has usually scored 12-15 runs in the first 10 balls in faces: a pulled boundary, a few energetically run 2s characterize Ponting’s arrival at the crease. But the longer he stays, the more he starts looking vulnerable. Tendulkar, on the other hand, is always more circumspect when he starts off an ODI innings. A bad ball will be driven for a four, but Tendulkar always gives himself a few balls to settle down. We associate Tendulkar more with rousing finishes (remember Sharjah in 1998, or remember how quickly he advanced from 120 to 170 in his double ton innings recently). The longer Tendulkar bats in ODIs, the more confident you feel about his durability.

Finally, think of someone like Mohd Azharuddin (Remember him? Remember his enchanting artistry?) or Jacques Kallis. These are batsmen who bat with practically the same momentum and vulnerability right through their ODI innings. They appear to bat with the same attitude whether they are facing their 5th ball or their 55th.

In a remarkable analysis, undertaken a few years ago, MRLN Panchanana and T Krishnan (who taught me statistics 35 years ago at Indian Statistical Institute) asked the following question: What is the relationship between a batsman’s score and his chance of getting out in ODI cricket?

We won’t get into the specifics of how the duo fitted a Weibull distribution to the ODI scores of the leading ODI batsmen around 2000, but we’ll merely say that it all boils down to a batsman’s ‘beta’ value: a beta value more than 1 means that the more runs a batsman scores, the more likely he is to get out. A beta value of less than 1 means the opposite; the more the batsman scores, the less likely he is to get out.

The table below lists the ‘beta’ values of some leading ODI batsmen. Notice that Gilchrist has a ‘beta’ value of 1.16, while Gibbs has a value of 0.93. This seems to confirm the impression that we have formed about their batting styles.