Momentous collapses in ODI matches

This week, our expert delves into batting collapses in the 50-over version of the game and brings up some interesting statistics too.

During the recent India-Sri Lanka ODI series, Sri Lanka missed two great opportunities to win, but lost both.

In the first match at Rajkot, chasing 415 to win, they were 315 for 1 in 35 overs, lost their way a bit and finally finished 3 runs short. Their failure was minimal and was probably restricted to a few balls.

However, the real failure occurred in the third match at Cuttack. Sri Lanka were 165 for 1 in 22 overs and collapsed to 239. I felt this was as much a disaster as I had ever seen and such instances deserved a wider look.

Some guidelines for the analysis.

1. Only matches for which the Fall of Wkt-Balls information is available will be considered. For the earlier matches it is impossible to do this analysis. If a team collapsed from 150 for 1 to 200 all out, nothing can be inferred without knowing when the score of 150 for 1 was reached. If it was in the 42nd over, this cannot be termed as a collapse.

2. Only situations after 20 overs will be considered. This is necessary since a team scoring 100 for 1 in 10 overs could still lose 2/3 wickets and would have to consolidate. Also I want a decent part of the innings to pass before taking any calls on the estimated final score.

3. The score just before the fall of each wicket will be considered.

4. At this point an objective estimate of what should have been the final score is determined. This is based on the current scoring rate, resource available in terms of wickets available and overs left. Then the estimated score and the actual end-of-the-innings score are compared.

5. For each innings, all pre-wicket-fall situations are analysed and the highest deficit situation is taken.

The formula used is

Estimated score = Current score + (Remaining overs*Estimated scoring rate)

Estimated scoring rate = Current scoring rate * (10 - Wkts lost) / 6.

The Estimated scoring rate is capped, using common sense, depending on number of overs remaining since it would be silly to say that if a team is 150 for 1 in 20 overs and the estimated scoring rate is 10.0, the team would score 450 runs. This has been decided after a number of trial runs and manual comparisons of final scores. Real life educated guesses such as teams at 150 for 2 (or 1 or 0) doubling the score, have been used as guidelines.

The table below lists the 12 matches in which the greatest batting collapses occurred.

From a wonderful position of 100 for 1 in 20 overs, Zimbabwe collapsed to 150 to the wiles of Murali and Chandana. The estimated score is 325 runs, indicating a collapse valued at 175 runs.

In the second match, Canada, aided by Davison’s 60-ball century, were scoring at over 7.5 runs per over. Then they lost their way and were dismissed for 202, 170 runs short. The next match is a collapse by Kenya.

In the fourth match, Sri Lanka were high flying at 130 for 2 in 23.4 overs and then folded at 175, a fall of 147 runs.

In the fifth match, India were cruising at 105 for 2 in 20 overs and then floundered against Angelo Mathews, who took 6 wickets. They folded for 168, a shortfall of 147 runs.

The Cuttack match we started this article with comes in 12th position. Their scoring rate at the fall of the third wicket was 7.33. Theoretically, they could have scored at 9.77. However this has been capped at 7.50 and Sri Lanka’s estimated score was 371 runs. They finished at 239, a shortfall of 132 runs.