Expert Blog

Friday, February 19, 2010

Best “back against the wall” innings

See where Hashim Amla’s innings ranks amongst the best knocks in pressure situations

A number of Test matches in the past twelve months have gone down to the wire. England barely managed to escape with draws in South Africa and most recently Hashim Amla’s valiant effort almost gave South Africa a series win in India. Given the spate of recent match-saving innings, we decided to rank the best individual “back against the wall” performances over the past twelve months.

Before we begin, an explanation of the performances under consideration - if you aren’t particularly concerned with the ranking methodology, you should scroll down to the next paragraph! First, only performances in a team’s second innings have been considered, be it the 3rd or 4th innings of the match. Second, we look at situations where teams were in precarious positions - either having to bat out at least four sessions in the match in case of 4th innings performances or trailing by at least 200 runs in case of 3rd innings performances. A number of metrics were used to evaluate individual performances. Runs * Deliveries faced was used to estimate the baseline score since the best match-saving innings involve both surviving and counter-attacking by scoring runs. Minutes batted could also have been used, but this is highly correlated with deliveries faced. Finally, six other factors have been considered to truly measure performance based on the surrounding circumstances and on outcomes -

- Away factor, 20% additional weight assigned to performances away from home

- Draw or loss, 20% additional weight assigned for draws. Wins have not been considered; remember these are match saving innings, not match winning ones

- Carrying the bat, 10% additional weight assigned for a batsman not being dismissed

- Percentage team score, the fraction of team score contributed by the batsman

- Pitch factor, calculated using a simple runs per wicket for that particular match. The lower the runs per wicket, the tougher was the pitch to bat on

- Pressure factor, computed as the number of wickets the team was left with at the end of the innings, i.e. if they were 300/9 as opposed to 300/4 when the match ended, the batsman in the 300/9 was in a higher pressure situation.

Using the above criteria, here are the top 5 ‘back against the wall’ performances in the past 12 months.

5. Daniel Vettori - 140 vs Sri Lanka in Colombo, Innings score: 63.30

New Zealand had to survive almost five sessions or get 494 runs in their fourth innings at the SSC. And at 176/6 with a little over a day to play, it seemed like the hosts had the match in the bag. That’s when Vettori played a fighting captain’s innings, lasting 258 minutes in a stroke-filled 140 in 189 deliveries. He was eventually the last man dismissed, after a marvelous counter-attacking innings.

4. Kumar Sangakkara - 137 vs India in Mumbai, Innings score: 85.82
Trailing India by 333 runs, Sri Lanka really didn’t have much of a chance in this one but Sangakkara delayed the inevitable with a patient 349-minute knock in which he scored 45% of the team’s runs. He was a rock on day four but eventually fell to a super delivery by Zaheer Khan on the final day which handed India the series.

3. Kumar Sangakkara - 130* vs Pakistan in Colombo, Innings score: 86.40
The Sri Lankan captain shows up twice on this list, and in this innings he actually managed to save the day and salvage a draw in the final match of the Sri Lanka-Pakistan series. Sangakkara batted for nearly eight hours in this one and on a pitch that offered some turn, he handled the likes of Kaneria and Ajmal with ease. After being bowled out for 233 in their first innings, Sangakkara led his team to a significantly improved batting display on the final day and in the end ensured a respectable draw.

2. Gautam Gambhir - 137 vs New Zealand in Napier, Innings score: 120.20
436 deliveries, 10 hours and 43 minutes- unbelievable numbers from India’s run machine in this effort which proved his ability to play a long innings away from home in a crisis situation. This is by far the longest knock in terms of time spent at the crease in all the second innings’ over the past 12 months, the next closest is Amla’s 8 hours and 19 minutes effort. Speaking of which….

1. Hashim Amla - 123* vs India in Kolkata, Innings score: 127.65
Amla’s knock does come in at number one - there was pressure, a raucous crowd, little support at the other end and despite the odds, he almost single-handedly pulled it off. In gully cricket, you have the concept of last man single batting - had this been used in international cricket, India probably wouldn’t have won at Eden Gardens because Amla’s defense was impenetrable. A fantastic knock and a great series for Amla, he’s gone a long way in establishing himself as one of the premier batsmen in the game today.

Take nothing away from India though, fantastic fight back after the first Test and they’re still the top team in the world!

http://www.castrolcricket.com/ee/index.php/castrol_weblog/comments/best_back_against_the_wall_innings/

Defining a paisa vasool index

How do you judge a cricketer’s “worth”? Srinivas Bhogle has an interesting perspective on the subject. Read on…

We live in times when a Shane Watson is “bought” for US$125,000 and Rohit Sharma for $750,000. So someone’s surely going to ask what the return on this investment is, i.e. is this a paisa vasool investment?

Answering such questions isn’t easy. Obviously, the answer would depend on the player’s on-field performance … and things are trickier in T20 cricket because, apart from runs and wickets, strike rates, economy rates and fielding ability also enter the calculation.

Thankfully, the Castrol Index (CI) could do the job of measuring the player’s on-field performance rather well. The CI judiciously combines a player’s batting, bowling and fielding effort into a single number.

While the CI is an interesting concept by itself, it doesn’t answer that key question: which player is paisa vasool and which player isn’t? However by dividing the money paid to a player so far (if the player has been available for 9 matches so far out of 14, we assume that he has received 9/14th of his total payment) by his CI, we obtain an index (that we could call the Castrol Paisa Vasool Index) that will do the job very adequately.

When we attempted such an analysis, a handful of interesting observations tumbled out of the cupboard:

# It is unwise to pay too much for single cricketing skills. A good ‘pure bowler’ could at best command a price of $500,000. Paying Ishant Sharma $950,000 is a big waste of money. Even Rohit Sharma wouldn’t be worth $750,000 if he didn’t bowl a bit too (and a hat-trick, as in IPL2, would be a real bonus!)

# A player possessing explosive skills that can turn a match around is good value for money … that’s why a Virender Sehwag, Tillakaratne Dilshan, Ross Taylor or Kieron Pollard is still a coveted catch … they could single-handedly win you 3-4 of the 14 or more IPL matches. To appreciate this better, read Ananth’s masterly analysis of JP Duminy’s knock in the Champions League for Cape Cobras.

# If the pitches are batsmen-friendly, pick bowling all-rounders; if they are bowler-friendly, pick batting all-rounders. Jacques Kallis is a fine example: he flopped in batting-friendly IPL1, but was immensely successful in bowling-friendly IPL2.

# Specialist wicket-keepers are not worth the money unless they bat well too. So if you can’t be an Adam Gilchrist, at least try to be a Kamran Akmal. And Brad Haddin can go home!

But the most significant finding of the analysis was that franchise owners accorded equal or more weightage to a player’s off-field value. Mashrafe Mortaza’s price of $600,000 didn’t make any sense … till you factored in the fact that, by playing him, Kolkata Knight Riders bought the loyalty of the whole of Bangladesh. Kevin Pietersen’s cricketing worth could certainly not be worth $1,550,000 … till you recognized that he was a great choice to walk down the ramp with Deepika Padukone.

So how do we set up the complete model of a paisa vasool index? The Castrol Index will estimate the on-field performance admirably. To couple on-field performance with off-field worth, we will need a more complicated hedonic pricing model – that could someday form the basis for a future Interpreter blog.

http://www.castrolcricket.com/ee/index.php/castrol_weblog/comments/defining_a_paisa_vasool_index/