Expert Blog

Monday, March 08, 2010

The importance of openers in one-day internationals

Arvind Iyengar explains why opening combinations are crucial to the success of teams in the 50-over format.

On Castrol Cricket’s Expert Fan Speak section, Ashan Vijay asked an interesting question about the growing importance of openers in ODIs. We decided to take a deeper look at the numbers and interpret what they tell us.

First, we consider ODIs played in the past 2 years. The table below outlines the matches played and Win/Loss ratios for the top 10 teams in ODIs. Australia heads the list with India in second place.

Next, we consider average and strike-rate of all openers for these sides over the past two years. The Batting Momentum,a comprehensive measure of overall batting performance which incorporates the effect of average and strike-rate has also been computed. Here’s a number for you - in the past 24 months, India has used 9 openers in total with Sehwag opening in 38 matches, Gambhir in 34, Tendulkar in 25 and six others with 10 or fewer opening appearances (kudos if you can name all six!).

The Men in Blue top the charts while Australia, the team with the best Win-Loss ratio, is in fourth place. For the stat geeks, the correlation between the Win-Loss ratio and Openers Average is 75%, and the correlation is 69% with Batting Momentum. Overall, that would seem to indicate that the openers tend to have a somewhat significant impact in determining team success, but you don’t necessarily need to have the best openers in order to win.

Of course, there is an inherent bias in some of the above numbers - India tend to play more matches in batting-friendly conditions at home compared to Australia which plays in tougher batting conditions on average, which makes the absolute numbers hard to compare. In order to truly measure the impact of openers over and above the rest of the team, we look at the average of openers with respect to the average of the rest of the team. For instance, India’s openers average 45.20 in ODIs in the past two years while the entire Indian team has averaged 40.52 in the same time span, indicating the Opener Average to Team Average ratio is 1.12. This gives us a sense of how valuable openers are to the entire squad.

Australia is last in the above table! Similar numbers with Strike-rates and Batting Momentum reveal that Sri Lanka, India and New Zealand rely most heavily on their openers while Australia, England and Bangladesh do not. This Opener/Team ratio then ends up having close to no correlation on Win-Loss ratio which seems to suggest that openers alone, relative to the strength of the entire squad, have a limited impact on a side’s overall success rate.

In short, it’s a no-brainer to say a team is likely to get better if they get better openers, all else remaining equal. But teams that rely heavily on their openers will not necessarily be more successful, Sri Lanka is a great example of that. Good starts help, and while they may be a key determinant of success in T20s, in ODIs well begun is far from half done!

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!

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Player of the Decade: Ponting or Muralitharan?

The smiling assassin from Sri Lanka as the Player of the Decade instead of the Aussie captain? Our expert has some interesting statistics to offer to the debate.

Ricky Ponting was voted Player of the Decade by a whopping margin by a jury of cricket experts. The combined Test and One-Day International numbers reveal Ponting was consistently better than other batsmen over the past ten years - no real debate that he was Batsman of the Decade. However, one could make the case for Muttiah Muarlitharan having featured higher in the voting - in Tests, he picked up 565 wickets at an average of 20.97 (the next highest was Makhaya Ntini with 380 wickets at 28.64). In ODIs, Murali again topped the charts with 335 wickets at an average of 20.55 and an economy rate of just 3.7! Again, no one else comes close to matching him on all dimensions. Brett Lee was the next highest wicket-taker with 324 but he went at 4.71 runs per over. Tables 1 through 4 highlight the comparisons of Ponting and Muralitharan against their closest competitors in Tests and ODIs for the 2000s.
   

Table 1: Top run-getters in Tests in the 2000s

Table 2: Top wicket-takers in Tests in the 2000s

Table 3: Top run-getters in ODIs in the 2000s

Table 4: Top wicket-takers in ODIs in the 2000s

A look at table 1 tells you Ponting had nearly a 100 more runs than Jacques Kallis, though the South African did have the higher average. Table 2 tells you Murali had no equal in any statistical category. Heck, he had nearly 200 more wickets than Ntini, and he had more fifers than Warne and Kumble combined! Further, if you look at how many times a bowler has picked up ten wickets in a match, Ntini, Warne, Kumble and Harbhajan together account for 20. Murali - he’s got 20 all by himself!

As for ODIs, table 3 tells you Tendulkar had a better average and strike rate than Ponting in the 2000s. Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Michael Hussey also fared better than Ponting in both categories for the 2000s, albeit with fewer matches (Dhoni averaged 50.82 at a strike rate of 89.59, Hussey averaged 54.07 at 87.15). Murali was unrivalled on the average numbers by the remaining top 5 wicket-takers. His only real competition was Glenn McGrath, who picked up 234 wickets at an average of 20.28 (slightly better than Murali) and an economy rate of 3.78 (only a few hundredths behind the Sri Lankan). Overall, closer competition in the ODI category for Ponting and Murali, but the numbers say Murali was more dominant than Ponting.

Then there’s the home-away argument that says Murali is not as effective away from home. While this is true of Murali, it is true of most players including Ponting. Murali’s bowling average at home was 17.99 and away was 26.36 - that’s still better than Kumble, Harbhajan and Ntini’s combined home and away numbers. Ponting’s batting average was 65.03 at home and 49.77 away for the 2000s, so even he performed significantly better on home conditions.

Finally, Ponting must be credited for handling the responsibility of captaincy and being a part of two World Cup triumphs. Yet, the counter to that is that Murali didn’t benefit from having a truckload of world class teammates all the time - it’s unfair to simply equate overall team performance with individual player performance.

In the end, the numbers indicate that Muralitharan should have figured a lot higher in the discussion for Player of the Decade, at the very least. He was unquestionably the bowler of the decade (though the voting saw him just about edge out McGrath by 3 points) and he dominated his peers by a much greater extent than Ponting did with his competitors. Overall, Muttiah Muralitharan can rightfully feel aggrieved about not winning the Player of the Decade. But worrying about awards is not the smiling assassin’s style; he’ll just keep on playing and keep on taking wickets!

Thursday, December 24, 2009

The best batsmen of 2009

Arvind Iyengar reviews the best batting performances in 2009 and tells you why Tillekaratne Dilshan is the key to turn around Sri Lankan fortunes.

Scores of 300 and more are no longer safe targets in one-day internationals. Check out Harsha’s take on the same in the Run Machines article.

So far in 2009, there have been 41 instances of teams going past 300 in ODIs this year. That’s far more than 15 such instances in 1999 and 17 in 2000. Heck, it’s a fifty percent increase from last year when there were 27 instances of teams getting 300 or more. It should come as no surprise that the India-Sri Lanka series has been peppered with high scores because these two teams have largely been responsible for the run fest this year. India and Sri Lanka have gone past 300 fifteen times between them. That’s because Tillakaratne Dilshan, Virender Sehwag and Mahendra Singh Dhoni have been in great form this year. Here’s a look at the best batsmen in 2009.

First off, we only consider batsmen who’ve scored at least 500 runs this year. In terms of averages, Dhoni leads the pack with an average of over 70. Dilshan is at number two while Tendulkar is at the fourth spot.

In terms of strike-rates, Sehwag is well ahead of the pack with a staggering scoring rate of 137 runs per 100 balls.

As a holistic measure, we look at batting momentum which is a combination of the average and the strike-rate to calculate the overall batsman score. Expectedly, four of the top five positions are occupied by Indians and Sri Lankans.

Tillakaratne Dilshan has been the best batsman of 2009; he’s been in the form of his life and has established himself as a premier player in the game today. He will have to continue to deliver to help Sri Lanka in the rest of their series against India.

Sunday, October 04, 2009

Leaving the Powerplay too late

Overall, New Zealand played better in the crucial overs and tactically used their Powerplay more effectively. That’s where they won the game.

The second semi-final of the Champions Trophy was all about one side stepping up their game during the big moments while the other fizzled out. The match was competitive for the most part, but the difference came in the final few overs of each innings. Daniel Vettori played a central role in both these stages and was an easy choice for Man of the Match. Let’s take a look at what happened in these crucial stretches of the game.

Runs scored in each over in the final stage of each innings:


Pakistan Innings: The Late Collapse

Umar Akmal and Mohammad Yousuf had done a great job getting their side back on track, recovering from 86 for 4 to 166 for 4 with eleven overs and change to spare. That’s when things started to go wrong – 5 wickets fell in a hurry and a 250-target was out of question. Yes, Pakistan were unlucky to lose Akmal to a bad decision, but they should have made more of the final few overs even after that.  Pakistan should have taken the Powerplay earlier – they missed the opportunity of having two set batsmen go after the bowling. Here’s the logic for not waiting till later – Powerplay or not, Pakistan would have thrown their bat at anything in the last five overs, so they should  have taken the Powerplay before the 45th over and built momentum earlier.

Credit to Vettori and Butler, their spell between overs 41 and 46 stifled the flow of runs and that turned the game in New Zealand’s favour.

New Zealand Innings: The Clinical Finish

At the 40-over mark, New Zealand were 168 for 4, comparable to Pakistan who were 174 for 5 at the same stage. Both teams had their Powerplay remaining. The difference is that New Zealand took it earlier and their batsmen actually made the most of those five overs, scoring 55 runs and taking their side to victory. Vettori played a big role again, with a near-run-a-ball innings of 41, while Grant Elliot hit out in the Powerplays and finished with a well compiled 75*.

Overall, New Zealand played better in the crucial overs and tactically used their Powerplay more effectively. That’s where they won the game and that’s what the Castrol Index worm  tells you – the sides were neck and neck for the most part but New Zealand pulled away in the important stages. That’s why there are in the finals. And they’ll be hoping for an encore against the Aussies.

Monday, September 28, 2009

One Worm to rule them all and tell you “Who’s winning?”

The Castrol Index worm uniquely measures a team’s overall performance at any point in time and at one glance, tells you who’s ahead on points.

If you tune in to the middle of a football match, one look at the score tells you who’s ahead: United 1-0 Arsenal. Similarly, in basketball, baseball, tennis and most sports in the world, the match score at a point in time tells you who is winning. With cricket, it’s not that easy!

Say Team A scores 250 in their 50 overs, team B is 110 for 2 in 30 overs. Who’s ahead?  My money would be on Team B (Geoffrey Boycott’s money would be in his pocket of course!), but I’m not certain who’s in the box seat. Picking the leader gets even harder in the first half of the match when you have no target. 130/2 in 25 overs could be a good score on a difficult match, a poor one on a flat track and about average on most pitches in the world. But we still don’t have an answer to “who’s winning?”

The reason why it’s hard to answer this question in cricket is because of the nature of the game – two teams compete in entirely different tasks for the first half (one bowls and fields, the other bats) and only after half-time do they reverse roles. Add to that, the lead indicators for winning at a point in time are quite complex – you have runs, wickets and limited overs… not like football where it’s just goals, or basketball where it’s just points scored. There are so many things to keep track of in cricket that it takes a while for a viewer to look at the score and discern the information.

That’s where the Castrol Index worm can help. It “measures” a team’s overall performance at any point in time and tells you who’s ahead on points. It’s like scoring a boxing match with the points updated after every punch. As an illustration, let’s look at the Castrol Index worm from the Australia-West Indies game. Click here if you want to check out the detailed stats from the match. In a nutshell, Australia recovered from 172/7 in 40 overs to post 275 on the back of some powerful Mitchell Johnson hitting. The West Indies were doing okay at 124/1 but were eventually bundled out for 225.

The worm tells you the West Indies were marginally ahead on points in the 40th over of the game. The game turned between overs 44 and 50, when Australia posted 78 runs in 6 overs… That’s when the Aussies pulled away. That’s where the game was won! The Windies came close to the Aussie worm in the first half of the second innings, but the gap was too much to overcome and they stayed behind the whole way, falling further behind at the end with their last 7 wickets falling for 55 runs.

Here’s the thing about this worm – tune in at any point in the middle of the game and you know who’s ahead! No need to process the information in your sub-conscious and do a mental calculation of who you think is ahead – just look at the worm. This, in essence, is the equivalent of your football score, a snapshot of the match which quickly tells you who is more likely to win. The bigger the gap between the worms, the greater the likelihood of the team in front winning.

There have been other worms in cricket, like the one below which tells you how the West Indies did versus the Aussies at a similar point in time.

This is useful in that it tells you the West Indies, after 18 overs, were ahead of Australia after 18 overs. Does that mean West Indies were more likely to win at that point? Probably not, because of Johnson’s craziness at the end of the Aussie innings, but one look at this worm does not tell you that. You still need to mentally factor in the Johnson blitzkrieg into your assessment of the match situation.

Then there’s the run-rate worm which tells you how a side is doing vis-à-vis the required scoring rate.

This is helpful, but does not directly factor in the wickets scenario, i.e. if a side is chasing 300 for victory and is 230 for no loss in 40 overs, they may be behind the required run-rate, but will be heavily  fancied to win. It does not really tell you then “Who’s winning?”

And that really is what the Castrol Index worm attempts to do. The methodology of arriving at a “score”, i.e. the team Castrol Index  at any point in time, is something that has been carefully thought through and factors in various parameters like runs scored, wickets lost, overs remaining and performance in power-plays just to name a few. This calculation ‘might’ require refinement as matches are played, but the intention is quite simple: to tell the viewer who’s ahead at any point in time. So keep an eye on those worms if you want to know “Who’s winning?”

Monday, June 22, 2009

Best Individual Performances

We witnessed a number of great individual performances at the ICC World Twenty20. Which ones were the best? The Castrol Index helps us figure out by measuring the value of each and every performance with bat and ball. Here are the star exploits from the tournament.

Best Batting Scores

AB de Villiers’ knock of 79 not out tops the list, but that innings has a small asterix against- no disrespect to Scotland, but the innings came against a minnow bowling attack. So de Villiers might have the mathematically highest score, but Tillakaratne Dilshan’s masterpiece in the semi-final was the standout batting performance of the tournament.

Eight of the top ten spots are occupied by players from teams that made the final four. Yuvraj Singh is the only Indian to crack the list. His and Lendl Simmons’ efforts were the only ones in losing causes, highlighting the importance of getting big-time contributions from your best players.

Best Bowling Scores

The bowling powerhouses, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and South Africa end up with nine of the top ten slots. Umar Gul’s fifer, the best bowling performance in the history of Twenty20 cricket, is deservedly at the top of the list. The Bowling Efficiency scores tell you that his effort is almost twice as good as the next best, showing how extraordinary his spell really was. All the performances in the above table translated to victories for the team.

These were the great one-off acts in the tournament. Who were the players who managed to sustain their form over the course of the tournament? Find out soon, as we pick the World Twnety20 Dream Team.

Arvind Iyengar - View Profile

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Meet the Finalists

Two teams remain with a shot at being crowned champions at the World Twenty20. The Castrol Index scores indicate that Sri Lanka has been the best team in the tournament so far with Pakistan surprising all with their high octave performance in the semi-finals.

A deeper look at the Castrol Index helps us understand why these sides have been successful. The two finalists have been ranked amongst the Super 8 teams on each metric of the Castrol Index to figure out what’s worked for them and what’s not.

Sri Lanka

Strengths: The batting has looked strong up front and they have managed to win close games- ranking first in the Extreme Pressure Performance
Weaknesses: The low Extreme Performance Batting score suggests Sri Lanka have not been making the best use of their last five overs while batting. The lower order needs to perform in the big matches.
Key Players: Tillakaratne Dilshan, Ajantha Mendis, Lasith Malinga

Pakistan

Strengths: The best bowling side in the tournament after South Africa and Sri Lanka. They have done particularly well at the death, ranking second in the Extreme Performance Bowling.
Weaknesses: The batting has looked shaky; the top order in particular has not fired consistently. Sending their experienced players up the order might help.
Key Players: Saeed Ajmal, Umar Gul, Shahid Afridi

Arvind Iyengar - View Profile

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

The Importance of a Quick Start

The saying goes- Well begun is half done. That has held true at the ICC Twenty20 World Championships where getting off to a good start has been supremely important and has played a big role in determining match results.

The Quick Start Batting, or the QS Bat, is a metric in the Castrol Index that measures a side’s ability to get off to a good start with the bat. It is a function of runs scored and wickets lost in the first six overs of an innings.

In matches played in the tournament so far, the side with the higher QS Bat score for a match has ended up winning 87% of the time, highlighting the importance of starting well.

A look at the Quick Start Bat scores for sides over a number of matches reveals that the best teams in the tournament- South Africa and Sri Lanka have the highest QS Bat scores and are a fair distance ahead of the rest of the pack. The numbers also tell you that the QS Bat scores are well correlated with the Castrol Index Scores- showing they are good indicators of team success.

The batsmen who occupy the first three batting positions are the ones entrusted with the responsibility of getting their side off to a quick start. It’s these guys who are currently topping the batting charts and if they continue to fire, it will be hard to stop their sides from making the final four.

Arvind Iyengar - View Profile

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Why the Defending Champs got knocked out

Team India is out of the 2009 Twenty20 World Championship after consecutive defeats against the West Indies and England. It was the first time the Men in Blue were really tested in the tournament and they didn’t look up to scratch.

So what went wrong for the Indians in the Super 8 stage? For one, they got off to poor starts with bat and ball, and ended up playing catch up for the rest of the innings. The Quick Start batting and bowling numbers show that India was outplayed in the first six overs of every innings.

Matchwise Performance by India in the Super 8s.

In particular, the batting at the top of the order did not live up to expectations. Ravindra Jadeja’s laboured 35-ball innings has been spoken about a lot and his knock was hugely responsible for India’s defeat. But the rest of the top order didn’t fire either- Gambhir, Rohit Sharma and Raina were outperformed by their counterparts in the Super 8s.

Batting Momentum scores based on Ind-WI and Ind-Eng matches

Top 3 Batsman total

India didn’t do a great job in the field either- there were plenty of misfields and dropped catches. Not surprisingly, quite a few Indian players ended up with negative fielding points for their efforts.

Fielding points based on Ind-WI and Ind-Eng matches

In the end, the team didn’t play to potential and not everyone played their role- which meant there was too much responsibility on the likes of Yuvraj Singh. And that’s why we will see a new champion crowned at this year’s T20 World Championship.

Arvind Iyengar - View Profile.

Sunday, June 14, 2009

The Super Group in the Super 8s

Eight teams are vying for four semi-final spots at the current stage of the 2009 Twenty20 World Championships. Theoretically, all teams should be in with an equal shot of making it, assuming all sides are more or less equal. But that is not the case and we now have one group more stacked than the other.

Here’s a look at the Castrol Team Index for the Super 8 teams at the 2009 T20 WC.

Group E appears to be much stronger, which means it’s a tougher road to the semis for the teams in this group. Group F looks less competitive with minnows Ireland; and Pakistan and New Zealand looking patchy.

Another indicator of team success and dominance is the net run-rate. At the start of the Super 8 stage, Group E teams occupied four of the top five slots.

So how did we end up with such uneven groups? Partly because of the seeding system used, which pre-assigned slots to teams regardless of their position in the preliminary group stages. As a result, three of the group winners in the preliminary stage find themselves paired together in Group E. Another implication of the seeding system is that it rendered the last three games of the preliminary group stage completely useless- the results had no bearing on the points or groupings for the Super 8 stage.

It then makes sense to have a better system in place- incentivize teams to win their groups so that every match is important. This can be done in a number of ways. For instance,
• Have carry-forward points
• Have a Super 6 stage as opposed to a Super 8, where the four group-winners automatically qualify and the four runners-up play knock-out games for the remaining two spots
• Either way, ensure only two group winners per group so that teams that have fared better avoid each other till the final stages

For now though, India, South Africa, England and West Indies must live with the fact that they have a tougher path to the final four than their Group F counterparts. The silver lining- they will be more battle-tested for semis and the final. If they make it that far!

Arvind Iyengar - View Profile.

Tuesday, June 09, 2009

Can Pakistan make it to the Super 8s?

Four days into the competition, we already know seven of the eight sides that will be a part of the Super Eight stage. We also know which group they will end up in thanks to the seeding system used at this year’s tournament. Here’s how the two groups for the Super Eight stage are shaping up.

Three of the remaining matches in the preliminary group stage are now dead rubbers- Sri Lanka-West Indies, India-Ireland and South Africa-New Zealand will serve as nothing more than warm-up matches. The results of those matches will not affect the Super Eight group classification because of the seeding system used.

The one match with everything to play for is the Group B encounter between Pakistan and the Netherlands. England is already through from the group on the basis of their high net run-rate and there is one spot remaining.

If Pakistan loses, they are out and the Netherlands will join Ireland, New Zealand and Sri Lanka in one section of the Super Eights. So Pakistan must win, but they must also win big in order to qualify with net run-rates coming into the equation. If they bat first, Pakistan need to win by at least 25 runs in order to qualify, regardless of much they score. So if Pakistan scores 150, they need to restrict the Netherlands to 125 or less in order to make it. If Pakistan chase, they need to win with about 3 overs to spare. If Netherlands score 120, Pakistan needs to get to 121 within 16.4 overs in order to qualify; if the Dutch score 160, Pakistan needs to get to 161 within 17.1 overs.

The match result really depends on which Pakistan side shows up for the game- the one that looked unbeatable for the most part of the T20 World Championships 2007 or the one that’s played like a minnow at the 2009 Championships thus far. Here’s a breakdown of Pakistan’s performance last year versus what they have done this year, as measured by the Castrol Index

The right hand column might be based on just one match, but remember Pakistan didn’t look great in their warm-up matches either. The numbers tell you the 2007 side was really impressive in all departments- a team that played to its full potential. And this 2009 side will need to play to its full potential or end up taking an early flight back home.

Arvind Iyengar - View Profile.

Sunday, June 07, 2009

Netherlands had a Field Day

Lord’s was covered in a sea of Orange as the Netherlands pulled off a sensational upset against hosts England on account of better fielding on Day One of the T20 World Championships.
A look at our match review will tell you England, despite losing, ended up with a higher Castrol Index for the match. The real difference between the sides was their fielding. Holland were okay for the most part; England put up one of the worst displays of fielding you will ever see. And the Castrol Index helps us quantify this difference in fielding between the two sides.

Here’s a look at the major culprits from Friday’s game.

Then there were the fielding heroes, whose contributions often get overlooked in cricket.

No surprise to see Englishmen at the top of the first table, while the Dutch make up the majority of the second. Looking at the overall numbers, Netherlands ended up with a fielding bonus of plus 4. England finished with a miserable negative 59. That’s a difference of 63 points between the sides. 63 points!!! That is MASSIVE! Some examples to illustrate how big that difference is-
• Netherlands’ best bowler, Ryan Ten Doeschate who picked up two for thirty-five got 46 points for his bowling
• Ravi Bopara’s quick fire forty-six runs of thirty-four balls fetched him 62 batting points
• Herschelle Gibbs’ crucial innings of fifty-three in the IPL 09 finals fetched him 59 batting points

That’s how big the difference was- the equivalent of one big innings. And that difference in fielding is the reason why the hosts face a real threat of not making the Super Eights.

Arvind Iyengar - View Profile