ICC World Cup – Ones to watch

For the champions trophy in 2013 I did a ‘ones to watch’ article. With the World cup just over two weeks away I’m going to repeat the process. Looking back at it several of the players in that retain their status as key players for their team. Dhoni and Kholi remain India’s stars, A.B. de Villers is still the best ODI batsmen and remains my favorite non english player, Anglo Matthews has gone on to become the undisputed star of the Sri Lankan team with what is a ridiculous run of form since becoming captain and Chris Gayle is still probably the most dangerous player at the event. One player we won’t get to watch is Sunil Narine, who has pulled out of the West Indies squad following having to remodel his bowling action.

As before I’ll go through the teams talking about their key players, hopefully picking out some lesser known names to keep an eye on. I wont be talking about the Zimbabwean, Irish, UAE, Afghanistan or Scottish teams as I simply don’t have a good base of knowledge about those teams to do so.

Australia – The hosts will be expecting to make the final and they have a lineup that boasts power in both the batting and bowling lineup. Captain Michael Clarke is a step above the rest of the batsmen so his attempt to recover from injury in time to be involved could have a large bearing on the success of the team. The other player I’m going to pick out is Mitchell Starc. I liked him when he was at Yorkshire and he seems to be developing into an international quality player rapidly.

Bangladesh – Tamin Iqbal, He is the man for Bangladesh who can drag them up to an intimidating total. A terrific striker of the ball he hasn’t quite kicked on from his first exciting burst in International cricket, the tournament would be enhanced if he could find his form here.

England – Well take your pick, huge amount of potential in the squad, Jos Butler in particular excites but Joe Root really seems to be Maturing for England and stitching the whole batting line up together. Root also seems to bowl reasonably tightly whenever given the chance to do so.

India – See previous article, still Dhoni and Kholi. Look better set up to chase totals than set them, Australia has rarely been a happy hunting ground for them so both captain and vice will need to help them repeatedly get high scores as it seems unlikely their bowlers will make it easy for them.

New Zealand – Go into the tournament with their usual tag of dark horses. Probably unfair this time as they should just be seen as one of the favorites along with Australia and South Africa. Brendan McCullum leads a truly exciting team that may just lack a bit of firepower in the bowling department. Tim Southee will lead their attack and will need to take a big bundle of wickets in tandem with former captain Daniel Vettori. Vettori’s return strengths the already strong batting lineup which stars the Kiwi version of Joe Root, Kane Williamson. Scores heavily at almost a run a ball without problem and can turn his arm when required too, a big star in the making.

South Africa – I’m going to avoid saying A.B. de Villiers and look elsewhere in this team. This team looks slightly different to other teams in that their strength lies in the depth of their bowling attack. Morne Morkel should make great use of the bounce and pace in a lot of the Australian pitches. If David Miller can contribute along with their established batsmen then South Africa should really be winning the event.

Sri Lanka – Herath. Desperately underrated, possibly as a result of some of the legendary names he has been surrounded by in the Sri Lankan team, but incredibly consistent and will be expected to help limit totals so the sometimes suspect Sri Lankan batting line up has some pressure on them reduced. One man familiar with pressure is Kumar Sangakkara, a true legend of the game set to bow out of international cricket soon, he is in great nick and will score the bulk of the runs for Sri Lanka up the order.

Pakistan – Goodness only knows, the usual stereotype applies, they could suddenly be great but it seems unlikely. The loss of Saeed Ajmal is probably fatal to any hope they had of getting it together. Younis Khan certainly has the experience to help them pull through and has been batting well recently but it looks tough for the Pakistan team.

West Indies – A bit of a mess at the moment all things said, poor showings on pitch, tours cancelled part way through thanks to disputes between players and the board. Despite this they actually have a talented squad but Captain Denish Ramdin has a tough task on his hands to blend them into a cohesive unit. Kemar Roach has the pace to cause batsmen trouble, between him and Ramdin they’ll need to back up Chris Gayle.

One other thing I realised was possible going through this was to name a Yorkshire 11 at this world cup:

Finch
Khan
Ballance
Root
Williamson
Singh
Bairstow (Alright I’m cheating here but none of the wicketkeepers were current or former Yorkshire players)
Miller
Maxwell
McKay
Starc

Setting Vs Chasing mark II

It occured to me I could formalise the claim I made in the first version of this post that the big hitters in the England ODI team have a better average when chasing and the guys who are accumulators have a better average setting by cross referencing all of their averages with their strike rate in ODI’s for England. Attached is a graph showing the change in average when setting Vs the international strike rate of that player with a trend line plotted on it in blue.

 

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The trend line very clearly demonstrates the relationship between strike rate and whether that player has a better average setting or chasing. This information is noteworthy for captains when deciding to bat first or second, if either their team or their opponents team are loaded with players who prefer batting first or second then that should be added to a captain consideration. For selectors they should probably be looking to  have a balance of players who score more heavily batting first and players who score more when batting second, although clearly if a player averages over 50 in both but scores much better when setting then they are still likely to make a good selection if the team bats second. Lastly this information is useful for coaches trying to get inside a players head to work out what helps him/her perform.

Think I’m done with this for a bit. All data was sourced from espncricinfo.com.

Peace. Bamos.

Champions Trophy – Players to watch

This was meant to be done before the champions trophy began but got a bit delayedd, oh well. My picks for players to watch out for.

England – Tredwell and Finn. Although Tredwell may not even play for England he’s a very underrated part of Englands bowling attack and has bowled very well in one day cricket for the national team when called upon recently, if he gets a chance he could be a very important player. Finn has the happy habit of getting wickets and Englands ODI strategy has long been to take wickets to contain the run rate.

India – Virat Kholi and Dhoni. Two incredible players, Kholi is being talked about as the leader of India’s batting line up and I expect him to score heavily here. MS Dhoni is just a phenomenal batsmen, seemingly capable of coming into any situation and smashing the ball off the park, opposition will look to get him in the first couple of overs as he plays himself in before unloading the big shots.

South Africa – AB de Villiers. Number one ranked batsmen in ODI’s and my favourite non-english player.

Sri Lanka – Matthews. The all rounder gives some balance to an experienced Sri Lanka team, will chip in with bat and ball.

Pakistan –  Hafeez. Came into the team to open and turned out as an excellent bowler for the in the one day format.

New Zealand – Guptil. Scored back to back centuries against England in the series just gone so is in terrific nick going into the tournament. Key player the the NZ batting plan of batting through the first 35 overs and maintaining wickets before bringing out the big shots after that.

West Indies -Gayle and Narine. Two players who have developed into stars thanks to the IPL. One player said maybe Gayle should be banned as he is too good. As anyone who follows cricket knows he’s the man, most dangerous player at the tournament and probably the coolest too. Narine burst onto the scene in last years IPL taking 24 wickets and going at 5.43 an over. If these two guys can translate that 20/20 success into the one day format then they could lead the West Indies to victory.

Australia – No one, they were just all out for 65 against India

Setting Vs Chasing

The recent ODI’s against New Zealand have been rather tedious with no real tension in any of them (so far, I write this as NZ chase Englands 287 and are 113-5 having just lost Brendon McCullum, so unless Taylor pulls something out of the bag a dull series) so I decided to take a look at something I have wondered about for a while, namely do certain batsmen bat better when they have to chase a total or when they have to set one. Players such as Eion Morgan for England and Mike Hussey for Australia are considered excellent ‘finishers’, by this I mean players who will come in towards the end of a chase and knock off the final runs, particularly in scenarios when the run rate needs to be pushed up significantly and instantly upon their arrival at the crease.

So to investigate this I took a look through all of Englands ODI games since the last major ODI tournament, and took the averages when chasing a total and when setting a toal for everyone who batted for England in that period. This result in the attached spreadsheet. ODI Averages – Chasing Vs Setting

(Note that the averages given are average number of runs scored per wicket lost, not average of number of runs scored in each innings and also take no account of strike rate, a clearly vital factor in this form of the game)

It’s necessary to put some perspective on this before viewing it, realistically players who have had less than 5 innings either setting or chasing can have their scores far to easily skewed by a single good score or not out, however this isn’t always enough to aviod annomilies. A good example of this is Samit Patel whose average is an incredible 44.25 better when chasing as a result of 4 not outs in his 6 innings. So to reduce the number of annomilies (and to avoid looking at the averages of players who rarely bat for England in ODI’s, either as a result of being selected infrequently or being the number 11 batsmen) I’m only going to comment on the players who have played 5 or more innings both chasing and setting.

Looking at the averages there are 9 players whose average changes significantly (by more than 5). They are Cook, Bopara, Morgan, Kieswetter, Patel, Trott, Bresnan, Root and KP. Of these the players who are stronger setting a total are Cook (+9.89), Trott (+5.3),  Bresnan (+6.57) and Root (+7.75).  This is interesting as these players at least in my mind would be considered accumulators or classic players. Now considering the players who improve when chasing are Bopara (+25.5), Morgan(+13.71), Kieswetter(+7.38), Patel(+44.25) and KP (+14.17). All these players are big hitters, with the exception of Bopara whose average is bumped up by several not outs when chasing.

One explanation for this may be that when chasing a total the big hitters knowledge that they have the ability to accelerate the run rate means they are less likely to throw their wicket, also the ability to clear the boundary makes it easier for those players to score quickly when chasing.

Peace. Bamos.