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Australia's new fielding analysis

stephen

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
Fielding in focus for Australia's selectors | cricket.com.au

Australia have a new way of analysing fielding stats. They combine errors and wickets to figure out a player's impact factor over their domestic career.

The article looks at Carey, Nevill and Wade and comes to the conclusion that Carey has the most impact and Nevill has the least.

My commentary:
I really do like the idea of tracking fielding stats but I think the simplistic analysis offered here is awful. For one they're combining first class and list A, which is presumably why Wade's strike rate is much higher than Nevill's, giving him a bigger impact factor despite making the same number of errors and taking 41 fewer wickets.

Any system which rates Wade higher than Nevill is obviously broken and needs fixing.
 

TheJediBrah

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Conspiracy theorist in me speculates that this used deliberate criteria designed to suit wade, a sneaky attempt to soften the blow if wade ends up selected for the ashes.

"See we did this analysis and wade is actually good!"
 

Dan

Hall of Fame Member
I kind of get what they're trying to do in terms of the efficiency part of it (tracking Grade One chances taken vs dropped), but the results part of it is so far out of the wicketkeeper's control.

Carey has an advantage in his awesome dismissals per innings stats, insofar as the usual Redbacks attack is Sayers-Mennie-Worrall -- guys who challenge the outside edge and look to nick guys off to the wicketkeeper and cordon. Compare that to NSW who arguably have seamers who attack the stumps more, and have a SoK who takes the majority of his poles by threatening the inside edge. My love for Nev aside, you're just not working from a solid baseline.

The other major thing there is that it doesn't take into account byes (which should also be broken down into Grade One etc. as well). Nev conceded 132 byes in his Test career -- about 75% of them were from quicks spraying it down leg (i.e. ODI wides), or from bouncers climbing too high. I haven't seen the numbers crunched for Wade yet, but that could be an interesting comparison.

At an outfielding level, this doesn't take into account where guys are fielding either -- the blokes assumed to be better fielders will be in places that chances are more likely to happen, so they'll have a higher impact index than the guys being hidden to start with. Instead of challenging the conventional wisdom, it'll just statistically reflect the decisions already being made.
 

OverratedSanity

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I hate almost all fielding metrics and stats with a passion. For batting and bowling, we've generally figured out that with a bit of context, an average roughly shows a player's worth. No one has yet figured out a stat similar to an average which can give you atleast a decent idea how good a fielder is. Far more than batting and bowling, it's fielding/keeping that you simply have to watch to judge properly. There's also the issue of what is considered an 'error' and what isn't. It's too subjective and complex to be boiled down to statistics. The effort to analyze is fine but if this influences selections, its incredibly dumb. Fielding stats are too new and half baked at this stage to be given that much importance.
 
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