Weak Ends to A career

[MagicPoopShovel]

Jayasuriya had an embarrassing end to his career - picking himself to tour Eng using his political powers.

 

[Daemon]

I think Tendulkar had a pretty undignified exit. Had a tour arranged specially for him. Pretty cringe.

 

[wpdavid]

Wally Hammond springs to mind. Overall test average of 58, but his career was curtailed by the outbreak of WW2. As he was aged 36 at the time, that really should have been it. But he came back after WW2 to play against India (averaging 39.7) and tour Aus & NZ (averaging 27.4). Obviously a shadow of his former self, which isn't surprising for a guy in his 40's.

 

[wpdavid]

Bob Willis ended up playing in one series too many. Aged 35, he was entitled to have hung up his boots some years previously but still played in the 1984 series against Clive Lloyd's all-conquering WI side. After three tests. Bob had accumulated 6 wickets at 61.2 each and called it a day. A real shame to see him in those games, as he had been an absolute colossus for England.

 

[wpdavid]

Graham Gooch was another one who went on a bit too long. His form in the later stages of his test career had been astonishingly good, but when he missed the 1993/94 WI tour, that really should have been the end of it. Instead, he came back for the home series against NZ an SA and the winter ashes tour. 210 on his comeback test suggested he was right to do so, but he only made a total of 13 in 3 other innings against NZ, averaged 23 against SA and 24 in Australia.

 

[the big bambino]

Without a sufficient sample size, normal variance will give you some strange numbers. Some will be very high and some low. Ponting averaged 31 in Zim and 119 in Pak. You can't read anything into either of these based on 1 match. These figures would be closer to inverse than where they currently sit given enough matches.

Re. your second sentence, you can't really draw a trend. Results are all over the place, as you would expect variance to show. He tended to do better in countries with weaker bowling attacks/ easier batting conditions, but variance exists anyway. Not much to see here.

On a reasonable cutoff of 10 matches and using 40 as as a magic point, Ponting has failed in 1 country, Sanga in 0.

40 is an arbitrary number for failure. If you define it at 35, Ponting has failed in 2, Sanga 1. @30, Ponting has failed in one, Sanga in 0.

Ok. You've isolated 3 unrepresentative stats out of 20 possible data sets. Of course any conclusions drawn therefrom is meaningless.

Yes better opposition has an impact. But both players superior record against the same opponents at home shows conditions do too. Yes the more matches impacts negatively on the overall figure. So Ponting played 60% of away matches v Eng, Ind and SA. Sanga only 42%. Since both relatively struggled against these opponents the effect will impact more on Ponting's overall average than Sanga. Comparison at that level is not like with like.

You seem fond of overall figures and just recently the number of 10 for tests and the average of 40. Even though the last 2 stats are not a representative reflection of their data sets. Nonetheless using these benchmarks Ponting averaged btwn 41 and 119 over 62 matches in every location bar India and except for a lonely inconsequential innings in Zim. Whereas Sanga failed over 18 matches in conditions as varied as Africa, India and the Carribean. Making Ponting more successful and adaptable.

And remember stating Ponting benefitted from home conditions means he would have had to average below 50 in away locations throughout the extent of his career. But that did not happen so the conclusion is untrue.

Defining success @ 60, sanga has succeeded in 7 countries, Ponting in 5.

Ok. One of those places is Zim and can be discounted as Ponting only played one innings there. We are also talking about away conditions. You've included Sanga's home record. I agree though that Sanga enjoyed a comparative advantage throughout his career batting in friendly home conditions ...

 

[CasMcG24]

Can we add Mr Cook to this list I know he's still playing and maybe he'll finish on a high but the current state of low scoring means he may finish on a low ebb which being honest would not do his career justice.

 

[Bolo]

Ok. You've isolated 3 unrepresentative stats out of 20 possible data sets. Of course any conclusions drawn therefrom is meaningless.

Yes better opposition has an impact. But both players superior record against the same opponents at home shows conditions do too. Yes the more matches impacts negatively on the overall figure. So Ponting played 60% of away matches v Eng, Ind and SA. Sanga only 42%. Since both relatively struggled against these opponents the effect will impact more on Ponting's overall average than Sanga. Comparison at that level is not like with like.

You seem fond of overall figures and just recently the number of 10 for tests and the average of 40. Even though the last 2 stats are not a representative reflection of their data sets. Nonetheless using these benchmarks Ponting averaged btwn 41 and 119 over 62 matches in every location bar India and except for a lonely inconsequential innings in Zim. Whereas Sanga failed over 18 matches in conditions as varied as Africa, India and the Carribean. Making Ponting more successful and adaptable.

And remember stating Ponting benefitted from home conditions means he would have had to average below 50 in away locations throughout the extent of his career. But that did not happen so the conclusion is untrue.



Ok. One of those places is Zim and can be discounted as Ponting only played one innings there. We are also talking about away conditions. You've included Sanga's home record. I agree though that Sanga enjoyed a comparative advantage throughout his career batting in friendly home conditions ...

You are chopping data into fine points with arbitrary distinctions to support a players record. I'm showing you what happens when the lines are shifted. I don't think it's appropriate to do this. The part of my response that you didn't quote was really the important stuff.

 

[the big bambino]

You are chopping data into fine points with arbitrary distinctions to support a players record. I'm showing you what happens when the lines are shifted. I don't think it's appropriate to do this. The part of my response that you didn't quote was really the important stuff.

I still believe now what I did at the start. Sanga failed in more conditions and Ponting did not overly benefit from home conditions, at least on the reasoning provided. That’s all.

 

[Bolo]

I still believe now what I did at the start. Sanga failed in more conditions and Ponting did not overly benefit from home conditions, at least on the reasoning provided. That’s all.

Moving on from these two specifically, do you believe that a bats record in a country should count against them at all/recieve equal weighing when they have played a very limited number of games there? If not, what is an acceptable cutoff point?

 

[the big bambino]

I don't mean to be difficult but its probably a moving feast dependent on the experience a particular player has in his career. Neither do i want to be difficult again by using the two as an example for their era. So for Ponting about the range of say 5 - 15 tests, Sanga 5 - 10. because that range takes into account most of the data points, that's my reasoning anyway. I note that range would exclude the WI from Sanga's record though I would be inclined to include it because he'd have to something spectacular in a 5th test against them to boost his ave in over 40. Then again maybe not.

edit. it would be churlish to exclude ponting's matches v eng so maybe boost the range to include that.

 

[andruid]

Nasir Jamshed

 

[Bolo]

I don't mean to be difficult but its probably a moving feast dependent on the experience a particular player has in his career. Neither do i want to be difficult again by using the two as an example for their era. So for Ponting about the range of say 5 - 15 tests, Sanga 5 - 10. because that range takes into account most of the data points, that's my reasoning anyway. I note that range would exclude the WI from Sanga's record though I would be inclined to include it because he'd have to something spectacular in a 5th test against them to boost his ave in over 40. Then again maybe not.

edit. it would be churlish to exclude ponting's matches v eng so maybe boost the range to include that.

It makes sense to move numbers on the one hand. But there should also be a lower limit at which the numbers will make sense. A bat with a long test career will only play about 4 matches per away country on average with 12 teams. You are probably going to see something like the typical bat playing only 2 matches in 5 different countries.

Even if a bat is familiar with conditions and extremely good in them, they will fail in over 50% of matches. Of these 5 countries a bat will fail in 2 on average, even if they are good in those conditions and would succeed given more games.

In his one and two match countries, Ponting has done spectacularly on the whole, but has failed in one. This failure is just an expression of probability though- claiming he would struggle to get the measure of Zimbabwe given enough games is ridiculous. Most bats will run into this with the same number of games, although you will see failure in 0-4 of these games for various bats based on probability given a large enough sample of bats.

This probability issue exists independently of relative number of games- it's purely based on absolute numbers.