A different way to rate bowlers

[Athlai]

A Worthwile Way to Reconsider Bowling Stats

 

[BoyBrumby]

Pick another title you'd like - all I could think of on the fly was "CDM's Garden of Statistical Delights" which might be counter-productive to the intention behind renaming it!

Star 79

Conflation between the median number of games played and the REM song Star 69.

 

[Lostman]

Interesting thread.

Let me just tell you one thing that Murali's 67 five wicket hauls are the equivalent of a 100 Test centuries !

Interesting, no ?

One way to standardize wickets/competition would be to assign "quality 5wkt haul" (got to love baseball stat techniques)

Ex: for Murali,

>5 wkt/innings and <125 runs conceded (25av) =58/67= 87%
>5wkt/innings and <100 runs conceded (20 av)= 51/67= 76%

Add another filter of SR (60 might be reasonable?) and you might be able to further standardize regardless of competition.

Thoughts?

 

[Matt79]

Star 79

Conflation between the median number of games played and the REM song Star 69.

Might look a bit up-myself if I go around refering to "Star79"...

EDIT: Done [/captain obvious]

 

[G.I.Joe]

Perfectly possible (assuming Thommo wasn't at the other end to spoil the party)

Wishful thinking.

 

[honestbharani]

Interesting thread.



One way to standardize wickets/competition would be to assign "quality 5wkt haul" (got to love baseball stat techniques)

Ex: for Murali,

>5 wkt/innings and <125 runs conceded (25av) =58/67= 87%
>5wkt/innings and <100 runs conceded (20 av)= 51/67= 76%

Add another filter of SR (60 might be reasonable?) and you might be able to further standardize regardless of competition.

Thoughts?

Not sure if runs would be the only criteria. On a road, a 5/150 or 7/220 would still have to be a pretty good bowling effort IMHO, and perhaps better than a 3/30 on a helpful track or against a side that has no clue on facing that type of bowling.

 

[Migara]

Good work CDM. I personally prefer wickets per innings stat.

 

[weldone]

Not sure if runs would be the only criteria. On a road, a 5/150 or 7/220 would still have to be a pretty good bowling effort IMHO, and perhaps better than a 3/30 on a helpful track or against a side that has no clue on facing that type of bowling.

Ya, but that's inherent in every statistics you talk about.

Same stats may mean different things depending on pitch and opponents.

That can't be your problem solely against this stat, surely.

 

[cover drive man]

Thanks for the title change. The list of batsmen will consist of the top 77 runscorers in test history. The first list will be what percentages of their innings were not outs and that will be applied to the second list.

 

[cover drive man]

Also the bowlers and batters list do/will include ICC World XI performances.

 

[Uppercut]

You know.. Not Outs can mean so many different things in different situations that there is no right or wrong about this... To me, contextually a not out innings can mean anything ranging from a 4* when you know the game is about to be drawn to a 150* not out winning you the game... So there are only 2 ways to approach this. Either include all not outs or juz abandom them in your analysis altogether. To me, both approaches have equal merits.

This applies to runs-per-innings, though. Runs-per-innings would be a reasonable measure. Worse than batting averages imo, but not exactly worthless. Runs-per-match is just daft.

 

[kingkallis]

Grimmett did feast on South Africa and the West Indies. His strike was 50 and 43 against them, compared to 86 against England. Murali's worst strike rate is 66 against Australia.

Lillee would have had to pick 10 wickets a match at a Strike Rate of 26.4 balls a wicket against Bangladesh and Zimbabwe over 15 games for him to equal Murali's 475 over 79 tests.

No chance for poor Lillee then!

 

[Ikki]

Lillee would have had to pick 10 wickets a match at a Strike Rate of 26.4 balls a wicket against Bangladesh and Zimbabwe over 15 games for him to equal Murali's 475 over 79 tests.

How do you get those figures? Murali himself played B/Z 25 times. And averaged 13 and struck at 30.4 against Bangladesh in 11 of them.

Also, whatever Murali would take, Lillee would have to do it faster because Murali bowled 10+ overs more than Lillee per match to take that many wickets per match.

 

[G.I.Joe]

How do you get those figures? Murali himself played B/Z 25 times. And averaged 13 and struck at 30.4 against Bangladesh in 11 of them.

Also, whatever Murali would take, Lillee would have to do it faster because Murali bowled 10+ overs more than Lillee per match to take that many wickets per match.

Murali played 18% of his games against Zim and Ban. 18% of 79 tests is 15. Maintaining Lillee's record against the rest for 64 games, that leaves him with 150 wickets to pick in 15 tests against Ban and Zim. Lillee bowled 44 overs a match. To pick those 10 wickets a match in 44 overs each, he'd require a strike rate of 26.4.

 

[honestbharani]

Ya, but that's inherent in every statistics you talk about.

Same stats may mean different things depending on pitch and opponents.

That can't be your problem solely against this stat, surely.

I have no issues with what CDM did.. I was responding to Lostman's suggestion.


I juz think with respect to stats in cricket, the simpler you take them, the better chance that it reflects the real stuff to a bigger degree... The more we complicate it, the farther we may travel from the facts, I think.


But when comparing reasonably close stats, you gotta admit that cricket stats are extremely fallible and hardly the best measure to arrive at who is better than whom.

 

[weldone]

I have no issues with what CDM did.. I was responding to Lostman's suggestion.


I juz think with respect to stats in cricket, the simpler you take them, the better chance that it reflects the real stuff to a bigger degree... The more we complicate it, the farther we may travel from the facts, I think.


But when comparing reasonably close stats, you gotta admit that cricket stats are extremely fallible and hardly the best measure to arrive at who is better than whom.

I was referring to Lostman's suggestion as well.

Don't agree with that as a statistician myself. Good and logical statistical analyses are sometimes complicated (the calculation part, not the rationale part).

I think over-simplification is more often a problem with statistical analysis than over-complicating things.

 

[Ikki]

Murali played 18% of his games against Zim and Ban. 18% of 79 tests is 15. Maintaining Lillee's record against the rest for 64 games, that leaves him with 150 wickets to pick in 15 tests against Ban and Zim. Lillee bowled 44 overs a match. To pick those 10 wickets a match in 44 overs each, he'd require a strike rate of 26.4.

Well yes, expecting anyone to bowl 11 overs less than Murali (who bowled ~55 overs a match) and take those wickets would take some doing.

Lillee probably wouldn't make up the difference but it'd improve his record a great deal - probably push his average into the low 20 and his SR into the 40s - and push him even higher on the list.

Maybe we should include performances in WSC?

----

Having said that, you could go into Grimmett's record and say the same thing said about Murali. It's just a simple exercise and probably not worth going that in depth for.

 

[Matt79]

I can't be bothered checking the maths, so I'm just going to assume that's correct and be impressed.

 

[cover drive man]

Sorry guys, very busy ATM. Will get round to this though.

 

[aussie]

I gave the example of batsmen purely because there is a unanimity about the greatest batsman which is missing with the bowlers. Otherwise I would have refered to the missing Syd Barnes which is an equally important omission in any list of all time great bowlers. He doesn't just have 189 wickets in only 27 wickets making his 7 per Test by far the highest for anyone who has taken even fifty Test wickets, his 24 five wkt hauls in 27 by far the greatest proportion, same with his 7 ten wicket hauls and his 49 wickets in just four Tests in his last test series; he was also the record holder for the highest number of Test wickets till as late as 1935.

If you think the example of batsmen as inappropriate, here is a bowler considered by many as the greatest ever and on any serious cricket writer/experts shortest list of all time greatest bowlers and he was missing in that list.

As I said in my previous post this is a proble that will remain with statistical studies covering entire history so this is not a criticism of CDM's laudable effort (as some are making it out to be) but a modest attempt to contribute to it.

If even this is not appreciated in the "new" CW I can go back into hibernation. I do have my nerw found love of photography to keep me company in my old age :-)

I hear that SJS. Not taking shots at anyone - but given that you have said it. I feel comfortable now saying now, that CW was a much better place for long but very lovely & informative cricket debates 3 or so years ago - now i dont know what to say sometimes.