The defintion of "pressure" for batsmen in a test match

[Son Of Coco]

Again you can't have the team being under pressure because pressure is a feeling, and teams do not have feelings. You can give different degrees of difficulty of situation in which the team is in (even that is open to some things that are essentially impossible to quantify) but that's different to being under pressure.

I disagree, how a team handles pressure comes down to the individuals that make up that team and how the team management etc deals with pressure situations. A team isn't a non-living entity, it's made up of 11 individuals + background staff. If a feeling of panic spreads through the team when they're reduced to something like 4/2 then they're in all sorts of trouble. Then you have what happened to England when they were rolled for 51.

 

[Jamee999]

i disagree, how a team handles pressure comes down to the individuals that make up that team and how the team management etc deals with pressure situations. A team isn't a non-living entity, it's made up of 11 individuals + background staff. If a feeling of panic spreads through the team when they're reduced to something like 4/2 then they're in all sorts of trouble. Then you have what happened to england when they were playing test matches in the 90s.

fyp.

 

[Son Of Coco]

fyp.

 

[Johnners]

We should just have a CW panel and go through every single 100 in the history of cricket and vote on which ones appear pressure or not.

Best way to determine it for study purposes imo (even though it would take an age ). Any purely objective method of determining a "pressure innings" is always going to create more question marks than one that accounts for the context of each individual performance.

 

[NUFAN]

Best way to determine it for study purposes imo (even though it would take an age ). Any purely objective method of determining a "pressure innings" is always going to create more question marks than one that takes that accounts for the context of each individual performance.

Okay let's begin:

C. Bannerman 165
pressure: NUFAN, Prince EWS
not pressure

Reason: Wickets tumbling, first ever test match, knew who his relatives in the future was going to be.

 

[Days of Grace]

Yeah, I have basically given up including pressure innings.

It would take way too long.

Instead, I am putting in Centuries in matches won as a criteria. I am still not sure about that, tbh, since I am sure that a batsman's century probably doesn't contribute to a match win as much as a bowler's 5WI, right?

 

[NUFAN]

It's amazing how different the pressure and 100s in a winning match will change.

Someone like Chanderpaul and Flower would be annoyed with the change for sure.

 

[Uppercut]

It could be argued that 100s in a losing match are the sign of a better player.

If you want to tamper in that respect, the only thing you could really do would be to take out the runs scored in draws. You'd shave off some excellent innings, of course. But statistically it might be a better overall analysis.

 

[andyc]

Just because the game ends in a draw doesn't mean that any innings played weren't done so under pressure, though. Thinking of Ponting's knock at Old Trafford here as the first example.

 

[Richard]

I disagree, how a team handles pressure comes down to the individuals that make up that team and how the team management etc deals with pressure situations. A team isn't a non-living entity, it's made up of 11 individuals + background staff. If a feeling of panic spreads through the team when they're reduced to something like 4/2 then they're in all sorts of trouble. Then you have what happened to England when they were rolled for 51.

How each individual handles pressure - or is able to completely avert any of it - makes no difference to how any one other does. Cricket is a team game played by individuals - at any one point it's only ever one batsman against one bowler.

Yes, if panic spreads through a team when they lose a couple of early wickets then that can compound tricky situations. But an entire team cannot handle pressure, because a) they don't play together as a team, it's each man for himself as he faces the delivery and b) each individual will not be feeling equally under pressure.

 

[Richard]

I disagree, how a team handles pressure comes down to the individuals that make up that team and how the team management etc deals with pressure situations. A team isn't a non-living entity, it's made up of 11 individuals + background staff. If a feeling of panic spreads through the team when they're reduced to something like 4/2 then they're in all sorts of trouble. Then you have what happened to England when they were rolled for 51.

fyp.

You know, you were only 5 in 1999, and I regret to inform you that all the legends about how much super-better England have been this decade than the previous one are entirely, completely, fully false.

 

[Prince EWS]

Okay let's begin:

C. Bannerman 165
pressure: NUFAN, Prince EWS
not pressure

Reason: Wickets tumbling, first ever test match, knew who his relatives in the future was going to be.

Gun. If only I inherited his batting ability.. all I got was Alec's strike rate.

 

[Son Of Coco]

How each individual handles pressure - or is able to completely avert any of it - makes no difference to how any one other does. Cricket is a team game played by individuals - at any one point it's only ever one batsman against one bowler.

Yes, if panic spreads through a team when they lose a couple of early wickets then that can compound tricky situations. But an entire team cannot handle pressure, because a) they don't play together as a team, it's each man for himself as he faces the delivery and b) each individual will not be feeling equally under pressure.

In a team game I think it does to some extent.

 

[GIMH]

How each individual handles pressure - or is able to completely avert any of it - makes no difference to how any one other does. Cricket is a team game played by individuals - at any one point it's only ever one batsman against one bowler.

Yes, if panic spreads through a team when they lose a couple of early wickets then that can compound tricky situations. But an entire team cannot handle pressure, because a) they don't play together as a team, it's each man for himself as he faces the delivery and b) each individual will not be feeling equally under pressure.

In a team game I think it does to some extent.

Not just in a team game, but in all forms of life. If one person is under pressure it can have a huge knock-on effect, I'm talking at work, I'm talking at home, etc/

 

[Richard]

There's no doubt that someone can "pick up" a feeling of, well, some sort of negative (be it panic, disappointment, worry, fret etc.) from someone else but equally how much one does that is as unique to the individual as how much one feels pressure on one's own.

I really don't think there's any way you can quantify "the team is under pressure".

 

[Uppercut]

Just because the game ends in a draw doesn't mean that any innings played weren't done so under pressure, though. Thinking of Ponting's knock at Old Trafford here as the first example.

You're right, obviously. I was just suggesting that maybe runs scored in results would be a better sample than runs scored in all matches. You'd obviously cut out some good innings, but the overall proportion of under-pressure runs would be greater in the results-only sample.

Just maybe.

 

[silentstriker]

It also punishes some teams. For example, I am 100% sure that if India had Australia's attack during the 90s (or even an average attack) and most of this decade, many the matches that were draws would have been wins for India.... Conversely, all of Bangladeshi centuries, for example, would count, even though many of those matches would be a draw if they were a better team.

Either way, it's not the batsmen doing anything different.

The only way to check would be to look at the pitch itself and make a determination on whether there was any chance of a draw at all. But looking at how few draws the Aussie side participated in, it tells you a lot of what you need to know about that.

 

[Richard]

All these posts tell you is that sweeping generalisations are always going to have plenty of imperfections, and will allow very fair objections to be made when you're trying to use them to prove something.

 

[Days of Grace]

Have decided to go with a "pressure average" for batsmen and bowlers as part of my analysis of Test Players.

What forced my hand is having Ken Barrington at no.9 in my alltime test batsmen list, when I have the feeling he scored so many runs in bore draws and large wins.

New criteria: batsmen
a) Team lost the match
b) Team won the match by 99 runs or less/5 wickets or less. If they won by more, then the match can still be defined as a pressure match if they were behind on the first innings.
c) Drew the match after following on (can someone find where a list of matches where this happens is on the internet. Cricinfo doesn't have that list. Would be very useful). Hanif Mohammad played the most famous innings in this criteria.
d) Drew the match after being 100 or more runs behind on the first innings. Ponting at Manchester comes to mind here.
e) Drew the match when only 3 or less wickets were needed for a result. Again, Manchester 2005 or Cardiff 2009.


New criteria: bowlers
a) Team lost the match
b) Team won the match by 99 runs or less/5 wickets or less. If they won by more, then the match can still be defined as a pressure match if they were behind by 100 runs or more on the first innings.
c) All draws. I figure that for bowlers, draws are where bowling conditions are on the whole the most difficult since not enough wickets can be taken to force a result.

Let me know what you think.

It is goign to be madness looking at every single win or draw in a team's history, but so be it. A little craziness never hurt anyone.

 

[silentstriker]

What about drawing the match due to weather, or maybe only a day was available, instead of, say, two and a half days.

Also, in a draw, the bowlers could just be on a team with other crappy bowlers and thus unable to get a win. E.g, India. If the other team is up by, say 250+ runs after the first innings, there is really almost no pressure on the bowlers, the game is gone anyway.