31^st July 2003

Damn Sad Hussain

Nasser Hussain resigned the ODI captaincy job saying he believed the England team was better with him there, but he felt he wasn't good enough at one-day batting to keep his place. We wish he had said so sooner and he could have been thrown him out before. What purpose did he think he served believing he was a below-par player? Some sort of latter-day Mike Brearley? His lack of batting prowess cost us qualification for the Super Sixes.

On Monday last he said he was tired of being England captain. Why didn't he include his tiredness in his constant criticism of the England team last year? He wasn't shy about laying into the England bowling - Hoggard lost his confidence, Caddick, a bowler previously with a great record avoiding serious injury, misses Test after Test last year after being overbowled, Gough picks up injuries which cost him two years' Test cricket while other less experienced bowlers (eg Anderson this Test but he was not the first nor the most blatant example)) get punished by exile to the outfield after bad spells.

Hussain wasn’t always a captain moving us to rage and fury, but he did become one. Like any passionate cricket fan, we might take issue with team selection matters, such as the omission of Ramprakash from the South African tour of 1999/2000. There is definitely a case for arguing that Hussain’s captaincy falls into two parts: BA and AA, or Before Atherton and After Atherton.

Atherton retired after the Fifth Test against Australia in 2001. The loss of the series in India, and the criticism he took for his negative tactics in bowling at Tendulkar during the Third Test certainly would have irritated him.

But Hussain’s Tipping Point occurs during the New Zealand tour of the following spring. Even on the radio it was apparent that he was having a tantrum in the field during the Third Test. A series that had England with a 1-0 lead going into this match turned into a 1-1 draw. Hussain, who hates to give anything away, would by nature have been embarrassed and angered by such a performance.

After this, he never accepted that his tactical approach, which was never to leave open the door of any stable from which a horse had bolted, perhaps contributed to his bowlers’ problems. Poor team selection nearly embarrassed England at Lord’s in the First Test against Sri Lanka. But England showed the value of Hussain as a captain by fighting back, both against the Sri Lankans and the following Indian side. Hussain showed grit, but it became apparent from team selection that Hussain was going to rely wholly on grit on the following Ashes tour. Hussain was going to go for victory, even though he had the possibility, given the talent at his disposal, to frustrate as he had frustrated Tendulkar, and play to take advantage of Australian mistakes.

Perhaps he was already tired. Is an Ashes tour the place for a tired captain, or the World Cup a place for self-confessed substandard batsman? Is he good enough at Test batting to keep his place, or will he retire from international cricket in a year's time admitting he wasn't? So let him be judged on his performance and let's replace him instantly with Graham Thorpe.

England v South Africa, Lord’s Prognosis

Lord’s is a hard ground to read. In recent years it has been a batting wicket, but not so long ago it could prove an explosive aid to bowlers.

Total runs scored in each Test, 1999-2002
833	621	646	773	829	1401	1406	852

There was a big jump last year, but the median scores suggest were looking at a total for this test of around 830. An innings by innings breakdown shows that runs are very much front-loaded.

The low score for the fourth innings are largely because on four out of five occasions, not many runs were needed to secure victory.

Jacques Kallis will still be on bereavement leave, so we’ll assumed unchanged teams. How do their averages measure up over the last four years, plus the Edgbaston test?

Innings Averages, South Africa v England
Player	Average	Player	Average
Smith	62.44	Trescothick	36.77
Gibbs	49.18	Vaughan	44.77
Kirsten	46.76	Butcher	36.69
Dippennaar	26.90	Hussain	31.87
Rudolph	98.67	McGrath	61.33
Boucher	28.23	Stewart	32.65
Pollock	25.59	Flintoff	21.48
Peterson	61	Giles	15.52
Pretorius	2.50	Gough	9.35
Willoughby	---	Harmison	11.14
Ntini	5.78	Anderson	5.33

Bowling Averages, South Africa v England
Player	Average	Player	Average
Pollock	20.27	Anderson	29.33
Ntini	28.76	Gough	26.90
Willoughby	125	Harmison	34.44
Pretorius	44.50	Flintoff	48.66
Peterson	26.33	Giles	34.86
		Vaughan	84
		Butcher	18.30

Possibly, the South Africans will bowl Zondeki instead of Willoughby, who underperformed at Edgbaston, and possibly Adams instead of Peterson — although nothing has changed in terms of the reasoning why Peterson played ahead of Adams at Edgbaston.

Looking at these figures, you’d have to favour South Africa strongly if they win the toss this morning. The one real advantage England have is with the fourth seamer. Everywhere else, South Africa are ahead.

Which is another reason to end on a moan against Hussain. Throughout his career he has been a bad-tempered, selfish and self-centred cricketer. With Kallis away, South Africa were vulnerable. Now he has put his team in the position where they haven’t had time to adjust properly to the options available after his retirement, simply because he didn’t think he fit in as captain. Well, Nasser, what about the team? That‘s a giant shadow you have cast over it.

30^th July 2003

Australia v Bangladesh, 2003

While the eyes of England have been focused on Birmingham, there was the matter of the ICC-mandated series between Australia and Bangladesh, which brought cricket to northern Australia. As expected, the Australians manhandled the Bangladeshis like a gang of Skate Rockers might rough up an old lady with Alzheimer’s. However, there are some points of interest to be drawn from statistical analysis.

Apart from one innings, the Bangladeshis did not manage to score even 200 against the Australian attack. Indeed, in the First Test, at Darwin, the Bangladeshis were bowled out for 97 in their first innings, in a typical Australian manner of establishing dominance as quickly as possible. However, the first innings at Cairns saw the Bangladeshis post a respectable 295. Where did that come from?

Obviously, the pitch offered the bowlers less, especially since the Australians got to 556 more easily than the 407 they put on at Darwin. But it still takes some ability to achieve a 300 percent improvement. Let’s look at some figures (OA stands for Overs Average, BO/I for Batter’s Overs per Innings; you’ll find these explained in our Glossary via the link above.):

The big gainer was Hannan Sarkar, who seemed to learn something between the two tests, boosting both his scoring rate and his ability to block. Javed Omar did a little better, and Habibul Bashar was pretty consistent. Sanwar Hossain was also an improvement over Al Sahariar. Khaled Mashud and Alok Kapali also seemed to learn something, as the increased BO/I suggest.

Meanwhile what can we see about the Australian bowlers? (End stands for Endurance, R/I for Runs per Innings, and W/I for wickets per innings.):

MacGill was certainly the game-breaker for the Ockers, and Gillespie did well, too. MacGill has put a marker down that Shane Warne will have to remove through some good performances once he has finished serving his suspension. We wouldn’t want to encourage the selectors to overlook the fact that Warne got caught and must be made an example of. McGrath was his stingy self, but took few wickets, while Lee was typically profligate and had one of his wicket droughts. If you could genetically manipulate those two into two different bowlers, you could have the greatest bowler of all time and a merely excellent bowler. Maybe they’ve got that anyway.

We’ll be back tomorrow with some stat-free commentary about Nasser Hussain’s resignation, among a few other leadership issues, and we should also have some commentary about the consequences of the 1^st England v South Africa Test for the 2^nd one, at the hallowed hunting ground of Lord’s.

27^th July 2003

South Africa finished their innings about an hour before tea yesterday, with Shaun Pollock and Mark Boucher at bat. Graeme Smith managed to establish a record for the highest score by a South African batsman, ever; but, in terms of the series, this innings demonstrated that the supposed ascendancy gained by England over the South Africans in the recent One-Day series was something of a figment of various optimists’ imaginations. As anyone could see by checking the different players’ averages, on paper the South Africans looked to be a side that would give England a hard time, because overall they bat better.

At the end of the innings, the English bowlers had accumulated the following Match Scores:

For those wondering why Vaughan might not have been bowled more, more profitably, Giles spin figures of 2-153, may provide a pointer. Nasser Hussain played his usual trick of putting one of the bowlers out of the attack. Anderson came out to bowl Saturday morning, had one spell of three overs, during which he gave up fourteen runs and showed he still had trouble bowling to the right line, and was dispatched to patrol the boundary for the rest of the day. Hussein tends to scapegoat bowlers, and it will be interesting to see whether Anderson’s stock, riding high until this Test, starts to plummet to Alex Tudor levels.

South Africa’s bowling attack had only a short outing, but readers, viewers and listeners were constantly reminded by the English media how inexperienced it was.

In terms of caps, we make the difference to be three. Gough would certainly have had more if he had not been hurt, as would Flintoff. But the only significant advantage comes in comparing the finger spinners, Peterson and Giles. Both these attacks are at about the same level of experience.

24^th July 2003

England v South Africa, 1^st Test, 1^st Day

As we suggested in the last paragraph of yesterday’s report, the recent dry spell in England has altered the nature of the Edgbaston pitch. (Birmingham has received half the normal amount of rain for the first six months of this year.) South Africa’s Graeme Smith won the toss and chose to bat. England’s Nasser Hussain, interviewed after the toss, said that he was ‘never 100 percent certain’ what he was going to do, but he said he too would have chosen to bat.

The eight players we listed in yesterday’s blog were all included in the South African team, and they added three more. Here’s the full list, with four-year averages:

Player	Innings average last four years		Bowling average last four years
Graeme Smith	45.50		40
Mark Boucher	28.46		- - -
Boeta Dippenaar	27.04		- - -
Herschelle Gibbs	43.63		- - -
Gary Kirsten	51.89		- - -
Makhaya Ntini		5.78	28.39
Robin Peterson		61.00	13.50
Shaun Pollock		25.63	20.15
Dewald Pretorius		2.50	132
Jacques Rudolph		146.50	- - -
Charl Willoughby		- - -	79.00

The opening pair, Smith and Gibbs, managed an historic partnership of 338. England’s bowlers’ current match scores reflect this day that was dominated by the bat:

By way of comparison, here are the Match Scores for Pakistan’s bowlers for the innings in which Smith and Gibbs set the current South African record first wicket partnership:

Potentially, there is some way for some of England’s bowlers to fall, if the magical Saqlain could wind up with a score of 21.

We’re left with three questions you might care to ponder. A couple of possible chances in the slips were lost because the ball did not carry. Might it have profited, England to move the cordon forward slightly, once they had seen that happen twice? Second, since McGrath was brought into the team as an all-rounder, why not give him a bowl? And third, might some more imaginative pairings of bowlers been put together, such as Harmison and Vaughan or Gough and Giles, so that the batsmen might have been forced either to avoid singles or constantly adapt their batting between spin and pace or bounce and skid?

We’ll be back again after the end of the South African innings, whether bowled out or by declaration.

Edgbaston’s Recent History

England’s record at Edgbaston in the last four years is evenly balanced. They can claim two victories: a remarkable come-from-behind one against New Zealand in 1999, and a one-sided triumph over Sri Lanka in 2002. Against this, they must set two heavy defeats by West Indies in 2000 and Australia in 2001. The last time England and South Africa played here was in 1998, a match ended prematurely by heavy rain, in which the pundits gave the nod on points to England. Let’s do some statistical breakouts for the last four years.

Average first innings total	215.25
Average second innings total	461.25
Average third innings total	167.25
Average fourth innings total	211

It’s pretty clear that the astute move in recent years would have been for the side winning the toss to choose to bowl. Something appears to go out of the pitch during the first innings, leaving the pitch flat and unresponsive in the second. Of course, this is boosted by scores of over 600 by Australia in 2001 and England in 2002, but even West Indies managed 397 in 2000.

A rough old time for the bowlers. But how did the different types of bowlers fare? Here’s a breakout using bowling average by bowling style.

Right Arm Leg Spin	12.50
Wrist Spin	12.50
Right-Arm Medium	18.83
Right-Arm Fast	25.07
Right Arm	27.46
Left-Arm Orthodox	28.44
Pace	29.88
Right-Arm Fast Medium	31.36
Finger Spin	31.38
Left Arm	32.59
Left-Arm Fast Medium	35.46
Right-Arm Off Spin	45.57

Right-Arm Leg Spin means Shane Warne, and the figures are there to prove it. However, it is fair to suggest that off spin is relatively unprofitable at Edgbaston, and the seaming medium pacers find something there that eludes faster bowlers. Flat-out speed, seam or leg spin are the ways to go. England’s potential second-line attack of Andrew Flintoff, Ashley Giles and Mark Butcher could reap some hefty dividends. For South Africa, Shaun Pollock may have lost a little too much off his pace to be a game breaker, but Makhaya Ntini could give a good account of himself. These two openers could be usefully reinforced by selecting three from Dewald Pretorius, Monde Zondeki, Jacques Rudolph, and Neil McKenzie–fast, fast, leg breaks, and medium pace respectively–especially since the last two are really in the side for their bats. Kallis’s absence may actually help, by removing a type of bowler who doesn’t do superbly at Edgbaston.

Analysing the individual performances more deeply, most of the spinner’s wickets come against the tail, which suggests that the seamers struggled against lower order batsmen. This leads us to think that either the tail was swinging and connecting against the seamers, whereas the batsmen batted cautiously until eventually an unplayable ball came along; or the tail was content to block where the batsmen played injudicious shots. We’d be more inclined to believe the former, given memories of the two-paced nature of the pitch.

However, the timing and the weather may be a factor in all this. Those tests of the last four years fell in the months of May, June, and early July; and none went longer than four days. This is the latest Edgbaston Test since 1993 (one won by Australia, convincingly), and it follows a period of dry weather (although it appears the pitch will get a soaking today.) Conditions could be very different this time, scores could be higher and a fifth day may be needed, but only if England bat well above their averages.

South Africans

South Africa haven’t announced a team yet, and we won’t supply four-year averages for the whole lot. These are the eight we think are certainties to play:

Player	Innings average last four years	Bowling average last four years
Graeme Smith	45.50	40
Mark Boucher	28.46	- - -
Boeta Dippenaar	27.04	- - -
Herschelle Gibbs	43.63	- - -
Gary Kirsten	51.89	- - -
Makhaya Ntini	5.78	28.39
Shaun Pollock	25.63	20.15
Jacques Rudolph	146.50	- - -

Rudolph’s average, like McGrath’s, is based on matches against weaker opponents, but he comes out ahead on that like-for-like comparison. Whoever is chosen for the remaining three spots will make up the balance of the attack, and their performance is likely to determine whether South Africa can pull out a surprise victory. However, comparing the numbers, one would suggest that Nasser Hussain’s team have their work cut out for them, in spite of England’s dominance of the Proteas during the recent one-day NatWest series.

We’ll have some analysis of just what happens at Edgbaston, including our novel Match Scores method of comparing bowling performances among other unique statistics of our own development, over the next few days. We’ll also have some interesting facts and figures about Alec Stewart, who announced his retirement from international cricket last Tuesday.

20th July 2003

GOUGH IS BACK!

England announced a 12-player squad for their first Test against South Africa, starting next Thursday at Edgbaston.
 
                

Player	Innings Average last four years	Bowling Average last four years
Nasser Hussain (capt)	32.39	n/a
James Anderson	8.00	20.27
Mark Butcher	37.10	27.07
Andrew Flintoff	20.87	45.13
Ashley Giles	14.61	36.84
Darren Gough	9.58	26.31
Steve Harmison	6.78	31.43
James Kirtley	N/A	N/A
Anthony McGrath	75.00	5.33
Alec Stewart	32.58	N/A
Marcus Trescothick	37.95	52
Michael Vaughan	46.49	77.5

Flintoff’s rickety record in Tests is illustrated here. He has the worst average of any member the potential front-line bowling attack for England, and his batting is easily the worst of anyone who can claim not to be part of the tail.

Also noticeable is the value of Gough to the England attack. He is easily the best bowler, historically speaking, taking into account the fact that Anderson’s good average was earned against the Zimbabweans. However, Gough has not bowled in anger in a Test situation for some two years, and although he has looked good in one-day games, Flintoff has done the same for years without translating his success there into Test wickets and maidens.

Amazingly, we can see that Mark Butcher ought to be preferred over Flintoff, and indeed can claim to be England’s one true all-rounder.

England’s relative batting weakness is also captured by these stats. Comparable stats for the Australians see batsmen averaging over 40 right down to number five. England’s number four cannot average a higher score than Stewart, a wicketkeeper traditionally batting at six. McGrath is really an unknown quantity at this stage. However, retaining Key would have been a grave mistake, unless one thought that the elements in his 18.77 average gathered against India and Australia somehow outweigh McGrath’s 75 against the frightful Zimbabwean attack. 

Let’s see how those England players with a track record at Edgbaston do:

Vaughan	46.00	- - -
Trescothick	79.00	- - -
Butcher	36.33	13.80
Hussain	39.46	- - -
Stewart	33.00	- - -
Flintoff	19.00	32.67
Giles	2.33	86.00
Gough	12.50	35.36

Giles’ appalling track record suggests that England may have chosen one bowler too many in this squad, especially since McGrath has been known to bowl, Butcher seems to enjoy himself in the West Midlands, and even Flintoff approaches respectability—unless there are unadmitted fitness concerns about one of the seamers. Gough, the Dazzler, has trouble here, though.

The figures also suggest that moving Hussain back to number three in the order, at least for one Test, is worth considering. Then he can wave a bunch of fingers at the media again.