11 March 2004

Team Round-Up: England and West Indies

As this is written, the teams have been announced, the toss has been made, and West Indies are about to go into bat against an inexperienced but highly touted England attack. Expectation weighs heavily on this England team, and Michael Vaughan sounds just a little bit nervous.

He has every right to. For all the high hopes of the English press, the belief that this England team has the best chance to win in the Caribbean for 36 years looks somewhat misplaced. It’s all very well for the players to talk like that, but at times the England cricket media seems to believe its job is to be the cheerleaders for a team that has some fundamental selection problems that it seems incapable of coming to grips with.

On the surface, such pessimism might appear misplaced. England played tough opposition away, fought hard for two tests before finally giving way thanks in part to the genius of Murali Muralitharan. West Indies, by contrast, were dominated by an excellent South African side that appears to have but a single weakness, the absence of a good spinning option.

Yet West Indies’ poor showing may prove easier to mend than the numbers might imply, while England’s optimism is based more on wishful thinking than on proven ability. England are hoping that three or four relatively untried bowlers will be able to take wickets, while they appear to think that their batsmen somehow measure up to the West Indies’ top five. Eh? Not on the evidence of their respective last series:

"Apples and oranges, mate," I can hear the England fan saying, "Sri Lanka is different to South Africa, and they’ve got Murali." Yes, but South Africa’s superb pace attack arguably constitutes the second-best group of bowlers in the world, whereas Sri Lanka’s attack is commonly accepted to be Murali and Vaas, plus a supporting cast of stoppers not takers. And the gaps between the two sets are immense, far greater than the difference between the average battings innings averages for the two series:

The difference is forty percent, so let’s reduce all the West Indian batsmen’s innings averages by that amount: Gayle becomes 36.60, Smith 24.60, Sarwan 29.40, Lara 39.83, Chanderpaul 28.60. That’s still a West Indian advantage of 13 runs.

Both these teams have long tails, and Flintoff needs to make up that 13-run difference (not taking into account any contribution by the likes of Powell or Ryan Hinds). For some reason, however, England seem obsessed with the notion that Flintoff is a batting all-rounder. This is far from the truth, as even a cursory examination of his averages will reveal:

The rule of thumb is that you’re an all-rounder if your batting average exceeds your bowling average. So, Flintoff has never qualified as such for Test purposes, but he keeps being regarded as one because of his one-day form. Probably the biggest revolution needed in England thinking is to regard Flintoff as a Test-level bowler, who is not a rabbit-in-the-headlights tailender. After all, he led the bowling averages in Sri Lanka!

Well, with Flintoff we reach the bowling half of these two teams. Readers who lack the stomach for atrocities should perhaps avert their eyes. England’s bowling attack has been plagued with injuries in recent years, and we’ve effectively seen a second-string attack for some time. However, that may well have been the salvation of Flntoff’s career, and has meant that some talented individuals have come forward to replace the old heroes Gough and Caddick. (Gough, in particular, has been sorely missed in recent years.) England don’t have a bad attack, but they don’t have a good one either.

Those were feast-or-famine numbers in Sri Lanka. Giles did all right, and Flintoff did well. Hoggard’s bloated average conceals a decent economy, but Anderson looks like a problem, and Kirtley doesn’t take wickets fast enough to support that economy. One can see just how much England are relying on Harmison and Jones to fulfil their potential. If they don’t, it’s hard to see where wickets will come from.

67.14?

That is the West Indian bowling average for their South African tour.

38.26?

That is the West Indian bowling average when you adjust it as we did when comparing the West Indian batting averages with England ones.

43.68?

That is England’s bowling average on the Sri Lankan tour.

So, as bad as West Indies’ bowling was in South Africa, it was not as bad as England’s figures in Sri Lanka. However, West Indies’ selectors have decided to pay more attention to the raw figures than to try and see them in context, and are going with an even more inexperienced attack than England. But they also have some interesting part-time options:

Best did not go to South Africa, and remains as much an unknown quantity as Jones. Dwayne Smith put up some interesting numbers as another part-time option, but didn’t bowl enough to warrant inclusion in the table.

We’re not in the business of prediction on this Web site, but of analysis. Looking at England, we’d say that they’ve shown a preference over the years to play to win, by trying to get their best bowling line-up into the side, regardless of how that leaves their batting. But the key to top-level cricket is to avoid losing, and that means having good bats. England are not a good batting side, and there are two reasons for this.

One is the determination to stick with Nasser Hussain, largely on the basis of what he has done in the past. Ever since we started doing this sort of analysis, three years ago, Hussain has been in decline. At crucial moments, he has pulled a fifty out of nowhere to suggest he still has his old batting skills, but each of these dawns has been as false as any in English Test cricketing history. Key is probably more likely to deliver good batting performances than Hussain in the future, but because he hasn’t gotten a hefty career average, England stick with the declining quantity instead of moving to a young player with the better chance of an upside. What’s worse is that Butcher and Thorpe could be moving into this same category.

The second reason is the aforementioned idea that Flintoff can bat. He can’t do it consistently. He’s been trying for five years, and that’s long enough for us to work out that his Test talent is bowling the ball. That means England needs to add another batsman, preferably an all-rounder, to the side. But the cupboard in that department looks a little bare, so it would be better to rely on part-time bowlers such as Trescothick, Vaughan, and Butcher to supply a few overs with the older ball. An England side with one tailender replaced by Flintoff, and with Key or Strauss in the side, might have avoided losing a few more Tests.

If England don’t take these steps, they are going to drop like a stone through the cricketing table as they attempt a transition between eras. All their best players are getting old, and all their question marks are young. That is not a good position to be in, when the environment includes countries with great depth such as India and Australia.

West Indies flatter to deceive. They’ve got some serious problems. They chop and change their bowlers needlessly, and field poorly. But these issues can be tackled easily through self-discipline. They can bat, and bat down to number six, one more than England. Then they are in "Calypso Collapso" territory, but if they can get enough runs on the board for their first five wickets, they will find themselves in a good position.

So, in that sense, if a couple of the young bowlers find their form, this West Indian team could do the exact opposite of England and shoot up the table.

Of course, life is rarely neat and tidy as this analysis has suggested. West Indies and England have been striving for mid-table respectability in recent years, and it is hard to see that situation changing in the foreseeable future.

10 March 2004

Team Round-Up: New Zealand

New Zealand have finished their first day’s play in their series against South Africa as this is written, although one is not aware of the course of events.

New Zealand is the land of the one sport, that sport being rugby union. In the same way that soccer reigns over the United Kingdom, so rugby does in the realm of the All Blacks. What’s worse, from our point of view, is that Test cricket is definitely second-best to the one-day game in the affection of the New Zealand cricket supporter. So, the recent series victory over South Africa (to be reviewed at a later date), no doubt gave the Black Caps some hope. They’ll need to draw heavily on that hope if they can expect to get away with a win in this Test series.

The problem with New Zealand doesn’t lay with the bats, although it’s fair to say that they lack depth, and the absence of Astle will always make life more difficult. New Zealand named a Test squad of thirteen, and here’s how those who played in the recent tour of India and series against Pakistan faired, statistically:

Cairns’ lack of form is partly down to his injury history, and partly because he only played one Test, at WestPac Park in Hamilton. However, the Black Caps really need someone more like the old Cairns in the Test side. It could be Cairns, it could be someone else. When you see your spin bowler at the top of your averages, you have to wonder whether something has gone wrong, but in this case it is a credit to some excellent batting by Vettori. But this is a side that looks one batsman short. There was hope prior to the First Test that Papps, who had a good one-day series, might provide that. Or else they need Ponting-like excellence from someone already in the side.

That’s not really a good selection for a Test match, and illustrates how much they miss Shane Bond. Another way to look at the problem is to average the last four Tests into bowlers’ lines from a scorecard. Since Cairns had only a single Test, we’ll omit him (and we’ll also leave out the maidens).

They’ve got to find four more wickets from somewhere. That’s not a good sign, and they’ve already given up 285 runs. They’re batsmen, meanwhile, can expect to have scored around 320 runs. It’s just not enough

When one compares New Zealand’s team averages with the Australians’, with the caveats that the Australians’ series was a lot longer (four tests to two) and they were at home, New Zealand faired better with the bat and worse with the ball. Since South Africa bat as well as the Australians, and have been bowling better of late, New Zealand confront a side that potentially is ideally balanced to take advantage of the Black Caps’ weakness while being able to fend off their strength.

New Zealand gets a lot of credit around here, because they are a well-organized side, and think hard on the game in order to make up for their shortcomings. New Zealand achieve a lot with limited resources, but have never looked as plausible a candidate for the senior table (to borrow the metaphor from a couple of days’ ago) as Sri Lanka. Weaker cricket powers need a player who is arguably the best in the world at bowling or batting in order to challenge the likes of Australia, and New Zealand haven’t got one. It is more a team of capable all-rounders, able to beat their averages (and consequently the opposition) on any given day–but not consistently.

About two years ago, the Black Caps were arguable the best of "the rest", given that they handled their closest opponent for that title, England, a bit roughly (and marked a watershed in Nasser Hussain’s England captaincy), and had just come off doing quite well in Australia. However, our sabermetric experience from baseball statistics makes us think that this team is on the point of decline. Their proven resources are not doing as well as they need to, which means that more youngsters will be brought into the side. Indeed, a triangular series between New Zealand, theWest Indies, and England is needed to sort out the middle of the Test Cricket Ladder, and fortunately that’s on the calendar in the coming months.

And we’ll be looking at New Zealand’s rivals for the Middle Ground next in a double-dose Round-Up.

9 March 2004

Team Round-Up: Sri Lanka

Apologies for being at the least a day late with this team round up. I’ve been busy with some work for the London Book Fair, opening at the end of this week. However, with that work out the way I ought to be able to deliver a few more articles.

Even more annoying, during all this time I’ve been champing at the bit in order to write this one. Sri Lanka are a fascinating team to analyse, and at their heart lies the man known in these parts as The Cobra, for his amazing gaze as he sends another spinning delivery down the pitch to befuddly batsmen. I write, of course, of Muttiah Muralitharan.

Murali remains a controversial bowler, as there are die hards who still call him a chucker. However, he was cleared long ago by an ICC investigation, and not being a biomechanician, I’m not a position to challenge this. So we accept that he’s legal, and we are amazed at the kinds of numbers he puts up, especially at home. England batsmen had to cope with his new delivery, and didn’t do so well as he posted some of the highest Match Scores we’ve seen so far (119 at Galle).

Murali’s remarkable Endurance, a measure of how many overs he bowls in an innings, illustrate just how much Sri Lanka rides those amazing averages. It would take two bowlers, in this case Dharmasena and Vaas, to make up as many overs in an innings as Muralitharan supplies and with less effect. Vaas himself did a good job, and its unfortunate that Fernando is injured for the First Test against Australia. And note how Jayasuriya was able to bottle up the England batsmen, and bring to a halt any rally with a 1.74 economy, even if he didn’t take an awful lot of wickets.

But Sri Lanka is more than just a great bowling side; it also has some handy batsmen:

That’s a solid lineup, although it lacks much amazing stroke play. Jayawardene was the Rock of Gibraltar, while Dilshan and Chandana blasted the ball to good effect. Spare a thought for Atapattu, who had a miserable time, but did better than Captain Tillakaratne, looking more like a Sri Lankan Brearley with every passing Test.

So, as Australia start their visit, what to make of this Sri Lankan side? For years now there has been an invisible barrier between the top teams in international cricket and the middle of the pack. This isn’t the first time that Sri Lanka have stood with their hand on a chair at the top table only to have to reilinquish their grip and retire to the tables in the junior common room.

Australia still have their key four batsmen, who can easily amass four hundred runs between them—Ponting, Hayden, Langer, and Gilchrist. However, none of them has yet faced the new delivery Muralitharan has developed which tormented the England batsmen. Sri Lanka is place suited to bowlers of swing and spin, and a difficult place to bat even for the home side. But the Australians are still missing one of the best bowlers, McGrath, due to injury, and Gillespie and Lee are both coming off weak performances against another subcontinental side. Only Warne, looking fit and rested, and consequently dangerous.

Sri Lanka are going to go as far as Murali can take them. And this could well be the point where they finally claim a seat at the top table, through a good performance against Australia. Don’t be surprised if you see South Africa and Australia having to set places for supper for a couple of subcontinental teams.

Next up: New Zealand

USA Qualifies for ICC Trophy

Not that we expect much, but since one of us is American we thought it worth bringing to attention.

ICC May Move Away From Lords

This would be a disaster for English cricket, and also for international cricket.

The ECB’s prestige relies heavily on two things, the size of the English market, and the fact that England is the birthplace of cricket. Having the International (formerly Imperial) Cricket Conference here is a consequence of history. The whole crisis has blown up over the issue of Zimbabwe. The Labour Government in Britain doesn’t want the ECB to tour Zimbabwe. The Zimbabwean regime attacks the former colonial occupier, which makes it potentially dangerous for players to visit as there will be plenty of nutcases willing to put their anti-British antipathy into action. (Although it is difficult to imagine the Zimbabwean government letting militants rough up a visiting cricket team whose visit suggested Zimbabawe was a normal place after all.)

Sending the ICC to Dubai or Malaysia, neither of them cricketing hotbeds, just sounds as ridiculous, and without any of the justification that has placed the financial department of the ICC in Monaco. "Reforms" that ignore history always fail. England is the home of cricket, and cricket’s governing body should stay here. It is already questionable whether cricket is number two or now number three in spectator appeal in England following the recent Rugby World Cup success. That English market that pours money into the coffers of touring sides is not something to be dismissed lightly.

The ECB (and the Labour governement) have gambled that the "white" commonwealth would rally round to exclude Zimbabwe from cricketing tours. But the Australians have undermined that strategy by agreeing to go. The ECB really ought to accept the first rule of politics—be realistic. There is no support for its strategy now, and keeping the ICC is worth a lot both to the ECB and to cricket worldwide. Time for the England team to book tickets for a Zimbabwe tour.