Worth reading, again and again and again

It’s an article that’s more than nine months old; it’s about a cricketer who retired about eight months ago; and it’s about the cricketer’s lesser abilities. But this article on Cricinfo keeps resonating in my mind. It’s perhaps the best article I have ever read, for its sheer ability to tickle the funny bone without stating anything except the bare facts. Even the adjectives are not over the board and are always substantiated by numbers. It’s a glorious example of brilliant wit using simple statistics, this piece on Glenn McGrath by Tim de Lisle. Stop everything and read this, if you haven’t already. If you have, another read (and another, and another) won’t hurt.

The graceful left-hander

And speaking of left-handers, it has also been long said that they are so naturally graceful that it is rare to find an inelegant left-hander. But that, thanks to the all-seeing eye of television, has proved to be a myth. More on that in the next post perhaps.

Thus ended my previous post. Here’s the next one.

When I grew up listening to radio commentary and reading cricket magazines, left-handers were always a pleasure to watch at the batting crease. Neil Harvey was described as somewhat of a ballet dancer in flannels, David Gower was grace personified, and even Clive Lloyd, while characterized as strong, was referred to as Big Cat, and the feline reference connoted its own image. And while the odd right-hander was described as elegant (Gundappa Vishwanath was right up there in this department), most of them were either technically correct (like Sunil Gavaskar) or brutally powerful (like Sir Vivian Richards).

So has the demands of the modern game made left-handers more utilitarian and less elegant? Or is it thanks to (or may be not) the ruthless eye of television technology, the scales are coming off our eyes? We seem to have become Gulliver to the televised world of Brobdingnag, conscious of every little detail and deficiency in the players. And no one has suffered more than the left-hander.

The Dravids continue to me “immaculate in defence,” and the Pietersens march on, murdering opposition fast bowlers with their brute power. So who is the most elegant left-hander in the world today? Saurav Ganguly? Ever watched him handle a short ball aimed at the ribs? You still call him elegant? Matthew Hayden? As elegant as a pugilist in leotards. Sanath Jayasuriya? With a nickname like the Matara Marauder, what would you expect? Name anybody else, and chances are your lasting image is an ugly swipe or an ungainly poke. So is the elegant left-hander an urban myth? A creation of primitive cameras and imaginative radio commentators?

On what turned out to be a related note, I had this conversation with a fellow cricket-fan at my office late last week, and we were trying to identify the most inelegant batsmen we have seen in action. The top three names that came out were Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Jimmy Adams, and Ejaz Ahmed – two left-handers in three. And Allan Border wasn’t far behind.

How television kills those pictures in our mind.

Left out in India

After India eased to victory in the first one-day international (scorecard) against Pakistan today, the Indian captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni said that he promoted himself ahead of Yuvraj Singh in the batting order to keep a left-right combination in the middle. Which got me wondering.

Almost every cricket-playing nation has had at least one or two left-handers who could lay claim to being among the top 10 test batsmen of their country. The West Indies have Sir Garfield Sobers and Brian Lara, Australia have Allan Border and Matthew Hayden, Sri Lanka have Arjuna Ranatunga and Sanath Jayasuriya, New Zealand have Glenn Turner and John Wright, England have Frank Woolley and David Gower, South Africa have Gary Kirsten (and could have had a couple more if they had not been banned for all those years), Pakistan have Saeed Anwar. What about India?

Saurav Ganguly would probably be deemed India’s best left-hander in history, but, with due respect, not too many people would consider him among the top ten all-time test batsmen in India. Why did India have such a paucity of southpaws? The small town I grew up in, if it were to be considered representative of India, could offer some hints.

I grew up playing cricket on the streets of a small town in Tamil Nadu in South India. Because of the layout of the street (we used to play diagonally across), there was (from a right hander’s position) no fine-leg or square-leg, and not much of a mid-wicket either; the most productive shot was the on-drive (ironically considered one of the most difficult to play in international cricket); and the odd single could be had if the cover-drive or off-drive is played gently enough so the ball doesn’t ricochet into a fielder’s hands.

Quite often, the fact that we had a limited number of players (about ten between the two teams) meant that shots in the arc covering point through to the wicket-keeper were not allowed. This led to an unwritten rule: left-handers not allowed. This was because they would, we right-handers reckoned, be quite a nuisance if they have the habit of playing off their hips down towards fine-leg, which, apart from fetching no runs, would also cause a delay in play because some one would have to run and fetch the “dead” ball. Even when we included left-handers into the team, they were openly made fun of and referred to as lottai, local vernacular derogatory slang for a southpaw.

So while we went into raptures imagining the languid grace of David Gower or the awesome power of Clive Lloyd (as recounted by the radio commentators of those days), we didn’t want a southpaw in our team. Rather conveniently for us, the Indian top order of those days (I am referring to the early 1980s) did not have a single left-hander, comprising as it did Sunil Gavaskar, Chetan Chauhan, Dilip Vengsarkar, Gundappa Vishwanath, two from Yashpal Sharma, Sandeep Patil and Mohinder Amarnath, and Kapil Dev. Unconsciously, I suppose, this made us feel justified in our discrimination.

Of course, things are changing now, and we have a steady flow of left-handers into the Indian team. May be it has to do with all those old houses being combined into apartment blocks and separate playing spaces being created for budding cricketers. But when I reflect on those days, I wonder how many talented left-handers India missed out on, because of the design of our streets.

And speaking of left-handers, it has also been long said that they are so naturally graceful that it is rare to find an inelegant left-hander. But that, thanks to the all-seeing eye of television, has proved to be a myth. More on that in the next post perhaps.

Well Cooked

A lot has been said about Alastair Cook and how he is the first English cricketer (or cricketer representing England, to be precise) to make six test centuries before his 23^rd birthday. What makes the achievement especially noticeable is that England is not necessarily known for blooding its players young. Or is it?

A look at the current team suggests that England is beginning to change this trend. Cook himself started at 21, as did Andrew Flintoff; Ian Bell was 22 when he made his debut. Even a look at the others suggests that the oldest debutant in the current squad is Andrew Strauss, who was a ripe, old 26 when he walked out in England colours for the first time. Just to complete the numbers, Mathew Hoggard and Ryan Sidebottom were 23, Kevin Pietersen, Monty Panesar and Steve Harmison were 24, while Paul Collingwood and skipper Michael Vaughan were 25 when they made their debuts. Not quite Sachin Tendulkar, Shahid Afridi, and Mohammed Ashraful, but not a senior citizens’ parade either.

Back to Cook. Inasmuch as his batting has been impressive, his thinking also seems to be in the right direction, if this delightful ramble is any indication.

While his conversion rate of fifties to hundreds is quite impressive (five fifties and six hundreds), Cook’s six hundreds read as follows: 104 not out, 105, 127, 116, 105 and 106. He is still due a real big one. And his analysis of why he hasn’t got there is interesting.

Sometimes I perhaps tense up after passing a hundred and put pressure on myself by thinking I've got to go on and get a big one. But I just need to enjoy the moment more as that is the best time to be batting.

Of course, Cook is not a man after statistics.

Stats are interesting but they do not drive me. The one thing it does, I suppose, is put me in a different category as no other Englishman has done it before.

He has the whimsy, does the young lad. But he may just want to watch it and not cross swords with divinity.

We had a bit of a celebration after winning the series at Old Trafford. Vaughany got a bit of stick in the papers for enjoying himself too much and falling asleep outside a bar. But he was just a bit tired. It was a bit late for the old man and past his bedtime.

Cheeky, chef, but watch out for Vaughany’s response. “Cook is an extremely smart and earnest lad, but his comments did give sleepless nights to the team. We were all a bit tensed up and tried to stop sleeping – we tried a bit too hard. But Vaughan is fine now, he hasn’t taken offence at what Cook has said. Let’s go, Chef.”

Unfinished business

With Brian Lara’s statements about intending to come back to international cricket, we are likely to be bombarded with opinions from all quarters on whether Lara’s comeback plans are sensible or not, and I would like to venture that most experts would veer towards the latter. Anyway, let me leave that debate and judgment to the experts and dwell on the possible reason for Lara’s apparent volte-face.

“It’s all very well for you to say goodbye to your profession and come back home. But what about the mortgage payments for all those houses we’ve bought? Who’s going to pay for them?” barked the wife when Lara entered home, with his clothes covered in confetti, after yet another triumphant World Cup campaign (they actually won a few games). So he floated his résumé into the market.

Coach? “Wanna coach an Asian nation?”

Write an autobiography? “Sorry, no ghost-writers around – they’ve started writing under their own names. Moreover, autobios are not hot any more, especially after the recent spate of flops.”

Commentator? “No thank you, how can we think of another West Indian when Holding rules the mike?”

“Oh well, you can always go back to the West Indies team.” “Yes, honey.”

So when he said, “I think I am going to play cricket again. If I go six or eight months without cricket I would lose it and I don’t want to lose it yet” to the media, you know what he meant with the “it”.

On a more factual note, Lara probably missed out on a couple of calculations and landmarks. He currently has 11,953 test runs. May be he just wants to cross the 12,000 barrier. He also needs just the one more one-dayer to complete 300 limited overs internationals. Of course numbers don’t matter to Lara, but if they come in, they are good, aren’t they? After all, the 400 not out just happened by the way, didn’t it?

And yes, while Lara has four wickets in ODIs, he is yet to open that account in test matches. So that’s a small matter to address there as well.

The end of the tail?

Excellent tailend swishing this. Tailenders should do this more; swing and hope.

A scrap of commentary from the Cricinfo team covering the third test between England and the West Indies in Manchester.

It’s an aspect of cricket that can be a bit irritating for the fielders looking forward to some rest and relaxation and more than a bit painful for the batsmen if they are at the receiving end of some perfume balls. But it is probably a most relaxing watch for the spectators – when the game is really a game and not a contest. A Courtney Walsh, a Curtly Ambrose, or a Muthiah Muralitharan at the crease were absolute delights to watch, not for their runs (or the lack of them) but for the way they handle their bats.

Unfortunately, tail-end batting is probably going to join the annals of history as a dying art, alongside touch batting, on-field expressions of dissent and walking after feathering the ball. With teams increasingly emphasizing on batting contributions from the tail, tail-enders (soon they may protest against that phrase; so what would you call them – bottom order? late order?) are increasingly becoming dour, defensive and, sacrilege, more than a bit proficient with the bat.

A Glenn McGrath could have been great entertainment, but what does he do? He goes and gets a test-match fifty. Anil Kumble (remember him chopping his own stumps like they were recalcitrant weeds in New Zealand eons ago?) looks so serious his ineptness is close to unwatchable. Monty could have been a great personality in the Jack role, but he clearly looks like a No. 10, if not a No. 9 (or is he England’s next great all-round hope?), considering his recent batting exploits. Even a Steve Harmison seems to be trying hard – he actually scores more runs than take wickets nowadays (may be that’s what keeps him still in the playing eleven).

Where have the real tail-enders gone?

Well left

Steve James, writing in the Guardian, talks about the importance of leaving the ball, especially in the kind of conditions England and West Indies were up against at Headingley. He quotes Sir Vivian Richards: “You’ve got to do it in England,” he said, “In fact, in early season over here leaving the ball early on gave me more pleasure than it hitting the middle of the bat. You’ve got to show respect.”

Two interesting points being made here.

Leaving the ball actually gives Sir Viv greater pleasure than middling it. Counter-intuitive as it might sound, it seems perfectly sensible. It’s probably true in business as well – success is a function of not just what you choose to do but what you choose not to do as well. And it is not counter to aggression either – aggression does not mean going hell for leather against every delivery – it’s about choosing the right delivery to hit. A certain Mr. Sehwag can benefit from this advice.

Sir Viv talking of respecting the bowling? He who stepped inside the line of Mike Hendrick’s full-length delivery and flicked it for six over midwicket in the last ball of the West Indian innings in the 1979 World Cup Final? He who murdered bowlers across the world with shots all round the wicket? He who is still talked of in awe for his gum-chewing nonchalance and chilling stroke play? No, Sir Viv was talking of respecting the conditions. If the ball swings, it is a function of the nip in the air. If the ball wobbles, it has to do with the wind behind the bowler. Respect for nature is what Sir Viv is referring to. An interesting way of saying “adapt to the conditions.”

Bev or Viv?

Today’s issue of Mint (the financial newspaper of the Hindustan Times group, in association with the Wall Street Journal) carries a story on how two actuaries have come up with a new system to calculate batting averages of batsmen in limited over internationals.

The most significant change that has been introduced is the treatment of unbeaten innings. The two actuaries Sanchit Maini and Sumit Narayanan argue, and rightly so too, that adding to the numerator but not to the denominator is not quite fair. Sanchit and Sumit use insurance principles like risk and exposure to play with the calculations.

“According to the new method, if a not-out batsman has played fewer balls than his own average (number of balls faced on an average in his career) up till that game, it is not counted as a not-out. For instance, if a cricketer has played 10 innings, facing an average of 41 balls in each innings, and remained not-out in four, but faced at least 41 balls in only one of these four innings, then he is counted as having been out in three of his ‘not-out’ innings. His average will fall because his score in this 10 innings will now be divided by nine (the number of innings in which he is considered out), and not six as it would have otherwise been.”

It doesn’t sound as complex as Duckworth & Lewis, for sure, so that’s a start. But if the ICC does take it up and starts adding more variables to it, you never know what may come out.

However, the question really is this: Do we really need different statistics to evaluate batsmen? Michael Bevan’s average is much higher than that of Sir Vivian Richards, but does even a rabid Australian think Bevan was better than Sir Viv? Sure, Sanchit’s and Sumit’s formula puts this pecking order in place, but isn’t that retro-fitting?

Any way, let me not quibble. The fun in cricket analysis lies in looking at the game through different lenses – and the number lens is perhaps one of the more interesting. Good shot, Sanchit and Sumit. Now if only you could find a useful way to measure fielding averages…

Seven Centuries in an Innings

Australia beat South Africa by 83 runs in the only meaningful encounter in Group A. This means that Australia go in with points into the Super 8.

Yes, Mathew Hayden bulldozed South Africa; yes Ricky Ponting made another big score (ho hum); and yes, Michael Clarke got among the runs. (No, Pollock and McGrath were not their usual parsimonious selves, but that’s a different story.)

But here’s a chilling statistic. Every single Australian scored at more than run-a-ball, and seven of them came out to wield the willow. Gilchrist got an even 42 of 42, Hayden 101 of 68, Ponting 91 of 91, Clarke 92 of 75, Symonds 18 of 13, Watson 14 of 9, and Hussey 5 of 3. Even in that game at the Wanderers, this did not happen.

I don’t want to sound like I’m old-fashioned and say that cricket has degenerated into a batsman’s game. The batsman is as integral to the game as the bowler. And let’s face it, from the perspective of the lay watcher (the backbone for cricket’s commercial success), Pollock’s parsimony is not half as exciting to watch as Gibbs’s six-hitting. (But then, unfortunately, I am an old-fashioned cricket fan who enjoys watching McGrath bowling in the corridor ball in and ball out.)

Is it not possible to make the game exciting for the lay watcher from a bowler’s perspective? After all, a four and a six are the main scoring shots that attract the commercial cricket fan. The wicket-taking equivalents of these are shattered stumps and breathtaking catches. The subtlety of a tight over is as interesting to watch as six boundaries (or even sixes) being hit in an over.

Alternatively, should we stop recording and analyzing bowling statistics? After all, football scores are only for goals scored, the defenders have no formal statistics to back them up. And the same is true of basketball and many of the other major games.

And with the Twenty20 World Cup coming up, it may be a good transition point for the game. It could be the end of the game as we know it, but then perhaps the game needs to reinvent itself to survive. It’s a business now, after all.