Modern-day batsmen and flat pitches

[GIMH]

Not the worst attacks ever, but often looked unlikely to ever take 20 wickets, and Aussie's making out Waugh batted against Ambrose/Walsh, Donald/Pollock, or Wasim/Waqar EVERY match. Caddick/Gough/Fraser/Malcolm/Mulally/Ealham/McCague etc is hardly the stuff of nightmares, even though the first three were very honest bowlers who could be great on their day.

Nah, generally I agree though I think 'honest' is a little bit of an understatement for those three.

 

[Furball]

One of the 3 is the most successful overseas bowler to have ever toured the West Indies.

 

[BoyBrumby]

Have to chuck Dean Headley in there too, however briefly. Went well against yer crims more than once before injuries did for him. The proto Simon Jones.

 

[Jungle Jumbo]

The first point is an absolute cracker, forgive me if anyone else has put it forward before, but I don't think I've ever seen it spelt out so well.

In other sports - football is a prime example - comparisons between generations are always very subjective and are usually dismissed by anyone in the know. You only have to look at a game from fifty years ago to see how different the sport was. A Pele or Puskas would never survive today.

Cricket is the same, to a similar extent - but the presence of apparently conclusive statistical evidence inevitably leads analysts to compare, and thus judge, players of different generations. But anyone can see, from comparing the nature of the game visually, that the sport has changed massively. The onus for most batsmen has gone from pure survival, with the aim of picking up runs once set and with a minimum of risk, to accumulating runs at as fast a speed as possible without taking undue - but not absolutely minimum - risk.

I also think that nostalgia and romanticism is a considerable factor in criticisms of modern day players (as, incidentally, I think it has in Sean's CW's 50, in some of the claims of older posters). Purists, traditionalists - call them what you like, at times I am among them for aesthetic reasons - will not accept Sehwag taking advantage of the conditions presented to them and flat-batting opening bowlers back over their heads.

In other words, AWTA. The game has changed, perhaps not for the better, but that shouldn't detract from the achievements of Sehwag, Samaraweera etc.

I should probably also add that I also think, as the game has become more analysed (and, slightly paradoxically, while Sehwag et al go after attacks from the off almost indiscriminately) batting has become more efficient and precise. Batsmen are now aware which strokes are most efficient and profitable - the whole 'percentage shot' idea which has crept into the game over the last ten years. In part, this is because of the impact of one-day cricket, but I think there has been a significant psychological shift which would have occurred - although perhaps not so extensively - without the introduction of shorter forms of the game, changes in pitches and the decline of real fast bowling.

 

[aussie]

Dont agree with the notion that the game has changed really tbf.

If Siddle/Johnson/Hilfenhaus - Asif/Gul/Aamer - Taylor/Edwards/Roach - Steyn/Morkel/Parnell - Malinga/Prasad/Thushara etc keep improving, along with hopefully a decrease in flat decks. It could be back to 90s again quite easily.

 

[Matt79]

Have to chuck Dean Headley in there too, however briefly. Went well against yer crims more than once before injuries did for him. The proto Simon Jones.

Knew there were a few I was forgetting. Headley was a decent bowler.

 

[Matt79]

Nah, generally I agree though I think 'honest' is a little bit of an understatement for those three.

I think it's fair. Calling a bowler honest is hardly a sledge IMO, and I did add 'at times great'.

 

[Furball]

Anyone else find it slightly funny that the first thread that's listed in the "Similar Threads" section is the thread on Matthew Hayden's retirement?

 

[marc71178]

Dont agree with the notion that the game has changed really tbf.

If Siddle/Johnson/Hilfenhaus - Asif/Gul/Aamer - Taylor/Edwards/Roach - Steyn/Morkel/Parnell - Malinga/Prasad/Thushara etc keep improving, along with hopefully a decrease in flat decks. It could be back to 90s again quite easily.

Apart from the quality bowlers that is.

 

[Top_Cat]

How did you standardise? Z-score? Personally I'd question the assumption of normality.

 

[aussie]

Yeah, you missed the point. I addressed that in the second part of my post.

Actually that initial post wasn't directed at you. It was just my general point/opinon on the matter. Which of course has been debated before alot here.

Sehwag, relative to his own contemporaries, was/is as successful as Waugh was relative to his. "That's a fact" as you would say.

A statistical fact alone. Since the similar average based on your criteria, the vast difference in standard of bowling & less flat pitches from the 90s & now, is too big for it to be irrelevant. Thus the similar averages of Sehwag & Waugh in comparison to their contemporaries cannot be equated on the same level.

I essentially figured out how far above the mean Sehwag was, given the era he's played in and the opposition he's faced, and compared it to how far above the mean (which is a different mean this time, based on the era Waugh played in and the opposition he faced) Waugh was, so I was no longer comparing apples with oranges - I was comparing relative success in relation to the difficulty of run-scoring at the times in question.

I actually agree with this. But for me its only valid if you are comparing players who played in similar eras. For example Greg Chappell (70s) vs Tendulkar (90s), it pretty similar in the standard of bowling & difficult of pitches to bat on.

Runs of the 2000s era really is comparable to 1920s & 1930s to be frank when it comes to pitches especually. Although i give the fast bowling of the 2000s era a slightly edge to back then. (AUS from 2000-2006/07 - ENG 04 to 05 - SA 06 to 09 making it better, since back then only Larwood/Voce & McGregory/McDonald where the only notable pace attacks).

 

[Prince EWS]

A statistical fact alone. Since the similar average based on your criteria, the vast difference in standard of bowling & less flat pitches from the 90s & now, is too big for it to be irrelevant. Thus the similar averages of Sehwag & Waugh in comparison to their contemporaries cannot be equated on the same level.

You're missing the key point here - that the standard of bowling and the regularity of flat surfaces was taken into account in the analysis. In fact, it was the entire point of that analysis.

 

[Prince EWS]

How did you standardise? Z-score? Personally I'd question the assumption of normality.

Nah it wasn't that sophisticated; it just used basic multiplication - eg. the mean all-time global bowling average is 88% of what England's was during Sehwag's career, so Sehwag's runs against England were multiplied by 0.88. The assumption of nomality would be the all-time global bowling average (30.04) I suppose, but given I didn't use SD for this analysis, it doesn't matter what the mean is as long as you're looking at a comparison and not an absolute number.

I've been working on a program that does it properly (standard deviation, home and away data for every player and team, narrower time periods for team bowling averages) but it's not ready yet and I didn't think such precision was needed for this thread because it wasn't my main point. My main point was actually the first point I made; the statistic aside was just to show that Sehwag's feats were at least in the same ballpark as someone like Waugh when you took pitches and bowling attack standards into account (even if cruedly so).

 

[Top_Cat]

I'm sure you didn't but don't take it as a dig, at least you put something up.

And I was talking about the distribution of the Z-scores not being normal (the kurtosis isn't pretty).

FYI, if you're looking for a stats package which does a fair chunk of what SPSS does;

GNU PSPP

 

[Prince EWS]

I'm sure you didn't but don't take it as a dig, at least you put something up.

And I was talking about the distribution of the Z-scores not being normal (the kurtosis isn't pretty).

FYI, if you're looking for a stats package which does a fair chunk of what SPSS does;

GNU PSPP

Yeah I didn't take it as a dig, I just thought I'd explain how I did it.

Thanks for the link btw, that should be really helpful. I was basically trying to make my own version of that in Visual C++ after making another program to trawl through about 1000 StatsGuru pages and remove the website formatting automatically.

 

[vic_orthdox]

Always roll eyes to myself when I hear blokes going, "I'd like to see Hayden walking down the pitch at him!"

Hayden, Sehwag especially carved out techniques that made them as successful as possible in this current environment. Same with guys who have great home records, they are a product of the time and place that they come from. That's one of the beauties of international cricket, that there are so many different ways to be successful; when and where you come from helps determine the method to your madness.

 

[aussie]

Apart from the quality bowlers that is.

Ha Steyn & Asif aren't quality??

 

[Avada Kedavra]

Maybe slightly out of topic, but I find it amusing when people say that X batted without a helmet, so he is better than Y, who batted with a helmet. Utter nonsense really. Batsmen used to batting without helmets will find it hard to bat with helmets and vice -versa.

 

[aussie]

You're missing the key point here - that the standard of bowling and the regularity of flat surfaces was taken into account in the analysis. In fact, it was the entire point of that analysis.

Yes but it has a bug in there somewhere ha, since no way could Sehwag average 50 vs AUS & 47 vs SA for reasons i already mentioned.

As i said your breakdown makes perfect sense. But if you comapring players it has to be some similarity witht he standard of bowling, regularity of flat/bowler friendly pitches across eras. Thats why a Greg Chappell vs Tendulkar comparison would work perfect here.

Always roll eyes to myself when I hear blokes going, "I'd like to see Hayden walking down the pitch at him!"

Hayden, Sehwag especially carved out techniques that made them as successful as possible in this current environment.

Yes but with not wanting to start another Hayden argument here. That technique that made such a bully between IND 2001 to SRI 04 (cairns & darwin) almost costed him his career during the 05 Ashes. So he had to make improvements & show adaptability in order to save & prolong his career. So in essence he had get rid of that "carved out technique".

 

[Uppercut]

I originally typed this post about Sehwag, but after spending five minutes trying to decide which of the Sehwag threads to post it in, I decided to start a new one as it has wider implications on every supposed flat-track-bully of this decade who averages 50 odd. While the specific examples will all relate to Sehwag, you can essentially apply them to Hayden, Yousuf, Jayawardene, Samaraweera (to an extent anyway) or anyone else who is degraded for doing nothing more than adapting their game to succeed in the conditions they are regularly presented with.

I've always been a denier of Sehwag's status as a great batsman. While I acknowledged his ability to score big runs on pitches that don't offer sideways movement for the quicks, I felt he fell short of greatness due to the complete lack of any innings of note on a seamer. In a way my opinion on that still hasn't changed - unlike most who push the case for Sehwag, I'm not going to pretend that he actually has played such an innings by inventing a greentop or citing irrelevant ODI games - my opinion on what Sehwag has done hasn't actually changed. What has changed is my opinion on its context: I'm proposing that given the extreme rarity of such a pitch in international cricket today, the ability to score runs on a greentop is actually largely irrelevant to how effective a batsman is going to be in today's landscape. Pitches around the world are flat in a majority of cases - and when they aren't it's usually because they deteriorate and get uneven later on. Tracks that offer sideways movement for genuine seamers are a rarity outside of South Africa.

The first hurdle people have to get over is the insistence on rating players from one era based on how they'd go in another. Comparison between players of different eras is very possible, but the only fair and just way to do so is to simply look at comparative success relative to one's peers. If player X was more successful than player Y (relative to their contemporaries of course), regardless of how people think they would have gone if they swapped timeframes, then player X should be regarded as the superior player. Most people seem to rate all players by how they perceive they'd have gone in a specific timeframe - a timeframe that coincidentally aligns with when they started watching cricket seriously. We all have our hangups about what 'real' cricket is, but there's no reason 21st century cricket on flat pitches with short boundaries and big bats, or pre-WWI cricket on uncovered wickets, should be any less relevant from a player-rating perspective than what most of us perceive as the 'true' cricket of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Judging Sehwag based on how successful he would have been if he played in the 80s is about as fair as judging Sangakkara based on how successful he would have been as a leg spinner or how successful Lara would have been as a 1920s wicket keeper on uncovered wickets. Sehwag's job isn't to bat in such a way that makes people think he'd be a success in theoretical circumstances; it's develop his game to be as effective as he can for his country, and he's far more effective averaging 60 on subcontinental wickets and failing once every five years when India tour South Africa than he would be if he could score 150 on a seamer and then no runs again for four years. His hypothetical success in another decade is completely irrelevant, not to mention unfair given it's quite logical to suggest he'd have a significantly different game if he encountered different conditions regularly. What he should be judged on is what he did relative to contemporaries, and this certainly puts him in the great batsman class.

The second point people bring up does have a bit more merit. Some of us can accept the world of flat pitches but still go at pains to point out that it still means more runs are being scored, and hence everyone's averages are inflated. This is true, but not really quite to the extent people want to believe. I'm going to standardise the averages of Sehwag and Steve Waugh based on the the bowling averages of their opposition during their careers.

[B]SEHWAG

Opposition	Runs	Avg	Team	Stdsd	Stdsd
				Bowl	Runs	Avg
				Avg[/B]

Australia  	1483	51.13	29.47	1512	52.13
Bangladesh 	23	11.50	49.72	14	6.95
England 	527	31.00	34.25	462	27.19
New Zealand 	357	27.46	33.98	316	24.28
Pakistan 	1276	91.14	35.06	1093	78.09
South Africa 	872	51.29	32.18	814	47.88
Sri Lanka 	891	74.25	30.49	878	73.15
West Indies 	643	53.58	41.49	466	38.80
Zimbabwe 	176	58.66	43.67	121	40.36

Overall		6248	52.50		5675	[B][SIZE="4"]47.69[/SIZE][/B]

[B]STEVE WAUGH

Opposition	Runs	Avg	Team	Stdsd	Stdsd
				Bowl	Runs	Avg
				Avg
[/B]
Bangladesh 	256	-  	56.53	136	-
England 	3200	58.18	35.46	2711	49.29
India 		1090	41.92	34.01	963	37.03
New Zealand 	1117	38.51	35.43	947	32.66
Pakistan 	934	34.59	29.04	966	35.78
South Africa 	1147	49.86	27.92	1234	53.66
Sri Lanka 	701	87.62	33.72	624	78.06
West Indies 	2192	49.81	29.90	2202	50.05
Zimbabwe 	290	145.00	38.96	224	111.80
					
Overall		10927	51.06		10007	[B][SIZE="4"]46.76[/SIZE][/B]

Now it's only one example I know, but you could take any player for any decade you liked and compare them to Sehwag and you'd get similar results. As this shows, even after taking the difficulty (or lackthereof) of run-scoring against each team during each player's career into account, Sehwag's record is still very much comparable to Steve Waugh's (besides the longevity of it, obviously, but Sehwag's still playing).

To summarise, I've basically come around to face the reality of the fact that scoring runs on flat pitches with clinical efficiency and regularity is what being successful in this decade of batting is all about, and thus batsmen who manage it to such a ridiculously high standard should be shown the respect they deserve as the stars of their era. I'm not saying that we shouldn't look at other factors, of course (pressure situations, good bowling etc), but the flat pitches argument really needs to be taken into better context, particularly when said matches actually have a result.

PEWS. This is probably my favourite CC post of all time.

I've standardised averages previously (although much less thoroughly) to show that Ponting has a better average than Tendulkar even when their relative eras are taken into account. That's partly due to the fact that there's a huuuuge overlap in their careers (where most people pushing Tendulkar's case make it seem like Sachin=90s, Ponting='00s). That doesn't show Ponting to be better than Tendulkar, because no statistics can do that conclusively, but it does show how the eras card is often badly overplayed.

The other one that gets me, and it's something I've ranted about in the Ponting/Lara thread but not got any response to, is why there's an insistence that if two batsmen score the same number of runs, the better batsman is the one who scored against the good bowlers and kept getting out to the bad ones. Where does that idea come from, and why is it always accepted without question?