This is what I've been assuming the case is. Bit of speculation but seems to me (using the exact example he put forward himself) that DoG has decided that Viv Richards is a better batsman than Chanderpaul and is trying to find a measure to add in to reflect that, even though it is a terrible measure that makes the rankings less viable in the end.
Jack Leach can attest to that.
Yeah. That 1* was more important than that 92. We all know he would have gone on to get a double century.
Ohai Simon
Because they batted higher in the order. We're going around in circles now. It doesn't mean they were better batsmen.
So in effect you're rewarding not just top-order batsman but people who were in a good team or had a bad captain (better players to fulfill higher/dangerous positions/not going out to the middle sooner)? I think that's a good reward for opening batsmen but the other parts of it convince me that it would be better to just do x1.1 for openers or something. This measure also rewards batsmen with a high strike rate so IMO the strike rate measure is unneeded if we have this. (Pedantry here but Pollock contributed more runs to his test team than Cairns. I get your point though).
Firstly, it was more important. Secondly you're missing the point
He also batted 5 and came in at 3/400 plenty of times so therefore his RPI would be already hurt out the gate since teams don't declare on 800
What about SR in the 1st/2nd innings? It's only truly worthless in a 3rd or 4th innings when trying to bat for a draw
It depends entirely on the situation and type of innings, really. You could rightly argue 50(180) from an opener or number 3 on day 1 on a spicy deck is helping the team more than a 50(35) where he doesn't even see off the new ball properly. Declaration situation or chasing a score with time running out, obviously its exactly the opposite.
Even if you really want to reward players who bat higher (which I think is just really dumb) then you'd be better off just literally doing that and add a metric to give more points to players who bat higher.
I'm actually not totally opposed to this. Is his average of 57-58 batting all over really worth as much as an average of 57-58 batting predominantly top four? I'm not so sure. Obviously he's still better than the vast vast majority of challengers but that doesn't mean a tiny comparative nerf wouldn't be appropriate.
Depends, yes. But I reckon in the vast majority of cases, fast runs > slow runs.
