Leaving out the minnows...

[Uppercut]

Yup, that's basically what I was saying. No set of statistics will ever be unchallengeable, and in cricket statistical work is less exact than in so many places, for the reasons mentioned by McNamara (2009): "No two batsmen have ever walked out to bat under the exact same circumstances. Ever."

Wise words indeed.

I would, however, say that succeeding on a flat deck is always better than failing on a minefield, and for bowlers, vice-versa.

 

[KiWiNiNjA]

yeah. i hate ifs and buts. fantasies have no place in real analysis.

Yet you live in the fantasy world where Bangladesh don't play Test matches.

 

[bagapath]

Yet you live in the fantasy world where Bangladesh don't play Test matches.

leaving bangladesh out of the discussion is perfectly fine. because the stats i am using for analysis are still real stats. the numbers against the other test teams are not fabricated by me. those matches actually happened. whereas vettori playing for india is as real as salma hayek marrying me. may be she would never let me get out of bed. may be she would bear 15 of my children. but this never happened.

 

[Zinzan]

Cricket's unique in that a player's contribution can be quantified. Not completely, of course, but to some extent.

Hit the nail on the head yourself there Upper's ....Can only be quantified to some extent & this involves looking at more than merely excluding minnow's only when doing an analysis.

This whole "I only look at real life & won't consider hypothetical scenarios" argument assumes everything in the cricket world is equal for both batsmen & bowlers regardless of where they play their cricket & for what teams they play for is bollocks tbh & I think deep down you know this. Such an assumption is both lazy & simplistic.

 

[Richard]

Yet you live in the fantasy world where Bangladesh don't play Test matches.

Saying "Bangladesh don't deserve to be a Test-playing team" is fine, and you can do that without denying the fact of the matter which is that ICC classify them as such.

 

[Athlai]

Bangladesh look like a Test team in home conditions. Anyone actually being watching their Test matches lately?

 

[Uppercut]

Bangladesh look like a Test team in home conditions. Anyone actually being watching their Test matches lately?

I've watched a fair bit of their recent test series actually. If anything I watch faaaar too much cricket .

I didn't think they were great against New Zealand. Shakib completely carried the team in that game, which is often forgotten when people talk about how reliant the New Zealand performance was on one man. It was a horrendous choke to lose, too, in these situations any credit I'm willing to give to a side for working themselves into a winning position is easily negated by them managing to throw it away. Their heads dropped so easily in the field when they still should have been favourites to win.

Against Sri Lanka a month or two later they were diiiiire. Just to point out one example, the second innings of this match was an absolute disgrace. Jayawardene declared on a lead of 600+ and gave them a day and half a session to bat out the game for a draw and they didn't even bother trying. Just threw their wickets away as if to say "cbf". It was depressing.

Going back further, their last home test series before that was against South Africa. There was one performance of note from Hossain in the first game where he wiped South Africa out for a low total (it didn't particularly matter, because they'd already been wiped out for almost as few). They immediately folded again afterwards too and were beaten pretty comfortably. At least they tried in this game, but it wasn't a game they were ever in a million years going to win. Interestingly, their price on Betfair never rose above 1.01.

Then in the second game Smith and McKenzie put on that ridiculous opening stand and they lost by an innings. For those who suggested that New Zealand are as bad at playing spin as Bangladesh, Robin Peterson took 5/33 in their second innings. Robin Peterson!

I see very little encouragement from those really- apart from Shakib, who's a quality player. If it's their day they can compete for one day, sometimes two, but test matches last five and they've been nowhere near good enough to keep it up for the whole duration. On other days, they just get raped. For every reasonably encouraging showing that sticks in everyone's mind there's a couple of utter humilations quickly forgotten because they're the norm.

I presume those are the matches you're talking about. The previous was back in 2007 against India, which I didn't see a ball of, but there was only one heavily rain-affected draw and another humiliation so I don't suppose you were thinking of that one.

 

[Athlai]

The Bangladeshi spinners worked great together and Tamim has been good with the bat too. Still lacking some good pace bowling and that extra bit of batting though. Mortaza still hasn't delivered on his potential and neither has Ashraful. Raqibul has really impressed me with the bat and if Bangladesh's ICL returnees bolster their batting anyone touring there may face a bit of trouble.

Wouldn't say Shakib carried them anywhere to the extent that Vettori carried us in that series. Shakib was by no means the only spinner we were having a whole heap of trouble with.

 

[Migara]

When few ICL players retuen I would thin BAN batting will be competitive. A line up of Tamim, Shariar, Saleh, Ashraful, Kapali, Raqibul, Shakib, Mushfiqur, Mortaza, Shahadat, Rubel does look lot healthier than the current one.

What BAN should do is have un-official test matches with better minnows like Ireland, Kenya or Netherlands, like what SL did even after getting their Test status. This will allow them to adapt to foreign conditions easier, and the confidence of beating the others will help. And minnows like IRE, KEN and NED also will improve immensely to have a shot at test status earlier.

 

[Uppercut]

The Bangladeshi spinners worked great together and Tamim has been good with the bat too. Still lacking some good pace bowling and that extra bit of batting though. Mortaza still hasn't delivered on his potential and neither has Ashraful. Raqibul has really impressed me with the bat and if Bangladesh's ICL returnees bolster their batting anyone touring there may face a bit of trouble.

Wouldn't say Shakib carried them anywhere to the extent that Vettori carried us in that series. Shakib was by no means the only spinner we were having a whole heap of trouble with.

No, it was pretty much just him as I remember it. There were a couple of decent scores of 70 or 80-odd but apart from that, Shakib did it all completely by himself.

 

[Athlai]

No, it was pretty much just him as I remember it. There were a couple of decent scores of 70 or 80-odd but apart from that, Shakib did it all completely by himself.

Meant the attack.

 

[Uppercut]

Oh. Didn't Shakib take something like 7/30 in the first innings?

EDIT: Yeah I looked it up. 7/36.

 

[Athlai]

Oh. Didn't Shakib take something like 7/30 in the first innings?

Of the second match yeah. He was the best bowler but was very well supported throughout the series. They kept it very very tight and Razzak bowled a few gems.

 

[Son Of Coco]

I'm against removing stats from the 'minnows' when doing an analysis of different players. I think doing so can be more misleading than leaving them in at times. I think statisticians assume people will use their brains when applying stats and not just look at the overall numbers. If player A plays 99 tests against Bangladesh and 1 against South Africa and has an average of 65 and player B plays 99 tests against SA and 1 against Bangladesh for an average of 64 I'd assume most people could work out who is probably the better player without subtracting all the tests. If player A has an average of 400 in his only test against SA after we take away all the Bangladesh tests though we're probably ****ed

If we're going to take away all the tests against minnows, what about players who have played more tests against the top 3 nations? How do we balance this up to give a fair representation of how they stand against the rest? As Heath mentioned in the opening post, once you start doing this where do you stop?

 

[Zinzan]

I'm against removing stats from the 'minnows' when doing an analysis of different players. I think doing so can be more misleading than leaving them in at times. I think statisticians assume people will use their brains when applying stats and not just look at the overall numbers. If player A plays 99 tests against Bangladesh and 1 against South Africa and has an average of 65 and player B plays 99 tests against SA and 1 against Bangladesh for an average of 64 I'd assume most people could work out who is probably the better player without subtracting all the tests. If player A has an average of 400 in his only test against SA after we take away all the Bangladesh tests though we're probably ****ed

If we're going to take away all the tests against minnows, what about players who have played more tests against the top 3 nations? How do we balance this up to give a fair representation of how they stand against the rest? As Heath mentioned in the opening post, once you start doing this where do you stop?

Indeed, very wise comments there. Without wanting to repeat myself (but I will anyway ), it's far too simplistic too only exclude minnow's from the stats & not look at any other factors

 

[Uppercut]

Of the second match yeah. He was the best bowler but was very well supported throughout the series. They kept it very very tight and Razzak bowled a few gems.

It was the first match. I assumed you weren't thinking of the second game, it was a washout and Razzak only took one wicket in it.

 

[Ikki]

I'm against removing stats from the 'minnows' when doing an analysis of different players. I think doing so can be more misleading than leaving them in at times. I think statisticians assume people will use their brains when applying stats and not just look at the overall numbers. If player A plays 99 tests against Bangladesh and 1 against South Africa and has an average of 65 and player B plays 99 tests against SA and 1 against Bangladesh for an average of 64 I'd assume most people could work out who is probably the better player without subtracting all the tests. If player A has an average of 400 in his only test against SA after we take away all the Bangladesh tests though we're probably ****ed

Well, it's never that clear unfortunately. Removing stats tend to give you a number/average that gives people a better gist of a player's records.

If we're going to take away all the tests against minnows, what about players who have played more tests against the top 3 nations? How do we balance this up to give a fair representation of how they stand against the rest? As Heath mentioned in the opening post, once you start doing this where do you stop?

You standardise (if that's what you call it) if you wish to go to that route. Use the players' averages and take into account how much one player played other teams and give the identical amount to the other player. Much closer and accurate.

 

[Uppercut]

I'm against removing stats from the 'minnows' when doing an analysis of different players. I think doing so can be more misleading than leaving them in at times. I think statisticians assume people will use their brains when applying stats and not just look at the overall numbers. If player A plays 99 tests against Bangladesh and 1 against South Africa and has an average of 65 and player B plays 99 tests against SA and 1 against Bangladesh for an average of 64 I'd assume most people could work out who is probably the better player without subtracting all the tests. If player A has an average of 400 in his only test against SA after we take away all the Bangladesh tests though we're probably ****ed

If we're going to take away all the tests against minnows, what about players who have played more tests against the top 3 nations? How do we balance this up to give a fair representation of how they stand against the rest? As Heath mentioned in the opening post, once you start doing this where do you stop?

The problem if you don't do it is that people try to penalise players for scoring a lot of runs against minnows. See some of the attitudes to Hayden's 380 on here for details- it's treated as some kind of crime, as if scoring no runs would have been preferable to scoring loads.

 

[Prince EWS]

The problem if you don't do it is that people try to penalise players for scoring a lot of runs against minnows. See some of the attitudes to Hayden's 380 on here for details- it's treated as some kind of crime, as if scoring no runs would have been preferable to scoring loads.

Yeah, I find this happens a lot with 'casual' fans in Australia regarding Murali's bowling as well. Whenever he takes a bag against Bangladesh, they whinge and moan about how often Sri Lanka play Bangladesh compared to how often Australia did and claim he wasn't in Warne's league because he takes "all" his wickets against Bangladesh and Zimbabwe. As if, like you say, performing poorly in these games would've been preferable (and they honestly would have for his reputation in Australia).

Informing these people that his average is actually better than Warne's even when you take these games out is either greeted with "Bull****" or "He's a chucker anyway".

Common-sense based interpretation of stats is fine if it's done objectively but what I've always loved about the raw figures is that they aren't biased. When people present a possible non-statistical case for a certain set of statistics comparing two players to actually be grossly misleading, they don't usually do it for the sheer principle of the matter after analysing the data and forming a conclusion. A lot of people, not so much on here admittedly, have preconceived ideas based on national bias, stylistic preference, watching one player more than another or something of the likes and then search for excuses only when the statistics don't back up their opinion, rather than actually using all their knowledge to form the opinion in the first place and challenging it if a set of data suggests otherwise.

 

[Uppercut]

Yeah, agree with all of that. People always point out that statistics aren't perfect, and they're absolutely right. Of course they're not perfect- as vic said, no two players have ever faced the same circumstances when walking out to bowl or bat, ever.

But it's sometimes forgotten than anecdotal evidence and opinions formed purely from watching someone bowl are horribly imperfect too. People like to believe what they see- as I said earlier, to watch Vettori I'd think he was a wonderful player (although thierry thinks the opposite)- when the truth is our minds are so, so open to a huge number of influences. It's fine if you want to factor how good you find a player to watch or how he makes you feel when he's batting into your opinion of how good he is, and a lot of people do, but I personally try to draw a line between my favourite players and the players I think are the best. With Vettori I conclude that even though my eyes tell me he's going to take a lot of wickets, in actual fact he very rarely does.

If you're going to use figures at all, you have to accept their limitations, especially if taken in isolation. A lot of people seem to have trouble with that in this thread, for some reason. But it's important not to pretend that watching someone play is all you need to do in order to determine how good a player they are and figures be damned. At the end of the day, cricket matches are won by wickets, and the bowlers who take wickets quickly and cheaply are the ones that help win their sides matches. If you want an objective measure, you have to accept that it will never be perfect, but average in games not including Bangladesh and Zimbabwe is *better* than average with those teams included.