Why Australia have lost the Ashes

[C_C]

. Cricket is about how you play, not just whether or not you win and how many runs you make.

Cricket is all about how many runs you make as a player and as a team how often you win.
If not, then Lawrence Rowe was a far better cricketer than Alan Border could ever dream of being.

How do you gauge the impact of the pitch with statistics?

Pitches are largely similar over a set period of time. Which is why i draw a distinction between pitches from the 90s and pitches from 20000/2001 onwards or so.

Or luck?

You make your own luck. Luck is probability and over a large span of time, it settles down to around 50% anyways. Sometimes you get away with a plumb lbw shout against you, sometimes a ball hitting your visor is judged caught. balances out largely and the differential is so miniscule that it isnt worth debating.

I know Ricky Ponting scored 250 odd against India a couple of years ago and 150 odd a few weeks back at Old Trafford, and I know the second one was the better innings because I watched the games.

I also know which one was a better innings simply by going on the statistics of the opposition bowlers and compensating for the away factor and both of us come to the same conclusion.

You can't tell these things with statistics.

You sure can once you account for the quality of the opposition, the state of the match and the state of the pitch- all of which are definable by numbers much more precisely than any weird whimsical notion of 'opinion'.

 

[Swervy]

And yes, i would say that over the past 5 years RSA has been a superior team to IND- they had a better overall record against India and did better against most opposition where almost 50% of their opposition wernt 3 of the worst teams to represent test cricket. But that isnt the case with England.

Well what happened yesterday isnt relevant either then, is it ?
I have defined a relevancy period as appox. 5-7 years, as it is around half-the period for a stalwart and near-fulltime for a regular decent player.
Below that is largely irrelevant.
So take your pick - either this team is way too new in its composition and thus cannot be evaluated unless they play 3-4 more seasons together or that they havnt done much apart from the last 2 years or so and that too, a large percentage of the time against rank minnows.
Both boil down to the same thing.

Have this team won a lot of games, and hardly lost any vs a number of teams in the last 2 years?? YES
Have they just beaten the number one team in the world?? YES
have they just beaten the best team in the world in style?? YES

as far as I am concerned, screw relevancy periods etc...this game is played out on the field..and anyone who has watch England play over the last 2 years will know this team is the real deal, and it has just culminated in test crickets biggest prize (for England and Australia, the two best teams in the world at the moment).

This was the unofficial World Championship in my eyes...well, the first leg of 2..England 1-0 up after one leg.

Whatever the stats say (which I think would suggest as well that tehse two are the best teams in the world at the moment anyway) thats how it is.

you can look at all the stats in the world...but people who have a knowledge of the game, and have watched the game (and more importantly watched this series) know that England and australia are the two best teams, and England have shown they can match the best over a 5 test series.

 

[C_C]

But your "side" point misses the point dear PY !

Its not a question of watching the game or understanding it but of knowing the statistics and interpreting them !

I hear The Telegraph and The Guardian are sacking their cricket correspondents and hiring half a dozen young statisticians from Philedelphia to write on cricket for them

If they did, they should be congratulated. Too many duffers commentating on the game without understanding it one iota and building mythical legends that are entertaining but largely inaccurate.
And i dare you to pit your understanding of the game against mine if you wish.

 

[C_C]

That's where common sense comes it to it, then. Obviously this team hasn't been together long, but last year most of it was intact, the bowling attack was exactly the same aside from the odd injury and the batting lineup had a couple of changes but a lot of the same players. They are fair results to include, but what relevance does a game with none of the same players in it have?

It is reflective of the team in general. If you wish to draw the line on when this england team was formed, you will have to draw the line at the very last test, when the latest english team to take the field ( Collingwood in, Jones out) is a unique representation of permutations and combinations.
And if the team hasnt been playing along for long, then it is obviously too short a span to chalk it up to how good they actually are. It would be just as fallacious as concluding how good Steve Waugh is after 10-15 tests.

 

[Swervy]

You sure can once you account for the quality of the opposition, the state of the match and the state of the pitch- all of which are definable by numbers much more precisely than any weird whimsical notion of 'opinion'.

so I take it you have devised a mathematically robust way of quantifying all this...so pretty much the same as the LG player rankings do.(which does take into account quality of oppostion etc)

so really the way to figure out who has the best team is to add up all the player ranking points in the team, and bobs your uncle, you have figured out who is best...

But we all know that cant be done.

 

[PY]

And i dare you to pit your understanding of the game against mine if you wish.

Them's fighting words thems are.

And incredibly arrogant.

 

[FaaipDeOiad]

I also know which one was a better innings simply by going on the statistics of the opposition bowlers and compensating for the away factor and both of us come to the same conclusion.

Which statistics? At the time, he was facing three seamers who averaged in the 30s (Flintoff, Hoggard and Jones), one spinner who averaged in the high 30s, and another seamer who averaged about 28. What's so great about that attack that it negates an extra 100 runs? It seems like it would be pretty comparable to the Indian one he faced really.

 

[C_C]

Have this team won a lot of games, and hardly lost any vs a number of teams in the last 2 years?? YES
Have they just beaten the number one team in the world?? YES
have they just beaten the best team in the world in style?? YES

Have they won a lot of games mostly against the MINNOWS ? YES.
Have they just beaten the best team in the world with their main strike bowler missing 40% of the matches and playing the rest while hobbling ? YES

as far as I am concerned, screw relevancy periods etc...this game is played out on the field..and anyone who has watch England play over the last 2 years will know this team is the real deal, and it has just culminated in test crickets biggest prize (for England and Australia, the two best teams in the world at the moment).

If you say screw relevancy period, i can easily say that there is no difference between England and Scotland in cricket- BOTH arnt playing currently.
You havnt answered me yet- how relevant or precise is 'current' ?
And this england team is just about as much of a 'real deal' as it was obvious from watching Steve Waugh and Vinod Kambli after 2 years- utterly inconclusive.

you can look at all the stats in the world...but people who have a knowledge of the game, and have watched the game (and more importantly watched this series) know that England and australia are the two best teams, and England have shown they can match the best over a 5 test series.

People who have knowledge of the game also dont jump the gun after just a couple of years.
They realise that in general, a good team is largely intact for around 6-7 years, if not longer and thus it is over THAT period over which the performance matters.
Infact,you contradict yourself by saying relevancy periods dont matter and then toss in a period- of 2 years or so.

England definately isnt ahead of India or Sri Lanka by much currently and inorder to be a clear-cut #2, it has to clearly do better than IND and SL against the top 3-4 teams over a span of 6-7 years.

 

[Swervy]

If they did, they should be congratulated. Too many duffers commentating on the game without understanding it one iota and building mythical legends that are entertaining but largely inaccurate.
And i dare you to pit your understanding of the game against mine if you wish.

starting to sound a bit like Richard here CC

I think quite a lot of us have a large understanding of the game..you obviously think it all boils down to stats...others dont.

a true understanding of the game takes in the whys of the game as well. Why was Flintoffs bowling worth more than a 27 average this series....why was Brett Lees bowling worth more than an average of 41...things like that. Stats will NEVER convey that information..and if you rely on stats to prove points, that indeed shows a lack of understanding of the game of cricket

 

[greg]

I wonder what C_C's opinion of Brian Lara is, with particular reference to his record against England?

 

[C_C]

Them's fighting words thems are.

And incredibly arrogant.

I dont mind showing the confidence i have in my knowledge and reasoning ability when some extremely arrogant and ignorant folks make a pre-emptive strike.

 

[C_C]

Which statistics? At the time, he was facing three seamers who averaged in the 30s (Flintoff, Hoggard and Jones), one spinner who averaged in the high 30s, and another seamer who averaged about 28. What's so great about that attack that it negates an extra 100 runs? It seems like it would be pretty comparable to the Indian one he faced really.

England attack - 3 seamers averaging 28-31, one pathetic excuse for a spinner averaging 37-38

India attack - 1 spinner averaging 28-30, 1 total newbie, 2 pathetic excuses for pacers averaging 40+

I think this statistic is self-explanatory.

 

[C_C]

starting to sound a bit like Richard here CC

I think quite a lot of us have a large understanding of the game..you obviously think it all boils down to stats...others dont.

a true understanding of the game takes in the whys of the game as well. Why was Flintoffs bowling worth more than a 27 average this series....why was Brett Lees bowling worth more than an average of 41...things like that. Stats will NEVER convey that information..and if you rely on stats to prove points, that indeed shows a lack of understanding of the game of cricket

Stats will convey every single bit of information provided you know how to use your statistics and understand the game.
Flintoff's 27 average is by no means better than another 27 ave. performance against Australia.
Doesnt matter if he bowled 100 more wicket-taking deliveries that just missed the edge. Unless you are talking about spilled catches and dubious umpiring ( its ironic that some here are bringing up umpiring inconsistencies when the very same characters dismissed it as nothing but paranoia just a month or two ago), they are worth essentially the same, since they impacted the result essentially to the same degree.

 

[FaaipDeOiad]

England attack - 3 seamers averaging 28-30, one pathetic excuse for a spinner averaging 37-38

India attack - 1 spinner averaging 28-30, 1 total newbie, 2 pathetic excuses for pacers averaging 40+

I think this statistic is self-explanatory.

Not really. Jones and Hoggard's averages have both fallen since then. At the time, both teams had one bowler averaging under 30, making them by your standard completely shocking attacks and equivalent basically to minnows to score runs against.

I know because I watched the game that Ponting's innings was brilliant. I saw him stand up to 90mph reverse swing from both ends. I saw him play and miss repeatedly and still be able to stand up and dispatch the next ball to the fence if it was too full or too short. I saw him face three express pace bowlers who were willing to jam it in short at him and try and scare him out and deal with it well, and I saw him play Giles intelligently on a 5th day pitch that was extremely dry and coming apart and offered significant turn for a footmark-specialist finger spinner like Giles.

Stats can't tell you any of that. All stats tell you is that he faced a poor attack and scored 150 against them, just like he has plenty of times in the past. Even with Mark Waugh, it just tells you he faced a good attack and scored a century, not how difficult the pitch was or the way he was bowled to.

 

[Swervy]

Have they won a lot of games mostly against the MINNOWS ? YES.
Have they just beaten the best team in the world with their main strike bowler missing 40% of the matches and playing the rest while hobbling ? YES



If you say screw relevancy period, i can easily say that there is no difference between England and Scotland in cricket- BOTH arnt playing currently.
You havnt answered me yet- how relevant or precise is 'current' ?
And this england team is just about as much of a 'real deal' as it was obvious from watching Steve Waugh and Vinod Kambli after 2 years- utterly inconclusive.



People who have knowledge of the game also dont jump the gun after just a couple of years.
They realise that in general, a good team is largely intact for around 6-7 years, if not longer and thus it is over THAT period over which the performance matters.
Infact,you contradict yourself by saying relevancy periods dont matter and then toss in a period- of 2 years or so.

England definately isnt ahead of India or Sri Lanka by much currently and inorder to be a clear-cut #2, it has to clearly do better than IND and SL against the top 3-4 teams over a span of 6-7 years.

you are just setting goal posts to suit your arguement here..I cant be bothered. I have watched the game as a fan of the sport for 25 years..I know what a good team is, and I know what an average team is, and I know what a bad team is. I know this England team is extremely good. Start watching the game CC, you will develop an uncanny instinct for who is a good team and who isnt.

England are clearly a better team than India, and by quite a distance better than Sri lanka.

This 6-7 period thing is a joke...you will rarely get many more than 4 or 5 players in a squad let alone a team that were in the team 6-7 years ago..and players develop with time etc,as players also decline..what this Australian team did in England in 1997 has no bearing (sp?) on this current Australian team...what India did in 2000 or whenever it was has no say in how this team for India plays.

Get a grip

 

[Swervy]

Stats will convey every single bit of information provided you know how to use your statistics and understand the game.
Flintoff's 27 average is by no means better than another 27 ave. performance against Australia.
Doesnt matter if he bowled 100 more wicket-taking deliveries that just missed the edge. Unless you are talking about spilled catches and dubious umpiring ( its ironic that some here are bringing up umpiring inconsistencies when the very same characters dismissed it as nothing but paranoia just a month or two ago), they are worth essentially the same, since they impacted the result essentially to the same degree.

yeah dont worry I understand how to use statistics ,and I understand how the game is played as well...I just dont place that much weight on the use of stats as you do..there are other important, unmeasurable things that take place, its the understanding of those that are important..but you have to watch the game to understand that

 

[Jono]

I think we've had experience of that - Mumbai anyone?

That was just a dead rubber test though.

The Ashes makes it that much bigger

That being said far from all Australians have been bad losers so I'm just playing around with that comment.

 

[greg]

yeah dont worry I understand how to use statistics ,and I understand how the game is played as well...I just dont place that much weight on the use of stats as you do..there are other important, unmeasurable things that take place, its the understanding of those that are important..but you have to watch the game to understand that

It's OK Swervy, because he's got a VIDEO RECORDER and HIGHLIGHTS packages!

 

[C_C]

Not really. Jones and Hoggard's averages have both fallen since then. At the time, both teams had one bowler averaging under 30, making them by your standard completely shocking attacks and equivalent basically to minnows to score runs against.

Errr NO.

India's bowling attack before OZ tour :

Zaheer Khan : 34.20
Irfan Pathan : debutant
Ajit Agarkar : 43.64
Ashish Nehra: 37+
Kumble : 27-28

English bowling attacks : 4 pacers in 28-32 bowling ave. category ( almost all except for Jones havnt been impacted by more than 1-2 pts ave) with one spinner at 37 or so average.
English attack not only has a better average ( before the start of the series) significantly, they also employ an extra bowler.
These facts and statistics are self explanatory without resulting in any speculative opinionating.

 

[C_C]

It's OK Swervy, because he's got a VIDEO RECORDER and HIGHLIGHTS packages!

Can you stop spreading falsehoods ?
Highlight packages ?
Listen chaps - there are torrents for the entire friggin matches and i am right now 25% done downloading ENG vs AUS 3rd test.