Wicketkeeping standards

[uvelocity]

neil loves de kock

 

[Neil Pickup]

Nice to hear that, do you know these websites? They are really good if you're interested in analysis. I expecially recommend anybody interested to take a look at their statistical glossary, just to understand how much advanced is the statistical understanding of rounders.

Yeah, I'd heard of the websites through reading Moneyball (long before the film was even conceived) having been turned on to it by the Malcolm Gladwell books. I've glanced at the ideas, but I'm not into baseball enough to really have the motivation to struggle through pages of raw data.

It's different because hawk-eye it's usually looked upon more for predicting the path of deliveries hitting the pads than anything. You often hear commentators saying how a delivery was outswinging or inswinging or an off-cutter (sometimes calling it wrong); just to say, we all know that Anderson, Steyn and Ishant Sharma can bowl outswingers, but nobody really analyzes by how much and how effective those single deliveries are. "He has an outswinger and an inswinges" is hardly enough, if they have no control nor command over them.

Well, Pitch-FX could tell us accurately and numerically by how many degrees does every delivery turn, the amount and the direction of that turn (on both axis, noth only laterally), and how much before and after it bounces on the ground (recording bounce also). Could be helpful for rating pitches and balls aswell. Also, there is Field FX that could tell us reaction times of fielders and how much ground they covers; all things that I'd love to see, just like RPS for spinners. Yet, even if they collect them, you don't find anywhere those raw data available for crowdsourcing. Pity.

I'm not sure how much coverage you get in Italy, but the Sky feeds over the last few years, and Channel 9 too, have included degrees of turn, bounce comparison, pace of delivery before/after bounce, reaction times for close fielders. It's certainly not available - I'd love it to be out there for crowdsourcing like a lot of the Premier League statistics now are. We need our own Bill James!

By eye you couldn't recognize if some dude is able to gain an extra wicket (or creating one chance more) every 25 instead of every 30 overs just thanks to his better execution of basics or his longer arms; and that's what I want to know. Same opposition, same ground, because I'm looking for the discrepancies between teammates, ex. between Somerset seamers at Taunton and away, Derbyshire seamers at the County Ground and away and so on, how big the discrepancy is inside the various sides. Sample size of only around 15 games (I doubt they'll play all of the 16 games) is my biggest worry, but over 2 or 3 seasons it could be interesting.

Can't argue with the principle - David Brailsford's theory of marginal gains and all that - and agree that the sample size (and the infinite variation provided by the British summer) may well make any stats void.

About Gilly, I never said that he was surely better than Healy; only, that when he was keeping every bowler had an increase in his Caught Behind strike rate (apart from MacGill) and every spinner had an improvement in his balls-per-stumping ratio; this is noticeable even in bowlers like Gillespie that were averaging better under Healy. Maybe Australia changed the strategy of the attack in the time, I don't know, and I have not factored even simple things like runouts, but then there are people who say that Gilchrist was average (not bad, mind, average) while Healy was the best keeper they ever saw. This gulf is something that I now find hard to believe.

Unless opposing players became worse at judging when to play and leave outside off stump between the eras of Healy and Gilchrist due to the proliferation of shorter formats, consequently leading to a rise in the general incidence of caught-behind as a method of dismissal, and a reduction of average innings length...

Just a thing, by proper cricket do you mean test or first class? Counties (and states for other countries) are the ones that I think have the biggest potential, more games in more homogeneous conditons in my opinion means that a new statistic and data collection trial should be done at that level first.

Was mainly being sarcastic about Test v ODI cricket, as it's impossible to believe that anyone with half a statistical brain can keep picking J*** D*******, but answering the question properly, I know that England went through every single game of the 2007 World Cup and analysed where all the balls went in the field - because I met the guy that did the job - and the same guy (having been fielding coach at Northants) analysed every fielder's role on a game-by-game basis in terms of runs saved/conceded, broken down in terms of catches and stops, then again further as high/low, left/right... but as you say, it's not yet public domain. It's the ECB National Coaches' Conference next weekend - I wonder what I can find out.

 

[Neil Pickup]

Sorry if I'm here doing multiple posts, but don't you think that his much bigger reach could be a reason, more than compensating for his agility deficit? That's the first thing that came to my mind apart from reflexes.

By the way, just as an aside: if you've seen yesterday game between saffers and kiwis, what do you think about De Kock?

Having been busy "teaching" (read: supervising boarders on a snow day) for much of proceedings, I watched the (vastly reduced) highlights on Sky an hour ago whilst trying to write a Maths Test (I avoided the temptation to include "Jade concedes 6.2 runs every over. If he bowls 100 overs, how many abusive tweets will be posted?") and didn't see enough to judge. I did wonder quite how he failed to get his gloves on that nick off Steyn at nine down, but didn't see an angle to check his footwork / weight balance well enough.

Interesting you mention Gilly's extra reach; would that not be countered by an increased difficulty staying down/getting down with low balls? Keepers have always traditionally been short, but the Oxford University keeper last year was 6'6 or something ridiculous like that... statistically, I can't imagine it's ever been investigated. So hard to control something like that...!

 

[Гурин]

Zero coverage down here, we have either to be a bit creative or head to some pub to catch SS Uk (latter option can turn quite expensive, a pint in Rome goes for 6€)


Australia Bowling stats under Healy (between bracket are those post 1992): 28.67 @2.78 (27.97 @2.76)

Australia Bowling stats under Gilchrist: 27.55 @3.09


I will search for percentages of type of dismissals, but not tonight, I'm not sober enough for that. Until then, there is nothing much to get from these numbers, apart from a slight improvement in bowling average and an increase in ER.


Goalkeepers in football have always been over 1.80 (often 1.90), but then they can make saves on low balls with their legs, WK have not that luxury. But then again, isn't the vast majority of balls taken by the keeper above his knees? And does it really make some difference when you're not up to the stumps and have time to adjust? I'd say that you can afford to miss a few central-low ones (on lateral ones tall guys might hold the advantage again) if you are able to catch more above waist height, but that's a big if. Here Field FX would really be handful, never seen hawk-eye tracing up to the point where the keeper takes the ball.


Keep us informed if anything interesting comes out of that conference!