T20 World Cup, 2022

[Atithee]

Yes, but DK looked like an amateur. He shifted predictably every ball, didn’t score much, and was embarrassingly clean bowled by trying one too many. It was childish and painful non-execution.

[Kumar]

Stats for team performance against left arm fast bowlers in T20 in last 5 years. India is not bad. In fact Australia is very bad with left arm pacers averaging 19 and Er of 7.73 against them.


LEft arm pacers average 28.62 and 8.35 against India. Only England and Pakistan are far superior to India with average of 32/33.

India’s overall average is 33 runs against all bowlers , so their average is 5 runs worse against left arm pace bowlers.

https://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engin ... pe=bowling



In ODI, they average 37 against left arm pacers and 45 against all bowlers! They actually have the best average in ODI, with teams almost performing similarly when it comes to difference between LHp and overall

[Atithee]

Our biggest problem is that we usually reserve our worst performance for big matches. And, when it does wrong, it really goes wrong. But, there is no way to “select” your way out of this malaise. It is more mental. I think the recent CWG diversity of medals is showing that we are now confident and believe we are the best. Once you have this attitude, teams end up winning more than losing. And, we usually at least make the semis of every major tournament, with a few exceptions.

I still think we need to stop carrying Rohits and Kohlis regardless of their stature and impossibility of finding a like replacement. If the test win in Australia and inaugural t20 World Cup win didn’t prove that it is possible to win without big names, I don’t know what will.

[Rajkumar Sharma]

Now you are again repeating that one match excuse which has became the team's theme after every defeats in ICC Knockouts.Atithee ji, since 2014 T20WC final to 2021 WTC final, we all know team has got belief, attitude, confidence, positivity, will power etc etc. but no body remembers that semis or runners up of major tournament when team fails to win the major title, neither that team is praised high for doing it. South Africa in 90s and early 2000 used to be like us, getting hammered in knockouts after playing best in group stages, as a result the world started calling them " bunch of chokers"

[prasen9]

We did not choke. The teams were just better than us. RSA were chokers because they choked from winning positions. We usually dug a hole early up and then the likes of Jadeja etc. played heroically until they failed again at the end. It is more like catching up rather than choking and then failing because we left too much to do. The women's team fully choked in the finals. That is choking.

Words have meaning. We cannot randomly call people chokers when they do not choke. And, if you are talking about choking at big finals, etc. we do not even make finals always. All teams except one lose at some point. We have not won anything fully because we were never the best team in these years. We were always around top-4. Currently, we may be rated the top T20 team but the tournament is in Australia. The ratings consider all surfaces all over the world. If we select well, we should win a lot of matches. Nobody can predict who will win a T20 tournament in these days because there is no dominant team like Australia was during their winning years or WI was. We are slightly ahead of say Eng, Pak, RSA, NZ, Aus, WI now. We'll see if we pick retreads like Jadeja and Pant or actually take bolder moves and pick based on performance. (Actually, Jadeja I may pick myself because of TINA for a backup at #7, and I am not fully convinced of Axar's batting yet.)

[Rajkumar Sharma]

People are not so blockhead that they will start calling RSA a choker just for meare 2 defeats in WC knockouts, one for the stupid rain rule in 92 and that tied match against Aus in Semis of 1999 WC. So they were in wining position only in this two matches. RSA lost 4 Champions trophy Semis 2000, 2002, 2006, 2013, 4 WC semis 1996, 2007, 2011 & 2015, 2 T20 semis in which they were no where in nailbiter position. SA lost 10 knockouts, India lost 6 back to back.Yup, Choking has meaning and people do understand it, when a team continues to get knocked out from big tournaments on big occasion

[Mukherjee Babu]

Well RSA made the word Choker famous 10 out of 10
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tristanlav ... world-cup/

[prasen9]

Choking has a meaning. Look up the definition. If you want to create your own definition, then there is no point discussing. One can call anything anything.

[Rajkumar Sharma]

May be. You take choking defination in differant away. Journals, Articles and other print media thinks SA are chokers based on their poor show in ICC Knockouts through records

[Rajkumar Sharma]

Bumrah is doubtful for T20WC. So who would be his back up ? Natarajan could be the best to replace him but he is out of news since IPL. Saini goes for plenty, even he was not strike bowler for RR. Umesh & Shami can alsobe brought back. Mohsin Khan caould be good option, he is tall, fast, can make difference in Australia

[Kumar]

In the meantime, our players are feasting on the weak WI opposition. I wonder who thought it was a smart idea to spend so much time playing West Indies to prepare for the T20 WC.

We have SAY at 37.5@175, Hooda 59@163, Pandya 23@143, Rahul 41@142, Karthik 31@142, Rohit 32@140, Kohli 50@138.

The pretenders are: Axar 20@138, Iyer 32@135, Kishan 31@133, Samson 22@135, Pandey 44@126, Pant 24@126, Jadeja 23@125, Padikkal 19@100, Rana 7.5@55

Dinesh Karthik in 2022 , average 21 and SR 133 in 13 innings
Pant in 2022, 26 average and 135 in 13 innings
Ishan Kishen 2022 , average 30 and SR 130


Considering that Karthik last played T20I in 2019, not fair to consider his career averages . I would probably include Karthik as pretender. Considering that Karthik is put in position where he has to start hitting from go, his SR is actually not good. They all play different position, so not very easy to compare their average against one another.

[arjun2761]

We can speculate and throw marginal stats all we want, but Pant is a lock on the team in the mind of those that matter, the selectors.

Personally, unless the selectors are complete dummies, I am pretty sure they consider the stats as one factor and then assess the current form and quality of a player to make their selections.

Relying entirely on stats isn't something that even baseball does and they have far better stats than some random averages over some random number of years over some random number of pitches over some random number of game situations over some random set of different bowlers over some random number of game day conditions (and I could also add another ten random variables which affect those high level stats).

[prasen9]

Just becasue Pant is a lock does not mean we should not argue. The point of the forum is to debate. If it is just reporting facts, we do not need this forum. Yes, I do not think there is anybody in this forum who does not believe that Pant will not be a lock. I am pretty sure Pant, Jadeja, and Chahal are all locks even though they are marginal players. Our only hope is that marginal players over-achieve and we will go on a prayer that these guys do.

Kumar 13 innings is maybe a tad too small to capture anything. I prefer 20 but I'll take 15. The point really is that this 13 is perhaps Karthik's weakest 13 or one of his weaker 13. Pant's 13 here is may be one of his better 13s. You can argue that Karthik is on a downhill slope and Pant is on an uphill slope given their ages. My point is that Karthik has performed at some time. Pant never has. I am talking about T20Is. Pant is our best ever batting keeper in tests and would walk in my all-time Test XI abroad and maybe even domestics. But, T20Is. Ideally, you want proven performers in world cups. I cannot think of a team that carried people on hope that they will click and won WCs. I am not talking about making semis. The problem with players who are marginal is that they may cover their deficiencies greatly in a few matches but find it hard to sustain it over 6-7 matches.

Most winning managers use very sophisticated stats to manage teams. As Oakland has shown and low budget teams such as Tampa Bay etc. have shown, stats can go a long, long way in identifying winning combinations much better than random human feelings can. Managers get fed tons of data. Each pitcher and catcher have detailed stats of each batter and each batter's zone and batting average in that zone. These are not random despite random claims. There is a huge market and the game is run based on sophisticated data-based methods. Of course, the icing on the cake is human judgement call but they do not defy the basics. For example, if Machado's pitch chart says that he is vulnerable on the top towards the body and smashes anything in the middle and outside low, no pitcher in baseball goes on a hope and a prayer saying they just felt that Machado cannot hit something low and outside. I made up the locations because I was lazy to look up Machado's pitch box averages. Comparing cricket to baseball is just nuts.

No player in baseball can ever even come up to the MLB because the manager thinks he is very promising and did well in some other league etc. The go through a rigorous system of training and only then they are brought up once their numbers look good and then if they are not they are optioned back even in the middle of the season. Joey Bart was one of the top prospects in baseball and he struggled in the first part of this season. Got sent back to the minors. He is a catcher with a very good home run hitting calibre but he has a problem with strikeouts. This is sort of where Pant is. A very good prospect who can be a future superstar but his skills in T20Is has not yet been polished because he has not figured out how to hit safely when the field is defensive or whatever it is that is preventing him from doing well in T20Is.

Of course, people are free to create strawmen that say one should rely only on stats and attack them. I provide a stats - or more accurately a stat-based team to show what a dispassionately chosen team should look like. I have not said that that should be the team anywhere. It points out the weakness of the chosen team in that players like Pant, Jadeja, Chahal, etc. have very poor records. The point is to prevent hype of this team and to argue what or who could or should be chosen instead of them. All said and done, I would possibly still choose Jadeja over Axar because I am not sure Axar can reproduce his heroics against West Indies, etc. I could also argue for Chahal because we have not tried any of the other ones that long. Pant, I will let Kumar argue for. Intuitively, I do not see Pant winning us anything now in T20Is but Pant is crazy and I would be delighted if he struck form all of a sudden and figured it out. If he is the Sindhu of cricket.

Back to Kumar. The point also is that these are not the only comparables to Pant. Rahul can keep wickets quite adequately in T20Is.

[prasen9]

Kumar, how many innings is Kishen's data. Most possibly even smaller than 13?

Even when we have very sophisticated stats and figure out how to come up with methods to use them, things will never be fully automated. Things like how a player is mentally and physically feeling can perhaps never be quantified and weighted ... at least not yet in a form that can be utilized automatically.

[prasen9]

Considering that Karthik last played T20I in 2019, not fair to consider his career averages . I would probably include Karthik as pretender. Considering that Karthik is put in position where he has to start hitting from go, his SR is actually not good. They all play different position, so not very easy to compare their average against one another.

Fully agree but the point is that if you come and bat at the end, your average is going to be lower and SR higher and if you come towards the beginning the average is going to be higher and SR lower. Or maybe in the middle the average is higher and SR lower. The point is that if you have a low average and a low SR then that means that you may simply not be doing anything correct. Can't hit and can't score runs too. That is who Pant is now in T20Is. But this is also a fact that comes from traditional thinking. It actually makes more sense to keep going for big hits at the beginning due to field restrictions until say you lose 2-3 wickets. Of course, if the new ball is swinging in assistive conditions, that is a separate issue. You need to have different strategies for different conditions. And, put in the opposition, numbers are just numbers. We need to build a full fledged predictor like baseball does to really say who batted better than whom and who is more like to contirbute more, etc. I am being lazy just choosing SR because I do not want to set up a sophisticated system. And even if I did, it would be very difficult to explain what the system is doing. Modern AI has an explainability problem.

I would be very happy if someone told Pant. After 5 balls, don't care about the average. Just hit. Let us see what is SR can be. His current SR of 130-135 is no way a reflection of his abilities. He is sort of in two minds. We need to set him free if we are going to play him. Tell him that if he gets a SR of 160 and an average of 15 we will keep him. Which we will do anyway. And, he is not doing much now. So, set him free. The upside may be huge.