The Sports-India Community

If Rahul did so, then so did Mishra.

Yes, Amit Mishra had some good performances in the IPL, but so did Harbhajan and Jadeja among the finger spinners. Bhajji took 16 wickets in 11 matches at an economy rate of 7.09, Jadeja 15 wickets at an economy rate of 6.35. Amit MIshra wasn't among the top 10 wicket-takers -- and nor did he have an economy rate among the top-10 in this year's IPL. Mishra got 11 wickets in 11 matches, at an economy rate of 6.75 (inferior to Jadeja's performance on both counts).

Chahal had a reasonably good season: 18 wickets in 14 matches at an average of 21.44 and economy rate of 7.82. Shreyas Gopal took 20 wickets at 17.35 apiece and an economy rate of 7.22 (clearly the best of the Indian wrist-spinners this year). Rahul Chahar had 13 wickets, but his economy rate of 6.55 was among the best in the league.

Deepak Chahar, the medium-pacer, was the most successful Indian bowler (in terms of wickets), with 22 wickets at 21.9 apiece and an economy rate of 7.47.

Rahul Chahar got 13 wickets in 13 matches at 23.69/wicket, 6.55 rpo. Mishra got 11 wickets in 11 matches at 24.54/wicket, 6.75 rpo. So, was Chahar better than Mishra, yes. Slightly. But, their records are pretty similar is what I was saying. Also, clearly Bhajji and Jadeja had great seasons. I was only comparing the leggies. Compared to these two Chahal had a much higher runs/over. Was Chahal bowled in the slog overs more than these two?

Cricket is really way, way behind to baseball wrt advanced stats. Or at least their public availability.

Bhajji and Jadeja played half their matches on the doctored Chinna pitches.

Which is why we need advanced stats.

Thanks Prasen, and one more thing is cricket has several parameters like pitch, ball type and colour etc which make reading into advanced stats and coming to any conclusion subjectivte.

srini, I do not know whether you follow the advanced stats in baseball. There is statcast, which measures what amount of spin the ball has, what angle each shot was and what speed it left the bat, etc. There are "fielding independent pitching" stats that tries to take into account the number of balls hit on the ground and that in the air (beyond the infield), etc. Baseball has a human judge who judges each fielding event to rate it as an "error" or just too hard to field and a hit. Park factors such as the Rockies park in Denver being higher altitude and hence allowing a lot more home runs, etc. are also factored in. The rarity of the air and the vagaries of the pitch are but two sides of the same coin, no? Granted cricket is not the same and we have many more balls per game, but at least in T20s, a lot of data can be obtained about how high the ball was and at what speed and spin, etc. Cricket started showing numbers such as control %. But, it does not archive these stats somewhere for people to get them easily. Baseball even does not have wickets. Their strike calls are totally subjective. So, there are a lot of subjective things but that does not mean that we cannot design better stats.

It should not be that hard to normalize the stats by the score in the match or the wickets by which # in the batting order the wicket was of, the impact of the wicket depending on the state of the game, etc. For example, a wicket taken in the last ball of a ODI innings in the first innings may not be that important but that in the second by virtue of which a team wins by 1 run is golden. Etc.

I can go to a site such as FanGraphs and sort data and find out a whole bunch of things. They even have a WAR, win over replacement, which evaluates each player based on their fielding position or pitching position (starting vs reliever) etc. and combines defence and offence and gives a number to show many wins a player adds over a replacement-level player and quantifies what price in $ is equal to one WAR for a player of that type. That has resulted in baseball realizing that players over 30 are not worth the dollars they were earning in the free-agent market and they have models to project how much each player's performance will degrade over time. Is it perfect? No. But is it better than giving someone a huge contract because they have been stellar in the last four years? Yes.

Folks, I finally caught up on season 1 of “Inside Edge”, the TV series available on Amazon Prime (in the US). It is quite gripping and well made. I assume that it’s based on IPL league. If it’s true, it’s rather shocking as to what goes on in the league. Does anyone know if there’s any truth in what’s depicted in the show?

Talking about stats, the girl who plays Rohini (the analyst/statistician) for the Mumbai Mavericks is exactly the kind of person our Indian team needs. It’s an intriguing show and a must watch if you are an Indian cricket/IPL fan..

IPL Is a huge part of year for lot of players, says Josh Hazlewood

Yawn!

The countdown has begun, gear up for the most exciting T20 tournament

Hmm. No need for any preparation. I can put on the alarm five minutes before the match, wake up in my pajamas, put my computer on and follow. Anyway the first few overs are yawn-worthy. So, no big deal if I am a bit late.

A bunch of players are not going to be there anyway. So, it may not be that good an edition.

Terrific innings from Mayank Agarwal yesterday. But with the scores level (and hence just a run needed off two balls), both he and the next man fell off the last two balls. Smacks of something fishy...

Bizarre chase as usual from CSK. Although Faf du Plessis finished with 72 off 37, he was scoring at less than a run a ball for the first 20 balls or so before going berserk a la Dhoni. And the latter himself came in at #7 after the chase was already more or less out of reach.

Sanju Samson and Rayudu have played the other two marquee innings other than Mayank.