The Doosra

Reverse wrist spinner - the best name for an off-break-doosra bowler like Ajmal

2012-01-29T09:10:00.000-08:00

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In Mike Selvey's Guardian column today

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2012/jan/28/pakistan-england-changing-world-order

he used the term reverse wrist spinner to describe off-break/ doosra bolwers like Ajmal.

Sounds like the perfect name!

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(I found a couple of other previous uses of the term reverse wrist spinner on Google - such as this time ten years ago on cricinfo by Sambit Bal - http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/story/226249.html) . Perhaps the cricket journalists have been saying it for a while?

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Simon Hughes blows a fuse over the doosra

2012-01-26T20:56:00.000-08:00

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I'm a big fan of Simon 'the analyst' Hughes as a writer and TV commenter - but this video of him supposedly trying to bowl a doosra is very annoying:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/sportvideo/cricketvideo/9034353/

Simon-Hughes-tries-to-bowl-the-doosra.html

The doosra is in the news because of Ajmal's mastery dissection of the English batters in the current test series, but what Hughes is bowling bears zero resemblance to Ajmal's innovative action.

Hughes makes the usual mistake of bowling a conventional off-break - where the ball is gripped between index and middle fingers, and which uses forearm supination to impart most of the spin; then trying to turn this action around to make it into a leg-break - which is pretty much impossible, otherwise off-spinners would have been bowling doosras ever since the beginning of cricket.

But Ajmal has devised a new way of bowling - with a 'back-flip' extension of the wrist, and ball gripped between middle and ring fingers - so Ajmal's off-break is nothing like Hughes off-break delivery.

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For heavens sake, can't people see the difference - it isn't subtle!

That's why I began this blog - because the pundits don't seem to look at the way that innovative spin bowlers are doing their tricks; and the most ridiculous tosh gets written about, say, Paul Adams, Murali and now Ajmal.

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Forearm spinners - the commonest type of spinner

2012-01-19T10:35:00.000-08:00

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The commonest type of spinner - the off-break and orthodox left arm spinners (like Monty Panesar and Graeme Swann) should properly be caused forearm spinners, since it is the supination of the forearm which imparts spin to the ball.

Supination is the rotation of the forearm from a position with the palm facing down and the thumb on the media (middle) side being rotated to the palm is upwards and the thumb is on the lateral (out) side.

It is this rotation of the forearm which generates spin - and it has almost nothing to do with the fingers (they merely grip the ball firmly) - so the name 'finger spinners' is wrong and misleading.

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True finger spinners are those rare types who use a finger flick to impart spin - such as Mendis or Herath's carrom ball, or from the past Jack Iverson.

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Wrist spinners are mostly leg break and chinaman bowlers, who bowl with the forearm in pronation (thumb medially rotated - but Saeed Ajmal is a new kind of wrist spinner who bowls with the forearm in supination (thumb laterally rotated).

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What of Murali?

He was mostly a shoulder spinner. The whole of his arm rotated, and the ball was either an off-break or a doora according to whether the wrist was flexed/ folded palm towards arm (doosra) or extended/ with wrist 'cocked' and back of hand towards arm (off break).

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Some googlies are also shoulder-spun - bowled mostly from shoulder rotation, especially when the bowler has a round arm action like Shane Warne.

Warne's most serious injury was of his shoulder, and resulted from bowling a sequence of practice googlies to Ian Healy.

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(By contrast, right arm wrist spinners with a high or vertical arm action - such as Chandrasekar or Kumble - tend to bowl googlies (or top-sinners) rather than leg breaks; and their googly is bowled with a flick of the wrist and not by rotating the whole arm from the shoulder.)

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What will be Ajmal's new 'mystery' delivery? A knuckleball?

2012-01-13T01:52:00.000-08:00

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I read that Saeed Ajmal will unveil a new 'mystery' delivery against England in the UAE test series. What could it be?

Since Ajmal is too shrewd to mess with his beautifully-honed action - which is making him into the best world spinner, overtaking Swann - and knowing the method of his stock deliveries

http://the-doosra.blogspot.com/2011/07/how-does-saeed-ajmal-bowl-his-doosra.html

i.e. ball held between middle and ring finger, spin imparted by a forward flip (extension) of the wrist with the back of hand facing batter...

Then I can make a guess that the mystery delivery will be a straight, floating, wobbling ball with no spin at all (thereby creating turbulence and unpredictable movement, like a baseball pitcher's knuckleball) - and he will deliver this simply by not flipping the wrist forward and instead releasing the ball completely dead, seam sideways to the batter.

It's just a guess - and it will be interesting to see if my prediction is correct.

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Maurice Holmes = Saeed Ajmal?

2011-07-18T08:03:00.000-07:00

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Maurice Holmes was recently banned from bowling (he plays for for Warwickshire) due to suspicions of 'throwing' his doosra.

It seems that after being reported for a suspicious bowling action, he was unable - or unwilling - to reproduce his match play action under laboratory conditions therefore it seems he was banned by default. From my reading he was not actually proven to throw his doosra. I have previously suggested how Saeed Ajmal can bowl the doosra without chucking:

http://the-doosra.blogspot.com/2011/07/how-does-saeed-ajmal-bowl-his-doosra.html

I have never seen Holmes bowl but from the photos available online he seems to use the same grip as Saeed Ajmal, therefore he may be using the same - legal - method for bowling the doosra.

Observe the similarity in the grip:

Purely on this basis, it seems possible that Holmes might actually or potentially be able to bowl a legal doosra.

Since Saeed Ajmal is one of the most effective spinners in world cricket this could be important.

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How does Saeed Ajmal bowl his doosra?

2011-07-18T08:00:00.000-07:00

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Originally posted Wednesday, May 25, 2011

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I have been watching the West Indies v Pakistan Test series on TV, and thoroughly enjoyed watching Ajmal bowl.

He is a real craftsman, and looks like currently being the second best spinner in the world (after Swann).

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He also has the best doosra ever - in the sense that he is the first off-spinner to have a doosra good enough to be a stock delivery - it doesn't seem to cost much effort, seems impossible for the batsman to 'pick' from the hand, has a useful bats-width deviation and very good bounce.

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How does he do it?

Of course I don't know for sure - but I think this is the method:

1. He uses his middle finger as the spinning finger for the doosra (contrasted with using the index finger for spinning the off-break).

But the grip doesn't look very different for the two deliveries.

2. He also uses a flip of the wrist - specifically an extension of the wrist - to impart extra spin.

This is an important innovation, since without this extra wrist flip, the doosra would spin only slowly; but with this wrist extension he get good top-spinning revolutions which gives his doosra dip and bounce.

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The reason that the doosra is so rare is that the off break is usually bowled using a rotation of the forearm (anatomically called supination - like putting your elbow on the table with the forearm lying flat, and moving from having the palm on the table to palm facing upwards).

But supination cannot be used when the back of the hand is facing the batter (the forearm is already supinated), so most bowlers would need to rely on a small amount of finger-imparted spin, a small sideways movement of the wrist (called adduction) and perhaps an element of elbow straightening (a 'back-chuck').

But by flipping his wrist forward, Ajmal is able to produce plenty of spin without throwing.

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His other advantage is that (I guess) Ajmaal has built his bowling action around the doosra - with an almost vertical arm action, so that his off-break is bowled from a very similar action and hand position - his off-break is more of a top-spinner than most other off-break bowlers.

Most off-break bowlers build their action around optimizing their off-break - then they find that they cannot bowl a doosra - or at least not without chucking, or bowling something very obvious and easy to 'pick'.

So (leaving aside Murali as a one-off and unclassifiable bowler) I believe that Saeed Ajmal should be recognized as the first international quality true doosra bowler!

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Maurice Holmes = Saeed Ajmal?

2011-07-18T07:50:00.000-07:00

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Maurice Holmes was recently banned from bowling (he plays for for Warwickshire) due to suspicions of 'throwing' his doosra.

It seems that after being reported for a suspicious bowling action, he was unable - or unwilling - to reproduce his match play action under laboratory conditions therefore it seems he was banned by default. From my reading he was not actually proven to throw his doosra.

I have previously suggested how Saeed Ajmal can bowl the doosra without chucking:

http://the-doosra.blogspot.com/2011/05/how-does-saeed-ajmal-bowl-his-doosra.html

I have never seen Holmes bowl but from the photos available online he seems to use the same grip as Saeed Ajmal, therefore he may be using the same - legal - method for bowling the doosra.

Observe the similarity in the grip:

Purely on this basis, it seems possible that Holmes might actually or potentially be able to bowl a legal doosra.

Since Saeed Ajmal is one of the most effective spinners in world cricket this could be important.

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More on Warne versus Murali (v Kumble) - top-spinner versus flipper

2011-05-16T03:09:00.000-07:00

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I recently saw a journalistic piece by Shane Warne on the subject of Muttiah Muralitharan (Murali) - full of back-handed (!) compliments; the sub-text of which was that the Australian batsmen in Australia had 'worked out' Murali, and negated his doosra - which is why Murali's record against Australia was modest (13 matches, 59 wickets at an average of 36) especially in Australia was poor (5 matches, 12 wickets at 75).

Of course, since Australia were the best batting side in test cricket during this era, especially in Australia, this is strictly *irrelevant* to a comparison between Warne and Murali - Warne never bowled against the great Australian batting side; and in those match-ups against the best non-Australian test sides Murali clearly out-performed Warne

http://the-doosra.blogspot.com/2010_07_01_archive.html

of particular relevance is the comparaitive record against India, which was the second best batting side after Australia during the Warne v Murali era:

Murali 4.5 wickets per match @ 33; Warne 3 wickets per match @ 47

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IF Warne had bolwed against Australia he would have been much less effective than against other sides; because Australians use their feet against spin, negating Warnes best variation for the early part of his career - the Flipper: a faster, straight, pitched-up delivery which could trap LBW those batters who stepped back and played spinners from their crease - but which is negated by batters (such as Australians) who play forward and skip down the wicket to spinners.

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The high bouncing top-spinners is the spinner's straight delivery variation which would be most effective against batters who come forward to spin - and who was the best recent top-spin bowler?

Neither Warne, nor Murali - but Anil Kumble.

Take a look at Kumble's record against Australia in Australia: 10 matches, 49 wickets (!) albeit at an average of 37 (spinners do the bulk of bowling in high scoring losing matches, which hurts their averages).

This suggests to me that spin bowlers who have a lot of top spin on their straight ought to have done better against the great Australian sides of the 1990s and early 2000s than did spinners who lacked such a variation.

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(Also relevant is that some Australian umpires in Australia were no-balling and referring Murali for throwing; and this seriously damaged his confidence since it was potentially career-ending. My opinion on this is that throwing is an irrelevant consideration with respect to Murali's unique action; because even if he did straighten his elbow, the delivery was only a 'back-chuck': with the back of the hand and the point of the elbow facing the batter. Ie Murali delivered the ball with the forearm in pronation - to use the anatomical term. The regulations banning throwing implicitly apply to the front of hand delivery with the forearm in supination; when a chuck can be much faster than a straight arm delivery. Indeed throwing with the forearm in supination could lead to quick bowlers delivering balls at over 100 mph - like a baseball pitcher's 95 mph thrown delivery from standing *plus* the extra speed from a run-up. Dangerous!)

Is there any evidence that wicketkeepers per se are good one day openers?

2011-01-25T02:57:00.000-08:00

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Just asking...

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I am eating humble pie...

2011-01-07T02:56:00.000-08:00

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With England's 3-1 triumph over Australia today - including 3 innings-defeats for Australia - and am forced to conclude that the current England selectors might, perhaps, know their job better than I do...

I am delighted by the success of Anderson and Tremlett - two of my favourite bowlers, very pleasantly surprised/ amazed by Cook's phenomenal success (which solves the problem of the next captain), impressed by Bresnan's improvement - and astonished that England did all this without bucketloads of wickets from Swann.

I am stunned by England's brand new capacity to post huge first innings totals - this looks like something new under the sun. I feel it may have something to do with the example of Trott.

Sadly, I was correct about Collingwood's problems being due to old age rather than loss of form - but clearly his presence in the side was very valuable nonetheless.

I would award at least 51% of the credit to Andy Flower, whose integrity, ability to make and stick-by tough decisions, and wisdom place him high among the current (admittedly feeble) leaders on this planet.

Happy days!

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Going round the loop - plus the gyro ball!

2010-11-01T05:01:00.000-07:00

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Interesting post at The Teesra

http://idontlikecricket-andrewb.blogspot.com/2010/10/looking-for-more-variations.html

which says:

" "going "around the loop" - keeping the finger movement constant, but rotating the wrist between successive deliveries, to change the direction of spin.

"So, for a right-arm wrist spinner, you might start with a "big leggie", releasing the ball with the seam pointing at gully, or even cover; then a "little leggie", with the seam directed to first slip; the top spinner, with the seam straight down the wicket; the googly, with the wrist now turned even further round so that the seam is spun towards leg slip.

"Shane Warne's "slider" might be the delivery at the opposite end of the loop to the googly - still with the same finger movement as a regular leggie, but now with palm of the hand towards gully and the seam pointing towards leg slip but with the fingers spinning the ball back towards the bowler."

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To this might be added the idea of the 'gyro ball' which is rotating the ball on a vertical axis - either by pushing the right side of the ball going forward (towards the batter) or the left side going forward (towards the batter).

The ball rotating on a vertical axis will tend to swing away from the side which is spinning towards the batter - espcially if the exis of rotation goes down the middle of the seam, so that seam is like the equator of the earth.

This means that the ball will *not* usually spin or turn off the pitch when it lands, because the seam is kept away from contact with the pitch.

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In other words, this extra variation - http://the-doosra.blogspot.com/2010/05/gyro-ball-variation-for-off-spinner.html - is that one which which I believe is used by Graeme Swann, and which gets him so many LBW decisions against left handers.

There would therefore be an away-swinging (to the right-handed batter) gyro ball - produced by the off-spinner and chinaman wrist spinner; and an in-swinging (to the right-handed batter) gyro ball produced by the orthodox left arm finger spinner and the leg break bowler.

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In 'going round the loop', the gyro ball variation would probably come next to the backspinner - produced by a 90 degree wrist rotation: at the end for finger spinners - following after the 'Teesra'; and at the beginning for the wrist spinner - preceding the 'slider'.

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England's team to win the 2010-2011 Ashes - revisited

2010-10-24T03:25:00.000-07:00

On June 10 I chose :

1. Strauss; 2. Cook or Trott or even Bell; 3. Peterson; 4. Collingwood; 5. Morgan 6. Prior; 7. Bresnan; 8. Swann; 9. Broad; 10. Anderson; 11. Finn (or Onions)

Now I would choose:

1. Strauss; 2. Trott; 3. Cook; 4. Bell; 5. Morgan; 6. Prior; 7. Bresnan; 8. Swann; 9. Broad; 10. Tremlett; 11. Finn.

Peterson cannot be played until/ if he recovers form; I would drop Cook down the order since he is doing a bad job opening; and drop Collingwood forever - since I feel he has reached the end of his career (the number of dropped catches recently suggests that his reflexes/ hand eye coordination has gone - that is down to ageing and is irreversible). Anderson is injured and I don't think he will be recovered, also I don't think his pitched-up swing bowling will be effective in Australia. I have always rated Tremlett.

But I am *not* optimistic about winning the Ashes this time - we only have three solid batters (Strauss, Trott and Bell) so we cannot win a high scoring series; and we cannot force a low scoring series in Australia with just four bowlers, only one of whom is a genius and one (Finn) or two (and Tremlett) of whom are still Test rookies.

I suspect that we will play Anderson in the First Test despite him still being injured, and then we will be down to three effective bowlers, we will open with Cook, we will play out of form Peterson and finished Collingwood - and will be in effect four wickets down before we even begin. So we will lose the first test and uphill all the way...

Index finger flicking - a potential new method for off-spin

2010-10-19T07:05:00.000-07:00

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The problem with off-spin bowling (or left arm orthodox) is that most bowlers cannot bowl a variation which turns the other way - i.e. most bowlers cannot bowl a doosra without either throwing it (a back-chuck), or having a very obvious change of action.

But it might be possible to do this if the spin was imparted to the ball using an index finger flick.

The ball would be held between the first three fingers (index, middle and ring fingers) with the index finger crooked.

The ball would be delivered with the heel of the hand (the side below the little finger) facing towards leg slip, and the the index finger would be straightened with a flick to impart spin.

I don't know of any bowler who has actually done this - but if someone had sufficiently large hands including a long strong index finger, I don't see why *somebody* shouldn't be able to do this!

The disadvantage is that this method would not impart as much spin as a normal off break action.

But the big advantage is that by angling the heel of the hand straight ahead then a top-spinner would result...

And by angling the heel of the hand towards the slips a doosra would result.

And this could happen:

1. without chucking, and

2. with only a barely perceptible change in the angle of the hand - which would be extremely difficult for the batsman to 'pick'.

A further advantage would be that such a delivery could probably be bowled faster than a leg-break - because the shoulder is in a more anatomically-neutral position.

I could imagine a Kumble-like or SF Barnes-like index finger flick bowler, medium paced, high action, plenty of bounce - able to bowl off-breaks, top-spinners and leg-breaks at will and without being picked.

The ball would probably not deviate *much* - but combined with bounce, and done with control, the result could be devastating!

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Asian-style soft ball cricket for English schoolkids

2010-08-16T03:17:00.000-07:00

If we want English schoolboys to both enjoy cricket and display flair, they should be playing with a soft ball. In other words, English school-kids should be allowed to play like Asians.

Instead of a traditional leather and cork ball, many Asians are brought-up on 'tape ball' cricket - perhaps using a tennis ball wrapped in gaffer tape. This encourages attacking, wristy batsmanship and unorthodox spin and swing.

Of course, there are plenty of good soft cricket balls commercially available with a raised seam, without English schoolboys needing to resort to a tape ball.

The hard ball means danger of injury, hand-jarring and help from the pitch. A softer ball means less fear, more scope for risk-taking, and bowlers who need to try something special.

So, let the ECB recommend *not* to use a hard ball in under 16 cricket, and encourage creativity and adventure from English schoolboys (and, with a soft ball and reduced chance of trauma, maybe more girls too).

Test cricket = Ashes

2010-08-13T02:45:00.000-07:00

It looks as if almost every nation's fans are abandoning test cricket except for Australia and England.

No matter - Test cricket can survive and thrive underpinned by only the original duo of Austraila and England - who remain wildly enthusiastic about the Ashes encounters, and who nowadays regard all other Test match contests as merely preparation and practice for the Ashes.

But the Ashes will need to become an annual event - alternating back and forth between Australia and England as at present, but happening twice as often as at present.

Also the Ashes tour programs could be expanded (as they were in the past) to include more warm-ups and friendly 'exhibition' games around the country - i.e. more of a 'scoial' program at the beginning and end of the Ashes proper.

Obviously doubling the frequency would make the Ahses a little less special, but it would be well worth it.

What makes a high quality, long-term test spinner?

2010-08-09T13:35:00.000-07:00

1. Accuracy and reliability, obviously.

2. Usually a powerfully-spun (fizzing) stock delivery with lots of revolutions on it; but if not then plenty of bounce at slow-medium pace (e.g. Kumble, SF Barnes, Mendis).

3. A well-disguised variation. At the highest level is is vital that the variation be hard/ impossible to pick. If it is, then the variation need not be anything spectacular - a good 'arm ball' for a slow left arm orthodox/ of-spinner is as good as a doosra- or , and a legspinner's straight delivery is as good as a googly/ wrong-un.

Contrariwise, if the variation is easy to pick then it is pretty useless at the highest level; even if it is a spectacularly-turning googly, an excocet-missile flipper or a high-bouncing doosra.

Swann is evidence of all this. He is the best spinner in the world on the basis of accuracy and reliability, a high-rev off break and a straight 'gyro' ball. In particular he is better than any of the doosra bowlers, because his gyro variation is very difficult/ impossible to pick - unlike most doosras (exceptions being Murali, and perhaps Saeed Ajmal).

Wicket keeping averages, again

2010-08-05T22:55:00.000-07:00

From Cricinfo 6 Aug 2010: "All told, [Kamran] Akmal has dropped 34 chances in his last 28 Tests, and he averages less than 17 in Tests against Australia, South Africa and England."

A wicket-keeper is a specialist fielder with gloves on, and should not drop chances.

Each dropped chance is an extra wicket needed, and each test match wicket costs an average of about 32 runs. Akmal has therefore given away approximately 34 X 32 runs = 1088 runs in 28 tests = 39 runs per test.

Giving away 39 runs per test (plus, probably, quite a few byes), or nearly 20 runs per innings - Akmal would need to have nearly 20 runs taken off his average to give a realistic measure of his contribution to the team.

So Akmal has been worth minus 3 runs per innings to his team - so that any competent wicket keeper who did not drop catches would have been worth more - even if they scored no runs at all!

But even if Akmal had batting average of forty, then this would only translate to a real average of about twenty.

My point is that a wicket keeper who drops chances frequently is *very* unlikely to be worth his place - even if he is a good batter. A reliable keeper who never drops catches would only need to average about mid-twenties in order to be preferable to almost any imaginable unreliable batsman-wicket-keeper.

In other words, the traditional idea of choosing the best wicket-keeper is probably the best idea - and the modern idea of the batsman-wicket-keeper is basically flawed: a result of inadequate statistics.

Murali was the greatest bowler ever, without question

2010-07-20T04:53:00.000-07:00

I would argue that - whatever people may say about it, and leaving aside considerations such as personality or entertainment value - Murali was the greatest ever bowler.

The evidence is that:

1. We have to assume that standards in sport are rising all the time, so that recent sports people are better than those of previous generations. This applies to all sports with objective measurements (running, jumping,, throwing etc), and we must assume it applies to competitive sports.

2. The most valuable bowler is a great spinner. Because a spinner can bowl more time and more overs than a quick bowler, as and when required.

3. Murali is the greatest spinner of the most recent generation. His main rival was Shane Warne, and Murali outperfomed Warne.

I did the folowing analysis in 2008, before Murali's recent decline, which was published as a letter in Wisden monthly.

v England: Murali 7.15 wickets per match @ 19.74; Warne 5.41 wickets per match @ 23.25;

v South Africa: Murali 6.93 wickets per match @ 22.22; Warne 5.42 wickets per match @ 24.16;

v India Murali 4.47 wickets per match @ 32.47; Warne 3.07 wickets per match @ 47.18;

v Pakistan: Murali 5.64 wickets per match @ 23.31; Warne 6.00 wickets per match @ 20.17.

Warne out-performs Murali against Pakistan, but Murali dominates Warne against the other three major test teams.

I would particularly highlight Murali against England - considering that Warne was always considered to bowl especially well against England, yet he was totally out-perfomed by Murali; and Murali's superb performances against India - in an era when India had the second-best batting in the world.

(India were second only to Australia, against whom Murali still managed to take a very impressive 4.5 wickets per match although at a modest average of 36 - sadly we will never know the comparison of how Warne would have performed against Australia.)

I lay considerable stress on the statistic of the number of wickets a bowler takes per match as a measure of how much a bowler contributes as an individual to test victories. In this respect Murali ranks very high throughout history - with only SF Barnes scoring significantly higher than Murali's 6 test wickets per match - and over a much smaller number of matches than Murali.

And of course Murali's basic statistic is that he has taken more test wickets than anyone else ever - which reflects that Murali's incomparably high value to his team over many years.

Murali therefore is the most recent bowler who made the largest contribution to his team (both in sheer volume and also per match) - and he therefore deserves the accolade of 'the greatest ever'.

The perfect wrist-spin bowler

2010-07-19T10:14:00.000-07:00

The perfect wrist spinner would be equally effective against left and right handed batters.

This means that they should have two stock deliveries - a leg-break for use against right anders and a googly/ wrong-un for use against left-handers.

To be effective, a spinner needs a good, sharply pun and accurate stock delivery and a well-disguised variation - either a straight ball or one that turns in the opposite direction. Both alternatives seem equally effective, so long as they are well disguised.

(e.g. for most of his career, Shane Warne had a leg-break plus a variety of well-disguised straight balls - he could not use the googly in the second half of his career due to a shoulder injury. The best current spinner, Graeme Swann, has an off-break and a straight-on undercut spinner - or gyro-ball!).

However, and this is the key, the stock delivery to the right and left hander might be bowled with a completely different action. This would not matter - so long as the variation was well disguised with respect to the stock delivery being used.

So that the leg-break for use against right handed batters might have a moderately round-arm delivery (like Warne’s) but the googly/ wrong-un for use against left handers might have a high arm delivery (more like Kumble and Mushtaq Ahmed - who bowled the googly as their stock delivery - pretty much).

The round-arm leg break for right handers might have a straight ball as its main variation (e.g. a top-spinner, a slider, or a flipper - as Warne used) - while the googly for left handers might have a leg-break as its main variation (as Kumble used).

My hunch is that having a completely different action against right and left handers might enable bowlers to develop better stock deliveries, and become equally effective against both right and left handers - which is very rare.

By becoming two bowlers in one, one might become the perfect wrist spin bowler.

The circle change-up for fast bowlers?

2010-07-19T09:56:00.000-07:00

I wonder whether any cricket bowlers have tried using the same grip as baseball pitchers use for their 'circle change-up' pitch?

This article tells how to do it: http://www.helium.com/items/1153498-how-to-throw-a-circle-change-up - in a nutshell, the ball is gripped such that the index finger and thumb make a circle down the side of the ball, and the middle finger is vertically on top of the ball. http://www.ehow.com/how_5605037_throw-circle-changeup.html

If it worked for right hand fast bowlers in the same way it does for baseball pitchers, the circle change-up would be a surprise slow delivery (bowled with full effort, and the normal bowling action, but coming-out about 15-20 mph slower than the fast delivery) that would swing-in to the right handed batter.

Presumably it would be a way of bowling a hard-to-read slow in-swinging yorker.

Another way of thinking about it is that the delivery should curve-in and drop-shorter than expected - almost exactly like a sharply spun leg-break does before pitching (think Shane Warne).

Apparently, the grip is relatively easy to master - so it might be worth a try.

Why so few medium pace bowlers?

2010-07-13T03:18:00.000-07:00

Test match and other international bowlers nowadays are essentially fast or slow - that is they bowl a stock delivery at about 50-55 mph or 80-90 mph (i.e. fast-medium to fast).

Why are there so few (none at all?) medium paced frontline international quality bowlers with a stock delivery of 65-75 mph?

The reason is perhaps that in spinning the ball, bowlers put at least 15 mph of 'work' on to the ball in imparting enery to spin it. In other word, they reduce the pace by about 15 mph and instead put that energy into rotating the ball.

This can be seen from observing that a spinners 'quick' (non-spinning) delivery is typically about 65-70 mph (I suspect that spin bowlers with a fast delivery of 75 mph or more are likely to be throwing); while a right handed fast bowlers spinning 'off-cutter' is typically about 65-75 mph.

The faster a bowler's 'arm' the better for a bowler, since it is mostly the arm speed which imparts energy.

So it can be seen that a bowler with a fast arm will naturally tend to bowl fast - and it is natural and more straightforward that a bowler who can propel the ball at 80 plus mph will do so as a stock delivery, rather than bowling cutters at 70 mph.

And if a bowler is naturally a 70 mph medium pacer, and given that (at first class level a 70 mph non-spinning delivery is innocuous) it makes sense to impart as much spin to the ball as possible - turning oneself into a 55 mph spinner.

So, it can be seen that a top-notch medium pacer would need to be someone who has a fast arm and would naturally be a fast-medium or fast bowler deliberately choosing to reduce their pace through the air in order to impart spin.

I suggest that this was very likely to have applied to 'the greatest' British bowler of all time: SF Barnes - whose stock delivery seems to have been a medium paced leg-spinner.

I would guess that Barnes was naturally a right arm fast-medium bowler with a fast arm, but that he was able (and chose) to bowl a finger-flick delivery as stock - using his ring finger to flick the ball anticlockwise from the front of his hand, with a normal off cutter as his main variation.

If there are ever to be international front line medium pacers again, I would predict that they will come from quickies, with a quick arm, deliberately sacrificing some of their speed to generate spin. Like Barnes they would therefore be fast seam or swing bowlers in their simple basic action, but in imparting rotation to the ball would end-up as medium-paced front-of-hand spinners.

England's team to win the 2010-2011 Ashes

2010-06-30T02:21:00.000-07:00

Principle: you need five bowlers to win test matches with sufficient regularity - unless at least two of the bowlers are first rate.

England has only one first rate bowler (Swann) therefore we need five bowlers.

The reason is that the bowlers need to average about 15 wickets per match (at a reasonable average) between them to win matches (it does not have to be twenty wickets per match on average, since some wickets fall to stumpings, run outs etc. and a some test matches will inevitably end as draws due to weather or good/ lucky batting (although I believe there are more draws than 'necessary' due to many teams having inadequate bowling resources for the modern game).

Most frontline test bowlers average about 3-4 wickets per test match - the good ones nearer to 4. Great bowlers usually get more than 4 (e.g. McGrath) or about 5 (Warne) - amazing bowlers get 6 (Murali) - and the most ever was 7 wickets per test match (SF Barnes).

A batting all-rounder like Flintoff or Kallis will usually only get 2-3 wickets per match - for example, Sobers took 'only' 2.5 wickets per test match - but those extra wickets from the fifth bowler make a critical difference to the ability of a team to win. It also allows a team to win even when a frontline bowler is injured during a match.

NOTE - Currently Australia are strong in batting, but only moderate in bowling. This means that England need to focus on bowling, because the series will be decided by who wins the contest between English bowlers and Aussie batters.

Therefore:

1. Strauss

2. Cook or Trott or even Bell (who cares? - this is the weakest batter)

3. Peterson

4. Collingwood

5. Morgan (come on - he has *got* to play, cricket is about entertainment: or Bell if you really want to be boring)

6. Prior (he has an excellent record at number 6 - much better than Flintoff, about as good as Alec Stewart taking into account that modern averages are higher; but if England now refuse to bat Prior at 6, then Kieswatter will have to come in).

7. Bresnan

8. Swann

9. Broad

10. Anderson

11. Finn (or Onions depending on fitness/ conditions/ resting)

If it is a spinning wicket then substitute Yardy for Bresnan.

If this team could be fielded, it should be able to beat the current Aussies.

The "gyro ball" variation for the off-spinner/ left arm orthodox bowler

2010-05-30T07:46:00.000-07:00

It is fun to imagine new kinds of bowling delivery, and the gyro ball is the name I give to what may or may not be the main variation deployed by Graeme Swann.

It gets the name because it rotates on a vertical axis, rather like the children's toy called the gyroscope.

Like an off-spinner's off-break, the ball is spun from using the index finger with the seam gripped between index and middle finger; but the axis of spin is vertical, and the seam rotates towards the right-handed batsman on the leg side and away from the batsman on the off side.

This means that the gyro ball will swing away from the right-handed batsman, and this away movement will probably not be affected when the ball pitches because it will not grip on the pitch.

So the gyro ball is actually a kind of spun away-swinger.

The reason it swings the way that it does is that as the ball is travelling towards the batsman, the air flow over the side spinning towards the direction of travel will be higher than the pressure on the side of the ball spinning away from the direction of travel.

In effect, the ball spinning away from the direction of travel can be imagined as pushing the air backwards behind the ball more quickly, reducing its pressure; while the side of the ball spinning towards the direction of travel could be imagined as pushing against the air as is goes past and slowing it - thereby increasing its pressure.

This is why top spinners dip, and back spinners (sliders/ flippers) float, and why an over-spun off-break (with the seam at 45 degrees to the wicket) will both dip and swing away.

The 'big spinner' bowler could therefore, in theory, angle the spinning seam to produce various combinations of dip, float, and away swing - while all the time spnining the ball hard (and therefore making mis-hits much more likely than when bowling non-spinning variations - such as the traditional away-swinging 'arm ball').

{The above applies to the left arm orthodox slow bowler - reversing all the directions and rotations as appropriate - such that the gyro ball would become an inswinger to the right-handed batter.)

The leg-spinner's straight deliveries

2010-05-21T07:43:00.000-07:00

A leg spinner has at least five possibilities for straight delivery variations:

1. Top-spinner
2. Back-spinner
3. Faster back-spinner (flipper)
4. Non-spinner from back of hand
5. Faster straight delivery from front of hand

These all have the potential to disprupt the batter's timing.

The top spinner dips in the air to land further from the batter than he suspects then bounces higher and accelerates towards the batter.

The slowly rotating back spinner usually doesn't do that much but comes straight on.

The faster back spinner (flipper) does the opposite to the top spinner - it stays in the air longer than expected, then bounces closer to the batter than expected, then bounces lower than expected. I would have expected that this delivery would be easy to 'pick' - but this cannot always be true, since Warne and Kumble created havoc with their flippers.

The slower non-spinner is the back of hand straight delivery sometimes used as a slow ball by quick bowlers and 'death' bowlers in one day forms - some say it was perfected by Steve Waugh. Because it does not spin, it seems to float and wobble in the air as it approaches the batter - like a 'knuckleball' in baseball.

Or the leg break bowler can simply turn his palm to face forward at the last moment and bowl a normal straight, seam-up (and probably back-spinning) delivery - which comes out much faster than the leg-break - I saw Shahid Afridi surprise a batter with this, which came straight on about 15 mph faster than the leg-break, and pinned the batter LBW.

Donald and Cork: masters of appealing

2009-04-25T01:49:00.000-07:00

There are two basic ways of appealing effectively - both based on alpha male intimidation.

The first was perfected by Alan Donald.

The bowler spins round and points his index finger directly at the umpires head like a pretend gun; and crouches, staring with narrowed eyes and directing the gun - I mean finger - right between the umpires eyes until he gives a positive decision.

But Donald was so great a bowler it is hard to know whether appealing really made any difference.

The premier bowler who elevated moderate talent to a level of solid international performance by appealing was Dominic Cork.

Cork's method was to thrust his groin at the umpire while arching his back. In effect Cork pointed his (thankfully invisible) penis right between the umpires eyes, until he got a positive decision.

Clearly, having an invisible but real penis pointed between your eyes is more intimidating than an imaginary gun - so Cork should be appointed England's appealing-coach.

Andre Nel - the complete bowler?

2009-04-25T01:47:00.000-07:00

So, Andre Nel has retired...

Was he the complete bowler? Well, not quite - but just think of all his variations:

1. The fast-medium delivery speared in straight at the stumps from wide of the crease with a wide-eyed glare;

2. the fast-medium delivery speared in straight at the stumps from wide of the crease with a narrow-eyed glare;

3. the fast-medium delivery speared in straight at the stumps from wide of the crease with mouth open, roaring;

4. the fast-medium delivery speared in straight at the stumps from wide of the crease with bared-teeth;

5. the fast-medium delivery speared in straight at the stumps from wide of the crease with tongue hanging-out…

All he needed was a fast-medium delivery speared in straight at the stumps from wide of the crease with mouth in the shape of an O, and he would have been the complete bowler.

Anil Kumble - greatest ever Googly bowler?

2008-11-30T00:56:00.000-08:00

Cricinfo.com's usually-authoritative Statsguru has a blind spot when it comes to Googly bowlers.

South African Paul Adams recently retired with a classification of left arm 'Chinaman'. But Adams' stock delivery was a Googly, moving sharply away from the right hander, and delivered by gripping the ball between index finger and thumb.

This is not an isolated incident: now Anil Kumble retires from a magnificent career as a right arm Googly bowler with a Legbreak variation - yet Statguru calls him 'Legbreak googly'. Even Kumble's model, the legendary Bhagwat Chandrasekhar, is misclassified as just 'Legbreak', when he was known as a top-spin/ Googly exponent.

Such misclassification is not trivial. With accurate terminology Kumble's reputation moves-up from being the second best Legspinner of the past twenty years to (probably) the greatest Googly bowler of all time.

The future of Test cricket - more frequent Ashes!

2008-10-26T09:41:00.000-07:00

Cricket commentators are very worried about the future of Test cricket in light of the increasing popularity of the Twenty20 format.

But the fact is that most current Test cricket is regarded by most people as dull.

One big exception is the Ashes, England only play Australia every 2 years on average. It would be much better is the sides met every year, alternating between the countries.

I do not think the increase in Twenty20 is stoppable, nor do I think it should be stopped.

And concerns over excessive quantity are premature: we will not know how much Twenty20 is enough until we have had too much - that's the only way to find out.

I suspect the market for Twenty20 will not be saturated until there is a significant internationally-interesting Twenty20 match happening somewhere in the world every day of the year including Christmas Day and televised live. Anything less than this is less than enough for cricket addicts!

My feeling is that England and Australia should take-over Test cricket and build the other Test fixtures around the Ashes. From my perspective, this would be great! After all, the Ashes is the oldest international cricket competition, and no other countries are so keen on Test cricket as England and Australia.

Other test match series could be built around the Ashes and controlled by England-Australia - a mixture of regular but less frequent clashes between the Ashes sides and South Africa, India and Sri Lanka.

Perhaps there might also be less frequent, one-off series againt Pakistan, the West Indies and New Zealand. (Forget about Bangladesh and Zimbabwe). Players from these countries who wanted to play Test cricket regularly would need to qualify for other countries - perhaps this process could be streamlined.

Realistically, I think that Pakistan is unlikely to be a major Test team for the forseeable future - until the country becomes more stable and less corrupt; New Zealand has too small a population ever to be a significant Test team (given that cricket is only their second sport); and the West Indies will never again be a great team because it is composed of players from several independent countries that are growing apart, and (mostly) growing poorer and more corrupt.

Although the transition will be painful, I think that Test cricket has become very dull on average due to too many poor teams, too many mis-matches and too little public interest. The big series (like the current Australia v India series) still grab considerable public interest, but are not frequent enough.

I am pleased that Twenty20 will cause a reorganization of Test cricket - and am pleased at the likely prospect of more frequent Ashes clashes.

Paul Adams not a 'Chinaman' - Statsguru is wrong!

2008-10-09T02:01:00.000-07:00

The South African spinner Paul Adams has recently retired, and has been widely - and wrongly - described as a 'Chinaman' bowler: including teh career summary by the usually definitive Statsguru on the cricinfo.com web pages:

http://content-www.cricinfo.com/statsguru/content/player/43919.html

In fact Adams was a left arm Googly bowler - who gripped his stock delivery between index finger and thumb.

A Chinaman bowler is a left-arm wrist spinner whose stock delivery is an off-break - turning towards the right handed batter. In other words a Chinaman bowler is the left arm mirror image of a right arm leg-break wrist spinner like Shane Warne.

But there is no doubt that Adams stock delivery turned away from the right handed batter. In other words Adams was a left arm Googly bowler.

Adams was famous for his strange action, in which he did not swing his bowling arm through, but instead ducked his head (and closed his eyes), and stopped the swing of his arm after delivering the ball.

http://s47.photobucket.com/albums/f169/wildkiwi21/?action=view¤t=ADAMS_Paul_20030815_GH_R.jpg

Adams peculiar action probably derived from the fact that he gripped the ball between index finger and thumb:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/cricket/2978953.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/images/39265000/jpg/_39265115_paul_adams_247.jpg

The spin was imparted by very sharp wrist rotation, with the ball delivered from the back of the hand. But the degree of shoulder rotation needed to point index finger and thumb back in the opposite direction from the batter is probably what prevented Adams from swinging his arm through in the usual fashion, and led to his strange contortions.

A taller man could, in principle, have bowled Googlies in a conventional but very round armed style even with this index finger-thumb grip, but Adams was so short in stature that I guess he needed to use an upright arm in order to get a reasonable amount of bounce.

So, Adams stock delivery was a sharply-spun googly - and his main variation was top-spun, straight on kind of delivery.

However, I did see him bowl the occasional Chinaman delivery, using a conventional grip of holding the ball in his first three fingers. So this was a surprise variation for Adams - however, his grip and action for bowling the Chinaman were a bit easy to pick - although (if I recall correctly) Adams tried to compensate by covering the ball with his right hand (to conceal his grip) during the run up.

Anyway, Adams should certainly be classified as a left arm Googly bowler and not a Chinaman bowler. Statsguru needs revising!

P.S.: Statsguru misclassifies another wrist spinner - the great Anil Kumble - as 'Legbreak googly' when of course he is actually a right arm 'Googly legbreak' bowler: the Googly is his stock delivery and the legbreak is his main variation. What does Statsguru have against the Googly?

Three ways to bowl a doosra

2008-10-08T05:36:00.000-07:00

There are three main ways to bowl a doosra: 1. a back-chuck/ weak throw; 2. with shoulder rotation; 3. with body rotation.

I will define a true doosra as a leg-break delivered with the back of the hand facing the batter, and the forearm in anatomical supination.

(Supination means the forearm is rotated in the opposite direction to the leg-spinner. Leg spinners have the forearm pronated. If the arm is held out in front with the thumb upright, moving the thumb outwards (clockwise) is supination, moving the thumb inwards (anticlockwise) is pronation.)

The big problem with the doosra is imparting sufficiently rapid rotations onto the ball. This is the reason why most off-break bowlers do not bowl the doosra - it is not that they can't spin the ball at all, but that without some extra way of applying spin the ball is merely gently-rolled from the fingers, and the rotations are so slow that the ball is barely spinning.

1. Back-chuck

The back-chuck/ weak throw is the method used by most of the doosra bowlers whose actions have been reported or declared illegal. This involves rolling the ball towards slips with the fingers and wrist, but using the snap of an elbow-straightening/ throwing action to add extra rotations and pace onto the ball. This kind of doosra is a useful delivery since the spin and pace are potentially both enhanced by throwing. As I said, this is currently usually regarded as an illegal delivery (if the arm straightens more than 15 degrees). However, I think the back chuck should if possible be legalized.

2. Shoulder rotation

Shoulder rotation is used by Muralitheran, and is probably only possible for someone with a permanently bent elbow. Murali's stock off-break is delivered by twisting the whole arm from the shoulder so the bent elbow moves from right to left, plus swivelling the wrist, to deliver the ball from the back of the hand over the gap between the thumb and index finger.

For the off-break Muralis fingers seem to pass over the top of the ball from right to left and releasing the ball towards leg slip (for a right handed batter). It has been described as similar to someone unscrewing a lightbulb clockwise and very fast.

Murali's doosra seems to be delivered by bending the wrist back on itself during delivery so that the fingers pass _under_ the ball from left to right and releasing the ball towards slips (for a right handed batter).

3. Body rotation

The other method for bowling a doosra seems to be that employed by Saqulain Mushtaq, who is credited with inventing the delivery: body rotation.

This gets a bit more rapid revolution of the ball because it is more of a top-spinner than a doosra, and the wrist has a larger range of movement in that side-on top-spin position. But the ball moves towards the slips (for a right handed batter) because Saqlain's arm swings across his body from right to left, and his body is swivelled round so that it is as if he is bowling at 45 degrees to the left of the batter, looking over his right shoulder.

Imagine coming-up to bowl at a right hander, but at the last moment swivelling around an extra 45 degrees anticlockwise and bowling at slip. This swivel brings the arm into such a position that a top spun delivery turns into a leg break. Then you would need to aim the ball at the stumps from this position, to replicate Saqlain.

I think that Johan Botha is trying to do the same - at the point of delivery he has rotated so far that he has almost turned his back on the batsman.

The body rotation method actually builds the bowling action around the doosra as the stock delivery (or at least a frequent one), and the off-break becomes a variation.

The problems with bowling the doosra using body rotation is that 1. the doosra is still rather a slow spinining delivery, slower than the conventional off break or leg break; and 2. the off break variation is sub-optimal, since the necessary degree of body rotation is less effective at generating spin than the usual off break bowlers action.

In conclusion, unless the back-chuck is legalized, then Murali will probably be the only bowler ever to posess a really fast-spinning doosra.

More on how SF Barnes spun his leg break

2008-09-23T01:34:00.000-07:00

I have long been mystified by the legendary success of SF Barnes, and have (so far) failed to find any definitive description of his bowling methods.

But from the scattered clues I now believe that Barnes stock delivery, the medium paced leg-break, was spun from the front of the hand (palm facing the batter) by using the ring finger of his right hand to flick the ball off his index finger.

In a description I read in 100 greatest bowlers by Phil Edmonds and Scyld Berry it was said that Barnes held the ball with his index, middle and ring fingers along and touching the seam, and that he could bowl off breaks and leg breaks without much change of action - but that the leg-break was his usual and most devastating delivery.

It seems clear from pictures and written accounts that Barnes bowled from the front of his hand (palm facing the batter) so that a conventional leg-spinner's bac-of-hand leg-break is not a possibility. And a front of hand delivery would usually imply that Barnes bowled leg-cutters - a delivery in which spin is imparted by cutting the fingers across the left hand side of the ball as it is released. However this is not probable, because leg -cutters have never been very much use except as surprise variations, and anyway Barnes denied in interviews that he bowled leg-cutters - he said that he spun the ball.

To spin the ball implies that the ball is gripped with the fingers when spin is imparted - not that (as with a leg cutter) the fingers are scraped down the edge of the ball at the moment of release.

But if Barnes actually spun a leg-break from the front of his hand, then this would generate very little spin, due to the normal anatomical restrictions on movement in that direction. Technically, the wrist rotation depends on forearn rotation - and the action of supination from the starting position of having the middle finger pointing upwards, the forearm rotation which generates off spin has a much larger range of movement (about 180 degrees) than the action of pronation which generates leg spin (probably less than 90 degrees).

So Barnes must have flicked the ball with his fingers. Specifically, from this (and other) photographs it looks as if Barnes has his ring finger curled along the seam so as to flick a leg break off his index finger:

http://content-eap.cricinfo.com/england/content/player/8996.html

This is a different kind of finger flick from that used by Jack Iverson or Ajantha Mendis - since Iverson and Mendis use the middle finger to flick the ball off the thumb.

Because the middle finger is longer and stronger than the ring finger, I assume that Iverson and Mendis were able to impart more rapid rotations on the ball than Barnes. However, in order to flick a leg break off the thumb, the bowler must rotate the wrist so that the thumb faces towards first slip (roughly). This means that the ball is delivered almost from the side of the hand, which reduces its pace.

Barnes method enabled him to deliver the ball with the palm almost facing the batter, so enabling him to bowl at a brisk medium pace (and open the bowling). Together with Barnes supreme accuracy and the bounce due to his height and upright action, the moderate leg spin was devastating.

I presume that Barnes off break was delivered in an almost conventional fashion, except that the ball was gripped between index and ring fingers, instead of the usual grip between index and middle fingers.

Alternatively, it is possible Barnes could have rotated his wrist and flicked an off break/ googly from the back of his hand using his ring finger - but I would guess that this would have been easy for the batter to pick since the googly would have been visibly delivered from the back of the hand, and also much slower.

If it is correct that Barnes flicked his leg breaks off his index finger using the ring finger then this might explain why apparently nobody has been able to copy his action (except, according to his own account, Ian Peebles, early in his career - although Peebles did not explain the nature of his action, merely that he used the same method as Barnes).

It is remarkable that Barnes ring finger, a finger which is usually weaker and harder to control than other fingers, could generate sufficient power and exert sufficient control to yield the kind of results Barnes achieved; and that the finger joints could stand up to the strain of so much bowling for so many years.

Finger flickin' good

2008-09-16T05:24:00.000-07:00

Published (slightly edited) in The Wisden Cricketer of October 2008, page 10 - titled 'Mendis: the new Barnes'.

It is early days, but looks as if Ajantha Mendis might have the technical potential to be the next great spin bowler. As well as conventional off-breaks, Mendis flicks the ball with his middle finger and can impart top-spin or turn in either direction.

Contrary to popular opinion and standard nomenclature almost all spin bowling is 'wrist spin'. Off-spinners and orthodox slow left armers both depend on the wrist to impart rotation, which is why can only turn the ball in one direction. If they had to bowl in a wrist brace they would barely spin the ball.

Pure finger spin is very rare indeed, because it depends on flicking the ball with a finger. It is unusual to posses fingers with the length, strength and stamina to flick a cricket ball repeatedly.

The best finger flicker was SF Barnes of England (1973-1967; 189 Test match wickets at 16.4). Barnes stock delivery was a leg break, which seems (from photographs) to have been flicked with the ring-finger, but he could also bowl off-breaks without visible change of action.

Barnes is a candidate for the greatest-ever bowler - perhaps Mendis could be in the same league?

Think Baseball - Taking Twenty20 seriously

2008-09-16T05:20:00.000-07:00

If Twenty20 is to evolve into a serious sport, then competitions needs to be played over a series of matches, like the baseball World Series which has up to seven games.

This is necessary to cut-down the role of sheer random chance which is the inevitable consequence of any short game.

And - since Twenty20 is only about ten percent the length of a test match - to judge a player statistically requires about ten times as many games.

To make a reasonable estimate of ability, we should be looking at Twenty20 player stats averaged over about 100 games (like baseball's 162 games per season).

All of which suggests that a serious sport of Twenty20 could, maybe should, evolve to dominate the whole English summer - each team playing a series of several matches per week, over several months.

Almost all spin is wrist spin: Mendis is the only finger spinner

2008-08-03T00:52:00.000-07:00

The distinction between 'finger spinners' (e.g. orthodox off-spin and left arm spin) and 'wrist spinners' (e.g. leg-break and chinaman bowlers) is nonsense. Almost all spin bowling is wrist spin. Ajantha Mendis is, in fact, the only finger spinner in world cricket.

If this wasn't the case, then all 'finger spinners' would be able to bowl a doosra using their fingers. Try it, it is easy to flick the ball the opposite direction using only fingers - but this is a very weak spin and very tiring for the fingers, so it is un-usable in match conditions.

It is precisely because of the difficulty of rotating the wrist forward and fast in both directions that it is so rare to be able to bowl a doosra without throwing.

(I think Murali can bowl a doosra only because of his bent elbow and massive shoulder rotation; and I think Saqlain's doosra is rolled, rather than spun, over the top of the fingers and out from under the thumb, using an unusual arm action which brings the arm over towards slips. They confirm that the doosra can be bowled legally only by people with unusual anatomies.).

But there are a few rare finger spinners, and these are the spinners who can flick the ball with their middle finger - Mendis is the latest (and perhaps most impressive-ever) example.

And because they do not use the wrist to impart spin, these finger-flick spinners can turn the ball in either direction, the wrist is simply rotated to point the thumb in the direction the ball needs to spin and turn.

The difficulty with this true finger spin is - I think - fatigue. If it was not to prevent fatigue, then Mendis would presumably bowl his flicker/ carrom ball all of the time. As it is, he apparently bowls wrist-spun off-breaks as a stock delivery, and uses the various finger-flicked-deliveries as a variation.

After all, Mendis can bowl off-breaks using his finger flicked googly - so why would he want/ need to bowl off-breaks from the front of his hand? There is no reason for Mendis ever to bowl front-of-hand off-breaks except for the need (in long bowling spells in the long form of the game) to reduce fatigue on his middle finger

I haven't yet seen an extended video of Mendis, but my guess would be that he probably bowls half or more deliveries as off-breaks; i.e. using his wrist to impart off-spin and cutting-down the number of times he needs to use the finger flick, and thereby preventing exhaustion.

I would predict that the longer the spells Mendis bowls, the more off breaks he would need to bowl - or else his middle finger muscles would simply become exhausted.

Warne v Murali

2007-12-14T06:11:00.000-08:00

(This is an edited - and more precisely calculated - version of the posting below which was published as a letter in The Wisden Cricketer January 2008, page 10.)

Murali is the better bowler, just look at the statistics.

Warne never bowled against the best batting side in the world - Australia - so the two bowlers can be compared only in terms of their perfomances against the second ranked Test sides.

These have, in recent years, been England and South Africa, followed by India and Pakistan. If you look at average and wickets per match, Murali's perfomances against England, South Africa and India are significantly better than Warne's. Warne edges it against Pakistan. Here are the numbers from before the Sri Lanka-England series.

v England: Murali 7.15 wickets per match @ 19.74; Warne 5.41 wickets per match @ 23.25; v South Africa: Murali 6.93 wickets per match @ 22.22; Warne 5.42 wickets per match @ 24.16; v India Murali 4.47 wickets per match @ 32.47; Warne 3.07 wickets per match @ 47.18; v Pakistan: Murali 5.64 wickets per match @ 23.31; Warne 6.00 wickets per match @ 20.17.

Bruce G Charlton

Newcastle upon Tyne

Murali is better than Warne - of course!

2007-12-03T03:06:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to Murali for getting the highest ever number of test wickets (709) and passing Shane Warne.

Pundits have been comparing Warne and Murali, and most seem to think Warne is better.

But they are wrong: the numbers are clear - Murali is the better bowler.

Warne never bowled against the best batting side in the world - ie. Australia - so the two bowlers can only be compared in terms of their performances against the second rank of test match sides. These have, in recent years, been England and South Africa, followed by India and Pakistan.

Murali's performances against England, South Africa and India are significantly better than Warne's - against Pakistan Warne was slightly better than Murali. So Murali is the better bowler.

Stats from Statsguru at cricinfo.com - before the current Sri Lanka versus England Match.

South Africa: Murali 6.9 wickets per match av. 22; Warne 5.4 wickets per match av. 24

England: Murali 7.2 wickets per match av. 20; Warne 5.4 wickets per match av. 23.

India: Murali 4.5 wickets per match av. 32; Warne 3.1 wickets per match av. 47.

Pakistan: Murali 5.6 wickets per match av. 23; Warne 6 wickets per match av. 20.

PS. This analysis confirms that India have been the second-best batting side (after Australia) over the past 15 or so years.

Twenty20 generates new spectator skills

2007-10-02T04:25:00.000-07:00

There is a lot more to Twenty20 than big hitting: indeed the game demands a whole set of new skills from spectators as well as players.

With only twenty overs per innings, each represents a significant swing in the advantage. Indeed, every delivery generates a perceptible gain one way or another.

Each over is a game within the game. A dot ball first-up compels the batter to take greater risks in hitting a boundary; but a first-ball boundary force the bowler to aim for containment. As an over proceeds, the risk-benefit profile moves one way or the other.

Towards the end of an innings each succeeding ball accounts for an ever-increasing percentage of advantage. Yet at almost any point, accumulated benefit may suddenly be overturned by a catastrophic batting collapse or run haemorrhage.

As spectators gradually learn to track these ball-by-ball patterns of evolving superiority, so Twenty20 should continue to become both richer and even more enjoyable.

Twenty20 is a whole new game

2007-10-01T09:47:00.000-07:00

Reflecting on my tremendous enjoyment of the recent Twenty20 'world cup' it strikes me that Twenty20 is not just shorter but qualitatively different from 50-over One Day cricket.

Two aspects stand out.

The first is intensity - with just 120 deliveries, every ball counts. I can't think of many other games like this.

To be specific - after each delivery the odds have shifted in one direction or another: a wicket or a dot ball moves favour the bowling side (unless the wicket brings in a big hitter); a two or (even more) a boundary favour the batters - YET even as the odds are shifting gradually throughout the game, there exist the possibility of a sudden and radical change in advantage: eg. a 'big over' with twenty something scored (or even six sixes), or a hat-trick.

And as the game progresses, each delivery counts for more, so there is a mounting of tension.

The second is the glorious exhilaration of so many boundaries - especially the big sixes. I enjoyed this far more than I had expected.

While 50 over cricket is pretty much a shorter version of the same kind of thing as a test match, Twenty20 really is like a new game.

On top of this there are lots of sudden changes in momentum and advantage, and plenty of tight finishes.

It's great! So much better than I had imagined. And the reason it is better is that we are all still learning how to watch it. In this respect Twenty20 is indeed like baseball - a game of percentages and shifting dominance.

I think Twenty20 has taken us all by surprise, but we should let it rip. Who knows where the new game will evolve?

Twenty20 bowlers should be allowed five overs

2007-09-16T01:42:00.000-07:00

Published in The Wisden Cricketer November 2007, page 10.

Title: Give them five.

Bowling in Twenty20 is a thankless job.

The game is so short and there are always more sloggers to come. Because each bowler is only allowed only four overs he can affect just 10 percent of the match.

But in a high scoring game, bowlers should have more of a potential influence than batsmen.

Why not allow five overs per bowler? An excellent bowler could then make a significant, even decisive, impact on the course of the game.

Least-worst Number 11s

2007-08-08T08:15:00.000-07:00

Letter to The Wisden Cricketer - September 2007 - Vol 4 Number 12: pp 8-9.

Since he is always batting with someone better, the primary role of a number 11 is not to score runs but to 'hang around' as long as possible.

A convenient way of measuring this is to measure balls-faced per dismissal - dividing batting average by strike rate.

On this basis Peter Such was probably the best-of-the-worst recent England number 11s; since he faced about 31 deliveries per out.

Alan Mullally and Devon Malcolm are the worst: out after just 13 balls.

Tufnell was not so bad, managing to survive 23 balls, and giving his partner 10 more scoring opportunities.

PS. I've just noticed that England's recent first-pick nightwatchman, Matthew Hoggard, has a test match balls-faced-per-out statistic of 33: only slightly better than the legendarily-inept Peter Such.

(TWC published version is slightly edited from this).

Beamers require immediate, severe punishment

2007-08-04T23:28:00.000-07:00

Letter to Sunday Telegraph

Re article: Beamers must be punished with ban, By Mike Atherton, Sunday Telegraph 4 August 2007.

Well said, Mike Atherton.

A deliberate beamer from a fast bowler is not really a cricketing offence, it is a crime of violence which is potentially lethal - death or permanent brain injury being a quite likely outcome.

With TV technology it is not difficult to establish the bowler's probable intention from the context of the game, facial expressions, video analysis of the delivery - and sometimes from the bowler's previous 'form'.

At present probably deliberate beamers - especially from the world's fastest bowlers such as Sreesanth, Brett Lee, or Waquar Younis - are not being punished severely enough. Indeed Sreesanth was not punished at all.

I saw Younis removed from the attack in an ODI by David Shepherd after bowling two beamers in a row to (I think) Andrew Symons. But even that was a mild punishment for an appalling offence.

in 2005, Peter Roebuck wrote a piece about beamers in relation to Brett Lee, pointing out that it does nobody any favours to tolerate fast beamers, and to fail to punish them at all (or to punish them mildly). After all, a massive claim for damages or even a long stretch of gaol is the bowler's probable outcome if the beamer achieves its intended effect.

Fast bowlers who have lost their temper need to know that if they bowl a probably intentional beamer they will immediately be removed from the attack for the rest of the game, and suffer total loss of match fee, followed by a suspension.

This knowledge of swift and severe punishment may help keep aggression in check and prevent a terrible accident leading to permanent brain damage or death for the batter, and years of prison for the bowler.

Arm ball - should be renamed away- (or in-) swinger.

2007-07-25T06:54:00.001-07:00

"That one went on with the arm..."

This is what commentators say when the off-spin bolwer bowls a seam-up delivery with backspin that swings away from the right handed batter in the air and bounces further away after landing (or when a leg-spin bowler does the same delivery and the ball swings and seams into the right hander).

Arm ball - what's that supposed to mean?

Why is the delivery going 'with the arm'. The point about an effective 'arm ball' is that the arm movement is exactly the same as for the spun delivery - the difference is not in the arm but the hand/ fingers.

And surely the arm is not going in the same direction as the ball anyway, indeed how could it? since the ball curves and angles away - whereas the arm goes in a smooth circular trajectory.

Pooh! - 'arm ball' indeed. Why not call it what it is? - an away-swinger (for the off-spinner to the right handed batter) or an inswinger (for the left-arm orthodox finger spinner to the right handed batter.

After all the so-called arm ball is bowled pretty much the same way as the classical swung delivery fram a seam bowler - side-on action, seam angled towards the direction of intended swing, back-spin on the seam...

Swing it is.

Spin versus turn - Annoyingly misused terms in spin bowling number 2

2007-07-25T06:46:00.001-07:00

It maddens me when commentators say 'spin' when they mean 'turn'.

They sometimes say things like: 'Panesar isn't spinning the ball today' Or 'Vettori isn't getting any spin from this pitch'.

They mean turn, not spin. Obviously the bowlers are *spinning* the ball, because the slow motion replay shows the ball spinning.

Well - not always, because sometimes spinners bowl vertical seam delivery such as an 'arm ball' where the ball spins backwards (instead of side to side); or a fast delivery where it may or may not spin slowly, but not enough to make it turn.

But the spinning ball doesn't always turn off the pitch - it may fail to grip the surface, for all kinds of reasons (the ball may not land on the seam, the seam may be too worn, the pitch may not allwo grip etc).

Let's get it straight: spin is what the ball does in the air; turn is what it (sometimes) does after bouncing.

Off-spin and Leg-spin - shurely shome mishtake?

2007-07-25T06:31:00.000-07:00

Terminology may get so entrenched in sports that there is no chance of changing usage - but some names can so misleading as to confuse the neophyte.

For example, in baseball a pitcher's surpise slow delivery (which looks like a fast ball) is called a 'change-up'. Yet you would expect a change *up* to be a faster delivery, wouldn't you? It certainly confused me when I first began to grapple with baseball.

The same paradox or illogic applies to the definitions of off-spin and leg-spin. You would expect an off-spinner to be spinning and turning towards the off side, in the sense that you would expect the ball to turn to the off-side after landing. Well wouldn't you? But of course that is wrong.

An off-spinner is defined as a ball that *pitches* on the off side and turns to the leg side. However, this is rubbish, because an off spinner may well be pitched on the middle stump, or even on the leg stump.

Where a ball hits the pitch varies, according to the bowler's tactical plan, and within the constraints of his accuracy; but it will always turn to the leg - if it does turn.

So why did it get the wrong name? Beats me, but I guess it is too late to change.

Provoking a batting collapse - a possible "set piece"?

2007-07-23T14:20:00.000-07:00

As Ed Smith notes in his excellent book Playing Hard Ball: the batting collapse is the biggest catastrophe in test match or four-day cricket.

A batting collapse is the main way in which the fortunes of a match can be reversed very suddenly and irrevocably.

The terrifying momentum of a batting collapse derives from the element of positive feedback. Positive feedback is when each increment of change tends to lead to further change in the same direction.

In a batting collapse each wicket that falls brings a new batter to the crease (and new batters are at their most vulnerable) and - what is more - a worse batter than the one who has been dismissed. Therefore it gets easier and easier for the bowling side to keep taking wickets; harder and harder for the batting side to stop the serial fall of wickets.

All of which makes it hard to understand why so little attention appears to be devoted to the tactics of batting collapses. The response to en emerging collapse appears to be left-up to the players on the field; who look to be improvising tactics with varying degrees of assistance from the captains.

Yet surely it would make sense to plan for batting collapses - so that batters are instructed how to bat and what to aim for; and even more so that fielding captains have plans ready for perpetuating a batting collapse.

Bowling sides should have a set of pre-determined plans about how to initiate *and maintain* an incipient batting collapse: which bowlers will be used in what order, what will be their role, what field settings are most helpful, optimum rate of overs, the psychology of inducing 'mental disintegration' among the incoming batters etc.

Initiating a batting collapse should be approached as a 'set-piece' - like taking a corner or a free kick in football - by deploying smoothly rehearsed sequences selected from a pre-determined repertoire.

Equalizers in cricket

2007-07-23T14:02:00.000-07:00

Bad weather has just denied England victory in the Lords test today. This is a good example of the way that random factors - such as rain and light - act in cricket (especially test match cricket, over five days) to equalize teams, and create a falsely narrow gap between their performances.

Cricket has many such equalizers which give unpredictable advantage.

The first is the toss, which can give the weaker side significant assistance (of course the toss is equally likely to help the stronger side, but that would only increase the margin of a result, not the direction).

The pitch is another equalizer, since its condition changes somewhat unpredictably throughout the course of a match.

Injuries during a match also tend to equalize for the same reason as the toss - injuries to the better side may enable the worse side to win against the odds.

Poor quality pitches are well-known equalizers, since low scoring matches are intrinsically closer, leaving a bigger role for chance to operate.

Some other restrictive practices are also anti-competitive - such as the old limitations on players moving between first class county teams, which kept good players in poor clubs, and prevented the best clubs building up superstar squads by transfers.

The condition of the ball is another somewhat random factor, since all cricket balls differ slightly and each one ages and wears in a distinctive manner.

If it was desired that cricket become a 'fairer' game it would be relatively easy to reduce the effect of some of these random factors. For example, artificial cricket pitches could be used to minimize change in conditions throughout the match; and balls could be changed as soon as they show any signs of wear (as happens in baseball - where dozens of balls are used in a game).

The fact that these things are not done seems to indicate a preference for more competitive and entertaining games, even when the competitiveness is artificially constructed.

All games are a mixture of skill and luck - but the element of luck is contrived to be higher than it needs to be; suggesting that skill in sports is neither valued nor rewarded as much as might superficially be expected.

The Leg Cutter - Annoyingly misused terms in spin bowling number 1.

2007-07-18T04:45:00.001-07:00

The Leg cutter

This term often is used by commentators (most of whom should know better) to describe a seam-up quick bowler's delivery which hits the seam as it bounces and moves away from a right handed batter. The bowler has delivered the ball with both fingers together along the seam, and the seam has been pointing towards the batter (or slightly angled one way or another).

The above is *not* a leg cutter.

In reality, this delivery is just the ball seaming away - as it bounced the orientation of the seam caused it to change direction - or else the seam hit an irregularity on the pitch which made it bounce away from the batter.

A true leg cutter is a spun delivery in which the bowler 'cuts' his fingers down the left hand side of the ball at the time of release, to make the ball spin anticlockwise, and move away from the right handed batter on bouncing. In a leg cutter the palm of the hand faces the batter at the moment of release (in contrast to a leg spinner where the back of the hand faces the batter on release).

This is a rare ability for a quick bowler. Apparently the greatest exponent of the leg cutter was England's Alec Bedser. I saw India's Venkatesh Prasad bowling leg cutters about 15 years ago.

More recently, New Zealand's Chris Harris bowled medium paced, very slowly spinning leg cutters - but Harris was more accurately a stock user of the leg-cutter version of the slow ball, credited to Steve Waugh - and deployed by many one day 'death' bowlers.

In this leg-cutter slow ball, the ball does not spin much, nor turn much; and the leg cut is merely a way of 'taking pace off the ball' while retaining a fast arm speed - as a surprise slow delivery.

The true leg cutter is a rare and difficult delivery to master - and seems to require abnormally large hands...

The worst form of cheating in sport

2007-07-09T06:42:00.001-07:00

The worst form of cheating in a sport is an action which leads to the key win-altering event in that sport.

A key event is a relatively-rare and win-determining event: in test match cricket it is a wicket (only 20 wickets per team per match); in baseball it is a run (most teams score just a few runs per match - 4-6 I guess; in soccer it is a goal (probably the rarest event in any major sport).

In cricket it has been noticed that cheating bowlers are criticized much more than cheating batters. So that a bowler who throws (rather than bowls), or a bowler that alters the ball (eg by scratching the surface) to make it swing in the air, or a fielder who claims a catch when he knows the ball has already bounced - all these are criticized much more than a batter who pretends not to have hit the ball when he is caught behind.

This is because cheating to get a wicket is a sin of comission, while cheating to preserve a wicket is a sin of omission. Cheating to get runs - eg claiming short runs, or leg byes, or pushing at the permitted boundaries off bat technology - these would hardly be regarded as cheating at all.

In baseball, by contrast, there are 27 'outs' per side, but just a few runs. A pitcher who alters the ball to get more outs (eg. by spitting on it, or scratching it) is regarded much more leniently than a batter who gets extra home runs by using a doctored ('corked') bat. A pitcher who used steroids to recover from injury or amphetamines to reduce fatigue is regarded much more leniently than a batter who uses steroids to increase power and bat speed - thereby getting more home runs.

In football, the worst kind of cheating is cheating to get a goal - handballing the ball into the net, or 'diving' in the penalty box and faking a foul in order to get a penalty. The worst-regarded defensive foul is a 'professional foul' used to stop a striker from scoring a near-certain goal.

So - in sport - some kinds of cheating are worse than others. Sins of commission are worse than sins of omission - and cheating to achieve the rarest form of win-altering event is usually regarded as the worst foul play.

Is a batsman wicket-keeper worth more to the team than the best wicket keeper? - How to calculate the comparison.

2007-05-28T11:28:00.000-07:00

Wicket-keepers are picked as specialist fielders and are always in a catching position. I believe they should therefore have their batting average adjusted to take account of their competence as wicket keepers.

The first step is subtracting byes from runs scored before calculating the batting average.

A more important step is making a deduction for each dropped straightforward catch. Of course, classifying a catch as a genuine dropped chance is a matter of judgement, but then so is lbw.

I believe that umpires should signal to the scorer to record dropped straightforward chances by the wicket keeper.

Each dropped catch is penalized by 1/10 of the innings score of the batting team. This seems fair because the bowling team need to take an extra wicket, and the (average) cost of each wicket for that particular innings is 1/10 of that innings total.

In other words, each dropped catch is penalized at the cost of a wicket, adjusted for the innings score. So that a dropped catch in a high scoring game (ie. a large total from the batting side for that innings) is penalized more severely than a dropped catch in a low scoring game (ie. a low score for that particular innings).

***

So a wicket-keeper's career batting average would be:

Total number of runs scored in career minus byes conceded in career minus extra runs conceded from straightforward dropped catches in career.

Divided by total number of times given out in career.

Note: Straightforward dropped catches are signalled as such by the umpire. Extra runs conceded from dropped catches are each calculated at 10 percent of the opposition's score during the innings in which the catch was dropped. One dropped catch is worth 10 percent of the opposition's score per innings, two dropped catches at 20 percent, etc.

***

If a keeper dropped a straightforward catch in an innings where the opposition scored 200 runs, the wicket keeper would have 20 runs deducted from the runs he has scored with the bat when his batting average is being calculated.

But if the opposition scored 600 in that innings of the dropped catch then the average cost of runs per wicket taken would be 60 - so that the keeper would have 60 runs deducted from his total of runs before batting average was calculated.

This analysis should settle once and for all the argument over whether it is better for a team to field their best wicket keeper, or their best batsman who is an adequate wicket keeper.

At present the batting average is a relatively precise and quantitative measure of batting ability, while the benefits of wicket keeping (*such as reliable catching) are subjective and impressionistic. This intrinsically benefits the batsman wicket keeper.

But the consequences of a droped catch are more severe than generally acknowledged - each dropped catch means another wicket must be taken, and this usually requires tens of runs to be conceded.

This proposed analysis would enable an objective comparison of two keepers - one of whom is a better batsman but drops more chances, and the inferior batter being a better keeper who holds more chances.

Specialist fielding substitutes - should be part of the squad

2007-05-21T03:28:00.000-07:00

I see that James Benning is fielding as substitute for Matthew Hoggard in the ongoing Test Match against the West Indies.

This sort of thing is terribly amateurish in the context of international cricket. No matter what Benning's fielding abilities may be, the fact is that he has not trained as part of the England team. The team on the field ought to be a fielding-unit, and this means that they must train together.

So, Test match teams ought to consist of a squad which includes at least one specialist fielder, who travels and trains with the Test team, and can slot into the on-field side.

Against this idea are that it will cost money, and will disadvantage a county side who will be losing a player. In favour of specialist fielding squad members is that a fielding substitute is almost always needed during a Test match, and having a fielder who has trained with the team would almost certainly help win Test matches. That's good enough for me.

Flintoff is turning into Tufnell: entertainers in English cricket

2007-05-20T22:50:00.000-07:00

Why don't England drop Flintoff? Look at the record - he doesn't score many runs on average, he doesn't take many wickets per match, he isn't terribly economical (per wicket).

He unbalances the side because he should be batting number seven, not six, yet his ankle isn't strong enough for England to rely on him bowling a full quota as one of just four frontline bowlers.

But - he is an entertainer, people like to watch him play - and in the end that's what cricket is about.

England are now quite a fun side, with three entertainers: not just Freddie, but Peterson and Panesar too. This is great. For many years we had the solo entertainer of Darren Gough (and he missed a lot of matches through injury) - and some rather marginal figures such as Phil Tufnell.

Sadly Flintoff is turning into Tufnell - good on his day, great to watch, but not quite up to test standard.

Because entertainers are only entertaining when they are also playing well. Otherwise they don't get picked: or shouldn't.

Platooning international cricketers

2007-05-18T02:54:00.001-07:00

The pressure of relentless international cricket is producing physical exhaustion and mental burnout - but I don't believe that the situation will significantly improve so long as the consumer demand for international cricket continues to grow (especially the demand of TV).

Speaking personally, I would like to have the opportunity to watch international cricket every day of the year.

The obvious solution is platooning of players - in other words there should be more than one player for each position - we should stop thinking of a cricket team as eleven players, and begin to think of the team as a squad of about 15 plus players who rotate.

Australia sometimes do this for one day cricket - I think everyone will soon be doing it for all forms of cricket.

The first place this will need to be done for quick bowling. Instead of choosing from four seamers, teams will choose from six or eight seamers; and the best will not always be picked but various combinations will be trained together (especially in fielding) and rotated in position.

For example a fast but wayward young quick (eg. Saj Mahmood), might be paired to open with a reliable old salt (eg. John Lewis).

Wicket keeping is another candidate, since it is probably too exhausting to keep wicket in back-to-back tests.

But platooning will particularly apply to foreign touring. I can't think of any other area of life (except maybe the armed forces) in which people are required to go abroad for such long periods of relentless work. The answer is to rotate players throughout tours.

Fans will just have to get used to seeing second best players as first choice for teams. Because over-time a team mixing first and second choices ought to perfom better than a team which always tries to filed its eleven best players.

How to bowl a Doosra (without chucking)

2007-03-26T13:39:00.000-07:00

Make it your stock delivery - with off break as a variation

The name 'doosra' means 'the other one' and it is used as a variation by off-spinners - but I believe the future of the delivery is to be learned from the beginning as a stock ball, by young bowlers.

Assuming that 'weak throwing' (see below) is not, after all, going to be legalized, then the only way to bowl a doosra without chucking is to model one's action around the needs of the doosra, and use the off-break as a variation.

The doosra would therefore be practiced against a right handed batter, delivered over the wicket from as close to the stumps as possible, with an arm action towards first slip, and with top-spin. The result should be that the ball bounces and spins away from the right handed batter. This is the stock delivery.

In other words the doosra needs pretty much the action of Saqulain Mushtaq - the doosra's inventor.

Then the off-break then becomes the variation, and one which might be almost impossible to pick, because it merely involves angling the wrist to point the seam down the leg side. I would expect that the off-break would turn more sharply than the doosra.

[Note: I cannot bowl at all - the above advice is worked out purely on theoretical grounds. Nonetheless, I hope someone tries it. Cricket need the doosra.]

Extreme pace is over-rated

2007-03-06T12:54:00.000-08:00

Who are the fastest seam bowlers in the world?: Shoaib, Brett Lee, Shane Bond.

(Bond is the fastest bowler with a 'pure' action - Shoaib and Lee both have hyper-extensible elbows; and both will chuck apparently deliberatley if not kept a close eye on; and Lee has bowled deliberate full pace beamers - which is despicable)

Shoaib and Bond are injured most of the time and have played very few tests. Lee... just isn't that good in test matches - he is expensive, and he doesn't take many wickets.

But who are the best seam bowlers in the world?: McGrath, Pollock (low eighties mph), maybe Ntini at present (about 85 mph)...

See - extreme pace is over-rated!

It is exciting (for the spectator, at any rate) - but pace above 85 mph doesn't appear to add very much, and the strain on the body is clearly too great for most physiques (Lee manages OK, he seems to be a superb athelete and very flexible).

So - don't worry about extreme pace, don't strive for extreme pace - if you are a selector don't be over-impressed by extreme pace - go for control and some variation.

My next item will be 'swing bowling is over-rated'.

Eight ball overs

2007-01-24T11:00:00.000-08:00

I would like to see eight balls in an over, instead of six.

This used to be the case in Australia, apparently, but I must admit I have never seen a match with eight balls in an over. My reasons for thinking it would be better are purely theoretical.

1. Eight balls would divide the match up into more significant units. The appeal for me is when a bowler and a batter are engaged in a 'duel' - when eight balls allows a bowler more scope for 'setting-up' the batter with a sequence of deliveries: for example a series of away swingers followed by an inswinger - or a mixture of leg-breaks and googlies, or short pitched deliveries followed by a yorker. The six ball over allows this kind of thing to only a limited extent.

2. Eight ball overs would save time, by redcuing the number of changes between overs. This would be a particular advantage in one day and Twenty20 matches.

3. I think eight ball overs would increase the advantage of a good bowler - because the batters couldn't get away from him for an extra two balls, and batters would forfeit more runs to play purely defensively to a good bowler.

But eight ball overs would be much harder to negotiate for a poor bowler. A poor bowler (for example a change bowler, or part-timer) might give away a very large number of runs in eight balls, more than an extra 33 percent, because the batter could afford to use-up two or three balls as a sighters, then still have time to hit boundaries off the next three or four deliveries. A canny captain would be taking a big risk in 'slipping-in' an over from a part-timer: he might well risk giving up a dozen or twenty runs.

4. So - I think that good bowlers would perform better with eight ball overs, while poor bowlers would do worse. This would be a good thing, I think, rewarding excellence in both bolwers and batters. Overs would tend to be more extreme - probably more low-scoring overs where the bowler dominated but also more high scoring overs where the batter 'took the bowler apart'.

5. In other words, to return to my original point, each over would have more the characteristics of a 'game within a game'. This is an aspect of baseball which I enjoy - the way that sometimes an 'at bat' can develop into a long-lasting duel between pitcher and batter, with a 'full count' of 3 balls and 2 strikes then being continued for several more deliveries, by the batter deliberately fouling-off pitches behind, waiting for a ball he thinks he can hit fair; the pitcher trying to throw the ball past or getting the batter to chase a wide or low pitch.

6. The main disadvantage of eight ball overs might be that fast bowlers would find them too tiring (although they would also have somehwat longer to recover between overs).

Fast bowlers need at least four days rest

2006-12-23T06:36:00.000-08:00

This seems almost certain, if baseball pitchers are a reasonable comparison.

In baseball the starting pitcher usually throws (from a standing position) about 100 plus pitches before being taken off and rested - for *four days*! And he will do nothing else but throw - plus catch a few balls that come in his direction, and (in the National League) try to bat.

By comparison a fast bowler probably delivers in well excess of a hundred deliveries a day, with a run up, and is expected to field just like anyone else when not bowling (and he has to bat - and run, of course). Then he often comes back and does the same the next day - maybe three days out of five - then (in back-to-back tests) travel and perhaps get two or three days off before starting all over.

Baseball starting pitchers are rested for four days between starts because careful record-keeping has shown that otherwise their performance declines significantly (ie. their speed and control) and their career is probably shortened as well. This kind of data is routinely gathered in baseball. The result is that Major League teams have at least five starters in a five day rotation.

But has anyone ever even kept such statistics for cricket? We need to know this kind of stuff.

How do quick bowler's average performances compare on day two of a long innings compared with day one: what is the average speed, the number of wides and no-balls, the economy rate, the number of wickets and bowling average?

Do bowler's injuries correlate with number of deliveries bowled per unit time, over a sufficiently large sample of bowlers? How much rest do bowlers need on average, and how frequently, in order to maintain their pace and accuracy?

My hunch is that this statistical information is not routinely gathered because people are worried about what they might find. On the other hand, if carefully gathered and analyzed, such statistics would allow quick bowlers to be rested such that their performance levels were maintained.

In particular we need to know at what point it would (on average) give better results to employ an inferior but fresher bowler compared with a better one who is knackered.

There might be a huge reward for better managmement of bowlers, because even fast-balling baseball pitchers are sometimes able to keep playing at the highest level into their early forties (eg. currently including Roger 'the Rocket' Clemens - 44; Randy 'the Big Unit' Johnson - 43) - while quick bowlers such as Glenn McGrath are considered ancient at 35, and have-to retire afrom international cricket.

Extra runs saved per match - ERS/M

2006-11-23T02:33:00.000-08:00

The bowling equivalent of the batting average: Quantitative evaluation of the contribution of bowlers in cricket using a novel statistic of ‘extra runs saved per match’ (ERS/M)

Bruce G Charlton

OR Insight. 2007; 20: 3-9.

School of Psychology, Newcastle University, UK, NE1 7RU

bruce.charlton@ncl.ac.uk

Abstract

In cricket, the specialist batsman’s ability may be evaluated by a single summary statistic: the batting average, but there is no equivalent measure for quantitative evaluation of the specialist bowler. I describe a method for calculating a novel bowling performance measure equivalent to the batting average: Extra Runs Saved per Match (ERS/M). The ERS/M is derived from the bowling average and the wickets per match statistic. It compares one bowler with another or with a standard ‘norm’ of bowling average 30 runs per wicket and 3 wickets per match. The value of ERS/M to selectors is that it measures differences in bowling ability between rival players, and combined with the batting average can calculate each player’s runs contributed per match. The business value of the ERS/M relates to its potential as an objective and comparative measure of a player's productivity.

***

Introduction

Cricket is the most ‘statistical’ of major UK sports due to its being based upon many repetitions of a basic unit of action - a bowler delivering a ball to a batsman in a highly-regulated manner. This makes cricket more amenable to an Operational Research approach than less stereotyped sports such as football in which only a few aspects (eg. the kick-off, corners, penalties) are sufficiently similar to enable statistical analysis.

Cricket has recently also experienced a highly-successful intervention from the field of Operational Research in the form of the ‘Duckworth-Lewis’ method of adjusting target scores in one day matches (Duckworth & Lewis, 1995) which was subsequently adopted by the International Cricket Council (Duckworth & Lewis, 2004).

There are 18 first class counties in England and Wales, each employing a squad of professional cricketers large enough to cover the needs of selection under different conditions and forms of the game (11 players allowed per game), plus inevitable injuries. For example, Lancashire Country Cricket Club (which is relatively large and successful) has an annual turnover (2006) of 11.7 million pounds Sterling with salaries accounting for 4.8 million pounds Sterling (Lancashire CCC, 2006). The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) presides over this system and manages the England national team – it has a turnover of 78.8 million pounds Sterling with a salary expenditure of 10.9 million pounds Sterling (ECB, 2006).

Performance measures in sport

Sport is ultimately a form of entertainment – and if a sport fails to engage attention and provide pleasure then the performance levels of players are irrelevant. Furthermore, sporting success is a zero-sum game, in the sense that winning is predicated on losing.

Both these considerations mean that the importance of sports player performance measures are circumscribed compared with the economic sector. Nonetheless, individual player performance probably underpins marginal income in cricket, as in most commercially-developed sports, in the sense that that individual player performance contributes to team wins (or to proxy measures of wins, such as runs or goals scored). A team's greater success in winning matches generally leads not only to greater sporting status but also to a significantly greater share of that sport’s total income (Szymanski & Zimbalist, 2005).

The use of statistical measures of player performance in cricket is a growing area (eg. Barr & Kantor, 2004; Lewis, 2006). However this field remains under-developed in cricket compared with that of its similarly-structured US cousin baseball which has been revolutionized by the ‘Sabermetric’ school of analysis (James, 2003) - a form of Operational Research. Initially used as a sophisticated form of appreciation among fans, Sabermetrics spread to fantasy baseball competitions, and more recently has been used in high level general management and coaching of teams such as the Oakland Athletics and Boston Red Sox – where it is usually termed the ‘Moneyball’ approach (Lewis, 2004).

The Moneyball approach attempts to maximize team performance within a given monetary budget, by discovering baseball skills which contribute significantly to wins but are currently undervalued by the market. This requires a variety of measures of players 'marginal productivity' (Mankiw, 1997) – ie. their contribution to the 'output' of the team, which (in baseball) can be measured in wins, or proxy measures of wins such as runs or 'outs'. Moneyball is therefore a form of ‘arbitrage’ which aims to take advantage of any difference in the valuation of a player in two markets: the sports value of a player in terms of contributing to team wins, and the economic value of the player in terms of salary. Statistical analysis is needed because the relative contribution of two rival individual players to team wins (ie. the difference between their productivities) is non-obvious.

The idea of measuring the size of contribution of specific players to team wins has hardly yet been addressed in cricket, perhaps because players salaries have been much lower in First Class cricket than Major League baseball (Smith, 2002); and because international cricketers cannot transfer between teams. This may explain why cricket fandom, journalism, selection and management still seems to be based on ‘traditional’ statistical performance measures of variable validity; and intuitive, qualitative evaluations.

Nonetheless, player performance remains of significant interest to cricket team selectors and coaches who are trying to build winning teams from a fixed pool of players or within a limited budget, and this imperative to win will probably lead to developments in the use of cricket statistics – at least among cricket professionals.

A bowler's summary average

In cricket, the specialist batsman’s ability may be evaluated by a single statistic: the batting average – the average of runs scored per times given 'out'. The batting average has limitations. For example, batting average does not take account of how quickly runs are scored – ‘strike rate’ – or how long the batter has survived without being dismissed - ‘balls faced’. Nevertheless, the batting average is generally regarded as a valid single summary statistic measure of a batters contribution to the team. The man regarded as the greatest-ever test match batsman – Don Bradman (Australia) has by-far the highest ever test batting average (99.94 – ie. 100).

However, until now, there has been no equivalent statistic to evaluate the specialist bowler, nor is the magnitude of difference between bowler's contributions very obvious. The usually quoted test match bowling statistics are the bowling average (runs conceded per wicket taken), the number of wickets a bowler has attained in their career (often omitting the number of matches played-in), and the career number of 5-wickets-per-innings analyses. But there is no accepted single summary measure of the ‘per match’ performance of test bowlers.

One major difficulty with statistical evaluation of bowlers stems from the fact that a test match bowler has two distinct (although in practice often related) jobs. Firstly, they should take wickets, since a test match can only be won if twenty wickets are taken. This emphasizes that bowling evaluation needs an average wickets per match (W/M) statistic. Secondly bowlers should be ‘economical’ and prevent runs being scored while taking these wickets – this is already adequately measured by the standard ‘bowling average’ (BowAv). However, at present there is no statistical evaluation method which combines both the number of wickets taken per match and the economy with which wickets are taken.

Average W/M is not a standard statistic, but can easily be calculated from the standard statistics of total number of test wickets divided by the total number of test matches played (Ganju, 2007). This makes the method applicable to historical bowlers, as well as current players. For example, SF Barnes (1873-1967 - England) is frequently discussed as perhaps the greatest ever bowler (Edmonds, & Berry, 1989): he took 7 W/M at a bowling average (BowAv) of 16 (W/M rounded to one decimal place, bowling average rounded to nearest integer, for clarity*). Of current long-serving internationals the highest number of W/M seems to be Muttiah Muralitharan (Sri Lanka) with 6.1 W/M BowAv 22 followed by Shane Warne (Australia) with 4.9 W/M at BowAv 25. From this we may infer that Barnes was a better bowler than Muralitharan who is better than Warne, but without further analysis we do not know how-much better.

Although these great test match bowlers averaged many wickets per match (high W/M) and also take wickets for relatively few runs conceded (low BowAv) there are seldom enough great bowlers to fill an international side, so teams must usually select from players who are stronger in one function than another. Indeed, two or three of the specialist bowlers selected are usually expected to be batting ‘all rounders’ at least to the extent of contributing a significant number of runs, or protecting their wicket for long enough to enable higher-order batters to add to the score or bat-out a draw. But the lack of quantification for bowling performance means that the relative value of better bowling cannot currently be balanced against the relative value of better batting.

Extra Runs Saved per Match (ERS/M) as a measure of bowling contribution

I describe a method of comparing two specialist bowlers in terms of their bowling contribution quantified in terms of Extra Runs Saved per Match (ERS/M) by the better bowler compared with the lesser bowler. The ERS/M is derived from the bowling average and the average wickets per match statistic for two bowlers who are being compared.

The ERS/M therefore gives an objective measure of test match bowling performance which can then be offset against any difference between the test batting average of the two players – batting average is total runs scored per number of times the batsman has been given out, and the difference between two players batting averages can be used to calculate the Extra Runs Contributed per Match (ERC/M) by the better batter (see Appendix).

I also describe a modified version of the method by which the ERS/M calculation can be used to quantify bowling ability objectively by comparing each bowler with a standard ‘norm’ bowler – the example chosen being a norm test match bowler who takes 3 W/M at an average of 30 runs per wicket.

Method

The extra runs saved ‘ERS/M’ measurement combines the average extra runs saved per match by having a lower bowling average plus the extra runs saved by taking more wickets per match.

Comparing bowler A and bowler B, where bowler A has both a lower bowling average (BowAv) than B and also takes more wickets per match (W/M).

Bowling average difference (BowAvD) = BowAv A – BowAv B

Wickets per match (W/M) = Total number of wickets taken/ Total number of matches played

Wickets per match difference (W/MD) = W/M A – W/M B.

1. To calculate extra runs saved (ERS/M) by lower bowling average:

BowAvD X W/M B

This describes how many extra runs would be saved by the lower bowling average of A assuming that he took the same number of wickets per match as B.

But A also takes more wickets per match than B, and needs to be given credit for the extra runs saved that these wickets represent.

2. To calculate extra runs saved per match (ERS/M) by taking more wickets/ match:

W/MD X BowAv B

This statistic describes how many extra runs per match would be saved by measuring the number of extra runs B would be expected to concede in taking the greater number of wickets per match that A is able to achieve.

3. To calculate Total ERS/M:

Total ERS/M = ERS/M by lower bowling average + ERS/M by taking more wickets

ERS/M A = BowAvD X W/M B + W/MD X BowAv B

This step entails adding the extra runs saved per match due to the lower bowling average of A with the extra runs saved per match due to the greater number of wickets/ match of A. (See Appendix for a worked example.)

(NOTE: where one bowler has a lower bowling average and the other bowler takes more wickets per match, the ERS/M is calculated for each measure separately. The smaller value deducted from the larger value to define which bowler is superior. The difference in number of ERS/M should be credited to the better bowler.)

ERS/M in performance evaluation

Comparison of two players

The major innovation of ERS/M is in quantification; especially in giving bowlers extra credit for the runs saved per match resulting from their taking a higher number of wickets per match. This extra credit is calculated from the number of runs the weaker bowler would concede in taking the extra wickets.

Because the ERS/M method measures bowling contribution using the same basic unit as the batting average (ie. ‘runs’), it is possible quantitatively to measure and combine both bowling and batting contributions. This can be used to evaluate pairs of players, whether these are specialist bowlers, or specialist all-rounders.

England’s selection dilemma of Monty Panesar versus Ashley Giles from the 2006-7 Australia versus England test match series can be used as a worked example of how the ERS/M method can provide an objective and quantified comparison of bowling contribution, which can then be offset against batting contribution (see Appendix). According to this calculation Panesar’s bowling would save about 42 runs extra runs compared with Giles (22 runs by greater economy, plus 20 runs by taking an extra 0.5 wickets), and Giles’s batting would add an extra 20 runs compared with Panesar. On balance, Panesar would therefore contribute about 22 extra runs compared with Giles.

Comparison with a norm

As well as comparing two players, it is also possible to use the ERS/M method to generate absolute measures of a players bowling contribution, and therefore to measure objectively the performance of current and historical players. This requires generating a bowling performance ‘norm’ for the purpose of comparison.

The norm could be derived from a consensus, a calculation of averages, or by an arbitrary but simple and plausible definition of the ‘expected’ performance of a test match bowler in an average match. For example the norm could be set at 3 wickets per match taken at an average of 30 runs per wicket, and an equivalent batting average norm could be set at 30 runs per dismissal; because the average of all Test match averages up to October 23 2007 was a batting average of 30 and a bowling average of 31 (Lynch, 2007). The number of 3 wickets per match is just my guess, and chosen for the elegance of keeping all the integers at 3.

Each actual bowler could then be compared with that 3-30 norm to calculate the value of ERS/M, which could be positive or negative – according to whether the actual bowler performed better or worse than the norm bowler. The ranking of bowlers would depend on the relative importance ascribed to the BowAv compared with W/M, and would be especially sensitive to the size of the W/M in the norm. Setting the W/M norm at a high level strongly penalizes bowlers with a significantly lower W/M statistic, and vice versa.

As an example, for the 3-30 norm suggested above, the extra runs saved per match for bowlers previously mentioned would be as follows: Warne 72 ERS/M; Muralitharan 117 ERS/M; and Barnes 162 ERS/M. This demonstrates and quantifies the enormous added-value of a great bowler compared with a 'norm' bowler.

Bowlers and batters could also be compared. For instance, using the 3-30-30 norm, Don Bradman – with an average of 100 - would have contributed 140 extra runs per match compared with the norm batter’s two innings of 30 each. Since SF Barnes saved 162 extra runs compared with Bradman adding and extra 140 runs it seems that the ‘best-ever bowler’ was an average of 22 runs per match more valuable to his team than the ‘best-ever batter’. So the best-ever cricketer was an Englishman!

Conclusion

ERS/M combines bowling average with the statistic of wickets per match (W/M) to provide a method for quantifying the contribution of a bowler in terms of a single summary statistic: extra runs saved per match by comparison with another player, or compared with a standard norm.

Selectors usually know which of two rival players is the better bowler, but there is currently no statistical method for quantifying just how much better. The potential benefit of ERS/M for selectors is that it measures the difference in bowling contribution between players, and enables selectors to measure both batting and bowling contributions. The next step in validating player performance measures such as ERS/M and ERC/M would be to seek statistical correlations between the sum of individual player's measures within a team, and team outcome measures such as wins, runs-scored and wickets-taken.

It is my impression that the two major aspects of bowling performance which constitute the ERS/M – ie. wickets per match and bowling average – are probably both proxy measures of a single underlying ability as a bowler. In particular, I have not been able to discover a long established Test Match bowler who took a large number of wickets per match but at a high (ie. expensive) bowling average over a significant length of time.

It therefore looks as if the ability to take large numbers of wickets per match either entails a low bowling average, or else requires the level of bowling control which is implied by a good economy rate. Simply measuring the number of wickets per match gives a reasonable approximation of ERS/M (Ganju, 2007). Nonetheless, there are significant differences in bowling average even between those elite bowlers who took more than 4.5 wickets per match, and the ERS/M statistic measures the advantage of taking many wickets at a lower average.

In sports, it is a general rule (or, at least, assumption) that team wins are, associated with improved marginal income – a greater share of that sports income (Szymanski & Zimbalist, 2005). But the supply of good players is limited and the amount which can be paid in player salaries is constrained. The problem for those managing cricket is therefore how to build the most effective (ie. most winning) cricket team, given the money and players available. The ERS/M provides a way to measure two players relative productivity (ie. the difference between their bowling contributions) which can be used along with information on the difference between their salaries to calculate an efficiency measure (such as ERS/M per 10 000 pounds salary).

As with the Moneyball approach in baseball, which is supported by new forms of statistical analysis, a major potential value of the ERS/M statistic for the ‘business’ of cricket would therefore be in ‘arbitrage’; ie. to discover and employ those overlooked players whose productivity and contribution to team wins is under-valued by the business salary market. Significant under-valuation (and, of course, over-valuation) of players is postulated to be almost inevitable due to the current deficiency of valid quantitative statistical information concerning a player’s bowling performance. This is due to the lack of an adequate summary statistic for bowling ability. The ERS/ M is proposed as such a performance measure.

*Note: Player performance statistics are derived from www.cricinfo.com ‘Statsguru’ on 13 October 2006.

References

Barr GDI and Kantor BS (2004). A criterion for comparing and selecting batsmen in limited overs cricket. J Opl Res Soc 55: 1266-1274

Duckworth FC and Lewis AJ (1998). A fair method for re-setting the target in interrupted one-day cricket matches. 29: 220-227.

Duckworth FC and Lewis AJ (2004). A successful operational research intervention in one-day cricket. 55: 749-759.

Edmonds P, Berry S (1989). One hundred greatest bowlers. London: Queen Ann Press.

England and Wales Cricket Board. ECB annual report and accounts 2005. www.ecb.co.uk. Accessed 19 March 2006.

Ganju K. Looking for the greatest bowler. Cricket Trivia. www.crictrivia.com. Accessed March 19 2007.

James B (2003) The new Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract. New York: Free Press.

Lancashire County Cricket Club. Lancs announce record profit for 2006. www.lccc.co.uk. Accessed 19 March 2006.

Lewis AL (2006) Towards fairer measures of player performance in one-day cricket. J Opl Res Soc 56: 804-815.

Lewis M (2004). Moneyball: the art of winning an unfair game. New York: WW Norton.

Lynch S (2004). The overall Test average, and the most outs without. www.cricinfo.com. 23 October 2007. Accessed October 23 2007.

Mankiw NG. Principles of Economics. Fort Worth, TX, USA: Harcourt Brace, 1997.

Smith ET. Playing hardball: A Kent County Cricketer's Journey Into Big League Baseball. London: Abacus, 2002.

Szymanski S, Zimbalist A. National Pastime: How Americans Play Baseball and the Rest of the World Plays Soccer. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2005.

Appendix

Worked example of ERS/M method – Panesar versus Giles

Here I use a recent England test match selection dilemma, which seems typical of the problem facing selectors.

Approaching the 2006-7 ‘Ashes’ series against Australia, England had two candidates for the role of left arm orthodox slow bowler: Ashley Giles and Monty Panesar. The dilemma occurred because Panesar was probably a better bowler (having a lower bowling average and taking more wickets per match) while Giles was probably a better batter (having a higher batting average; BatAv). The question was whether Panesar’s better bowling would compensate for the fewer runs he would contribute with the bat.

Panesar’s statistics were less precise estimates of his ability than were Giles’s, because in late 2006 Panesar had played only 10 test matches compared to Giles 52. However, Panesar’s statistics were more recent since he replaced Giles during 2005-6 while Giles was injured. For the sake of clarity, all statistics are rounded to the nearest integer except wickets/match which is rounded to one decimal place.

Monty Panesar (MP)

Test Matches – 10

Test wickets – 32

W/M – 3.2

BowAv – 32

BatAv - 10

Ashley Giles (AG)

Test Matches – 52

Test wickets – 140

Wickets/ Match (W/M) – 2.7

BowAv – 40

BatAv - 20

BowAvD = 40 - 32 = 8

W/M difference = 0.5

Step 1: To calculate extra runs saved (ERS/M) by lower bowling average:

BowAvD X W/M AG = 8 X 2.7 = 21.6 ERS/M by MP by lower bowling average

Step 2: To calculate extra runs saved per match (ERS/M) by taking more wickets/match:

W/MD X BowAv AG + 0.5 X 40 = 20 ERS/M by MP by more W/M

Step 3: To calculate Total ERS/M: -Total ERS/M by MP

BowAvD X W/M AG + W/MD X BowAv AG

8 X 2.7 + 0.5 X 40 = 21.6 + 20

= ERS/M by MP of 41.6 runs per match.

The two stage calculation assumes that Giles can take his average of 2.7 W/M at only 8 runs per wicket more expense than Panesar (ie. the bowling average difference), but for Giles to take the extra 0.5 W/M which Panesar on average contributes, Giles would on average concede an extra 20 runs.

The conclusion is that MP will save an average of 21.6 runs by greater economy, plus 20 runs by taking an extra 0.5 wickets. At this point the superiority of Panesar’s bowling has been quantified as an ERS/M of 41.6 runs per match.

Calculating Extra Runs Contributed per Match (ERC/M) with bat

The extra runs saved per match (ERS/M) by Panesar can be offset against the extra runs contributed per match (ERC/M) by Giles when batting.

AG’s batting average (BatAv) is 20 compared with MP’s of 10. Since a player may bat twice in a test match, a simple approximation of batting contribution would be double the difference in batting average (BatAvD). The BatAvD for AG and MP is 10 runs.

BatAvD = BatAv A – Bat Av B

ERC/M = 2 X BatAvD

ERC/M AG = 2 X 10 = 20

Therefore Giles would be expected to contribute 20 extra runs per match, compared with Panesar.

(Note: If a more precise measure of batting contribution is required, the batting average difference could be multiplied by the average number of innings batted per test match, which is 1.5 for Giles and 1.3 for Panesar; the difference arising from the fact that Panesar bats number 11 and therefore less often than Giles who bats at number 8. Players may be injured during the match, and therefore fail to bat; and in the case of England winning or drawing, not all England players would necessarily be required to bat twice. However, the statistic for innings batted per test match is not always calculable from standard cricketing statistical tables.)

According to this calculation Panesar’s bowling saves 41.6 runs extra runs compared with Giles, and Giles batting adds an extra 20 runs compared with Panesar. Based on this averaged and slightly approximated data, and all else being equal between the two players (which is seldom the case), Panesar's better bowling contributes 22 more runs per match than Giles better batting contributes, and it would therefore be better to select Panesar.

The Oval Test forfeit

2006-09-16T13:50:00.000-07:00

Draft of letter published in The Wisden Cricketer October 2006

The umpires job is difficult, but should not be made impossible. He must apply laws specifically, and not be influenced by the potential interacting ramifications of each decision.

Even when laws are applied consistently, there will conflicts between short- and long-term benefit: this is intrinsic to all laws. But when laws are applied rigorously then people can predict the consequences of their actions. We now know that when a team refuses to play they will forfeit the match; and this will ensure it never happens again.

Darryl Hair stuck-to the law in the face of massive personal pressure, which makes him the hero of this affair.

Bruce Charlton, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

The bowler's 'knuckleball'

2006-09-16T13:49:00.000-07:00

There are many similarities between bowling and baseball pitching, including the right-hander's curveball (off-spinner) and screwball (leg-break); but so-far there is no cricketing equivalent of the mysterious 'knuckleball'.

Knuckleballs are thrown off the fingertips with no spin, at the pace of a slow or slow-medium paced bowler. Air turbulence makes the ball flutter and wobble unpredictably in its trajectory. A slow bowler might replicate the effect by holding the ball lightly across the seam with fingers spread, cocking the wrist and bowling a very full length.

A bowled-knuckler could be ideal for the 'death' stage of a one-day match. Indeed, the nearest thing yet may have been Adam Hollioake's highly-effective floated-up slower delivery; which had zero-spin, a transverse seam and was maddeningly difficult to hit.

Cut-and-choose One Day toss

2006-09-16T13:48:00.000-07:00

Losing the toss often inflicts too great a disadvantage in one day cricket, especially for a team batting first on dewy morning grass or second under lights.

Instead, the toss should be a 'cut-and-choose' system: the loser cuts, the winner chooses.

For instance, the losing captain might be allowed to deduct up-to 5 overs from either innings. He would offer this 'cut' to the winning captain, who chooses when to bat.

Clearly, there is a strong incentive for the losing captain to divide the innings such that the winning captain does not gain advantage by his choice.

This should reduce the number of unexciting, and unfair, one-day games.

Corruption in cricket

2006-09-16T13:46:00.000-07:00

In all the discussions of international cricket policy I have never seen due recognition of the fact that test-playing nations vary widely in their degree of bureacratic corruption.

According to authoritative surveys by Transparency International over many years, the cricketing nations include the most corrupt in the world (Bangladesh, equal worst with Chad), middling ones (eg. South Africa), and some of the least corrupt (eg. New Zealand - joint second best after Iceland).

[Reference: Integrity and corruption, Oct 20 2005 www.economist.com]

Since corruption is defined as 'abuse of public office for private gain', it would be surprising if cricket administrators were exempt from their societal norms.

Note: This is the most recent corruption perceptions index 2006 - from http://www.transparency.org. I list the main international cricket playing nations.

Least corrupt nation is 1 (jointly Finland, Iceland and New Zealand), most corrupt is 163 (Haiti).

1. New Zealand
9. Australia
11. UK
24. Barbados
51. South Africa
61. Jamaica
70. India
79. Trinidad and Tobago
84. Sri Lanka
130. Zimbabwe
142. Kenya &
142. Pakistan
156. Bangladesh

Legalize weak-throwing to promote the doosra

2006-09-16T13:31:00.000-07:00

Original draft of letter published in The Wisden Cricketer February 2006

There are two kinds of throwing which bowlers can engage in: strong-throwing and weak-throwing.

Strong-throwing is when the palm of the hand faces the batsman at the moment the ball is released. It is used to generate extra surprise pace, and is generally regarded as unfair and potentially dangerous.

Weak-throwing has the back of hand facing the batsman at the moment of release. This allows the finger spinner to bowl a doosra (and top-spinner) more easily and effectively. Many people, especially in the South Asian cricketing nations, regard weak-throwing as a fair delivery.

I suggest that weak-throwing (with back-of hand facing batter) should be permitted by the laws of cricket in order to encourage the doosra and maintain spin bowling as an important part of the game, while strong-throwing should remain illegal.

Bruce Charlton, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK