Chin Music!

As an ardent fan of the Indian Cricket Team who backs the team to perform consistently well, it is tiring to talk about the topic time and time again. And yet, neither do we stop talking nor has there been any improvement over the last couple of years in terms of what I refer to. And if you need a most recent example that will animate your memory more than ancient ones, the Indian top order's dismal showing against the West Indian quicks at the Kensington Oval in Barbados on Sunday (May 9, 2010) is a case in point. And what was pathetic to see was that even someone like Gambhir, who has become very accomplished over the last two seasons, looked ungainly against the short stuff although one must admit that the delivery that got him was a jaffa; lesser batsmen may not have got a glove to it.

Although we did not give away many wickets to the short delivery directed well, the discomfiture and the toad-hopping was visible for all to see. Consequently, the Indian batsmen could not put the bad stuff away. Vijay got a half tracker which he hit right down the throat of the man at deep square-leg - the only man there. Yusuf Pathan later in the day, when all was almost beginning to get lost, once again showed his vulnerability against the shorter stuff as he holed out at square-leg. 

One can go on forever about selection - not only about the composition of the playing eleven but also the fifteen member squad picked for the tournament but India's display in this T20 World Cup is likely to once again herald a discussion that unfortunately seems undying as far as the new generation of Indian batsmen are concerned. Harsha's words summing Raina's discomfort against quick short bowling can be justifiably generalised to every other player, perhaps with the exception of Yuvraj Singh (who has not been in form) and M. S. Dhoni who at least tries to attack short-pitched stuff: "This is a generation of cricketers which looks extremely good only in some conditions..." I could not agree more. Bhogle's tweets this morning signify much the same as well.

I have no disrespect for the Rainas, the Rohit Sharmas or the Yusuf Pathans; but what one fails to understand when they go slam-bang in batsman-friendly conditions in the IPL back home is precisely what one understands when one sees them settle back to mortality against world class quick bowling. Some may say that T20 and one-day internationals are the lot for these cricketers but that is not only a parochial way of looking at it - for most of these cricketers may want to match wits with the best at the test level some day - but entirely misses the point. Excuses are the quickest way to sink down a bottomless pit and shamefully enough we have always been good at giving them.

The problem, however, has its parentage in the times of which these cricketers are a part: short boundaries, flat pitches to encourage high-scoring affairs which somehow inexplicably - and abominably - attract big crowds, curtailments on a bowler's freedom (as if the game were not batsman-friendly already!) and all the rest of it. For batsmen from the subcontinent in particular - and I include Pakistan and Sri Lanka too for they have not played the short stuff all that well either - success in domestic cricket gives a false sense of security and lulls them into a state of achievement, or worse, even complacency. That is because not only do they not get to see anyone who is even a shadow of a Steyn, a Jerome Taylor or a Lee but they also play on wickets which are either square turners or have nothing in it for the bowlers. This cannot be good preparatory ground for any cricketer.

Some may tell me, and have told me so in the past: what's wrong in playing to one's strengths? Since Australians never prepare turners and South Africa never prepares slower wickets when Sri Lanka or India visit thereabouts, why should we prepare sporting wickets? I am tempted to answer the counterpoint in two ways. Playing to one's strength is NOT wrong at all and the analogy of other countries playing on conducive backyards is indeed an argument which holds some tooth. However, at the domestic level playing 'only' to one's strengths turns out to be detrimental, not for anybody else but for domestic cricketers who grow up in those backyards. At the end of the day, a ground curator may get a glare or a stern rebuke; the board may get away with some uncharitable headlines from the media; but domestic cricketers when they travel abroad to make the cut fail to make the grade. And that is a terribly sorry state of affairs.

I am candidly unconcerned about the prosperity, or lack of it, of T20 cricket. I am a self-proclaimed supporter of the game played hard, tough, patiently and diligently in whites across five days. And despite the frenzy the game's quick bite format has created, I still think we have not come to a stage where players may consciously abandon the idea of playing test cricket which shows how much esteem the game's traditional format hold's in everyone's heart. But the developments elsewhere in the game may soon bring a stage where some are just not good enough for the long format and the long haul.

A Mahela Jeyawardena or a Jacques Kallis epitomises those who have made the shift from being class test players to fine T20 cricketers. And yet the game also has Yuvraj Singhs who do not just have the right temperament, or in fact the technique, to handle the sustained belligerence of good fast bowling in a test match. A Virendra Sehwag - even though he does not play the hook or the pull - is an exception, and exceptions are better left alone. And if the indications of the modern breed of Indian middle order batting is anything to go by, I shudder to think of the day when Dravid and Tendulkar will both have hung up their boots. I know no individual is indispensable and the Indian Cricket Team, like any unit of many members, will survive their retirement. But if we want to make the transition anywhere near smooth, the BCCI has to do some quick thinking on a lot of fronts. It has had to do that for a number of years and has not done it. One hopes at least that the continued barrage of bouncers against the mid-twenties of the Indian batting line up and their obvious maladroitness in handling it wakes up some dull minds and sets some constructive action in motion.     

        

Two cursed statisticians and T20!

Frank Duckworth and Tony Lewis were cursed yet again; no their crime was not doing Mathematics and Physics and Mathematics and Statistics respectively at esteemed British Universities. Their mistake seems to have been developing the Duckworth-Lewis system for one-day international cricket – which determines what aggregate the chasing team should have after every over given the wickets they have used up. In last week’s T20 WC match between England and the West Indies, the method had to be employed again and West Indies who had by then got off to a blistering start finished off the target they needed with balls to spare. England who had put up a solid overall total stood shortchanged and the weakness of the method was yet again exposed. England captain Paul Collingwood was not pleased and said as much. 

There are two ways of looking at a method like the D & L one – in a scientific (or Mathematical) context and in a sporting context. But before I do that I am tempted to relive for you all the sort of absurdity that prevailed before the D&L method came in just to show that the method, for all intent at least, was intended to ensure fair play to chasing teams and prevent absurdities like the 1992 world cup semi-finals between England and South Africa. I do not think even the average cricket fan is likely to forget the match.

South Africa needed 22 runs off 23 balls (or something) when the first of three (if I am right) mini-interruptions caused by the weather happened. After the first of these interruptions, the balls game down to 19 and after the second the number of balls came down to twelve or below that. Strangely enough, the bulk of the runs to be scored never came down! I still remember the expression of daze across faces in both English and South African dressing rooms. But the best, rather the preposterous, was yet to come. After the third delay, South Africa needed 22 runs of ONE BALL! After two decades of isolation from the sport due to Apartheid, South Africa’s first World Cup campaign ended in a comedy of errors – or at least in the tragedy of Statistics or Mathematics whatever you want to attribute the humungous succession of blunders to. I am sure the dispassionate observer as well as the average Tom Doe who came to the match laughed out loud, more from the entertainment provided by the calculation rather than the match. If the South Africans had felt miffed, or downright murderous, you could only understand!

I still do not know what went wrong: whether there was a system in place or none at all is anybody’s guess. But it was in the wake of such unbelievable stupidity on the cricket field – in a world cup semi-final of all matches – that the necessity for a sound statistical method that would be a guide to chasing teams was felt profoundly. From 1996, we have had the D/L method and to say the method has been controversial is an understatement.

I would not go into great details about what the method actually does because though it sounds complicated it is not: you can google about it to find out more. However, the method is grounded on two types of numbers regarded as resources on a cricket field for a batting team – the number of overs and number of wickets used up. Few would question the validity of considering the number of overs batted and wickets lost in the process as resources (relative to the score of the opposition) in a one-day international. Statistically too – and I am not qualified to go into statistics proper – I am sure the system has its strengths. But the problem lies in the fact that the system cannot mimic one variable in cricket, or for that matter, sport – unpredictability. It was precisely this that England found out against the West Indies as well last week.

A team that is on a rampage can suddenly fall apart; and then a team whose middle-order fails in pursuit of a modest target can still reach home in a close chase courtesy gritty efforts by tail-enders. Not for nothing is it said in cricket that no match is over till the last ball is bowled. Chases are often complicated, in other words made thrilling, by conditions of the pitch as well. In the recent IPL, a city like Bangalore often assisted the chasers because of the dew factor later in the evening whereas in Delhi, and less spectacularly in Navi Mumbai, the pitches slowed down considerably in the second half making chasing a difficult prospect. Admitted, nobody asks statisticians to come up with a system that factors in any of the things mentioned in this paragraph for it is not their business to design for the unpredictable (or simply put, what is not statistically predictable). Yet that unpredictability in fact is the very essence of any sport, the substance of all enthralling spectacles which animate the human imagination.

Viewed objectively, therefore, it seems to me that the D/L method may not be as flawed as commentators, teams, bowlers, fielders and fans make it out to be; it is not good enough, sure, but for reasons intrinsic to cricket and yes statisticians and the game’s administrators should (have) be(en) aware of it. I am not a math person, perhaps my co-blogger here may be able to help, but I cannot think of too many methods that can turn out to be tailor-made for the game. Particularly keeping in mind the fact that T20 is a fast-paced affair, one may have to give up the statistical ghost because 3 balls can tilt the game this way or that way. I do not think any algorithm can predict that. That’s the way sport goes; that’s the way life goes. Sometimes, you win games you had no business winning and other times you are shocked into submission. It is all a part and parcel of the excitement.