This is the fourth post in which I outline my approach to assessing player value. I talk about replacement level, wicketkeeper value, and whether or not the progression towards ever higher T20 run rates affects my approach
Read MoreThis is the third post in a series, in which I outline my approach to assessing player value. This post walks-through an example and then adds a further three considerations on top of the ones explained previously: weighting, regression to the mean, and ageing
Read MoreThis is the second post in a series, in which I outline my approach to assessing player value. The first explains the overall objective: to measure the expected contribution of each player in runs. This post then details four main adjustments that I make to historic performances to remove any obvious biases in the data
Read MoreIn this and subsequent posts, I aim to explain my methods for T20 player evaluation. They are not set in stone. Any time I sit down to analyse a player, team, tournament, strategy, there is a decent chance that they will change. I would love to hear other people’s feedback and ideas. If nothing else, writing down my thoughts has forced me to be critical of my own work. Indeed, the methods changed several times even as I documented them
Read MoreThis piece looks at some of the best picks on the second day of the Global T20 draft. A lot of different factors go into the draft process in any sport, and rational thought isn't always the most important. Here the aim is to identify the picks which give the most value in comparison to what was available at the time. Obviously, everybody mentioned here is likely to be a net contributor to their team but not everybody can select Chris Morris - salvaging an average player in the later rounds of the draft could be just as valuable
Read MoreRecently, I have been wondering whether stats of less prolific bowlers (1 or 2 overs per match) are slightly over-inflated, given that they are most likely to be used when the conditions / match-ups are in their favour. Or, to put it another way, I have been wondering whether the stats of the top bowlers in a team (4 overs per match) are slightly under-inflated, given that they are required to deliver four overs whatever the circumstances
Read MoreTim Wigmore @timwig recently wrote a piece on players specialised in the "art of the first over"... the surprisingly common phenomenon of otherwise part-time bowlers being called on to open the innings for the bowling team. In this post I want to delve a bit deeper into the numbers themselves and apply an analytical lens to establish what these numbers tell us
Read MoreMy last post used historic data from over 1,500 players to construct ageing curves that show how batting performances improves and declines with age. In this post we will see how these curves change depending on the players included in the analysis. In some cases, it reveals genuine differences between player types and, in other cases, potential limitations in what was originally quite a naive approach
Read MoreFor teams looking to acquire new players, having a solid understanding of their value is vital. Measuring past performance in T20 can be difficult and measuring future performance is even more challenging. One reason for this is that we need to account for the unrelenting passage of time: younger players improve and older players decline
Ageing curves allow us to understand the overall shape of a typical T20 batsman's career. This post walks through the methodology I have used to calculate an approximate ageing curve for T20 batsmen
Read MoreSCIENTISTS have claimed that James Anderson and Stuart Broad may not, in fact, be separate people - and that they are a single person in disguise
It may sound like a wacko conspiracy, but the idea that cricket teams play the same bowler multiple times during one match had been suspected before now
Read MoreEven as a fairly well-informed fan, it can be hard to find stats in T20 that are as reliable and informative as batting and bowling averages in Test cricket. Mostly, I am guided by strike rates and economy but I still need to contextualise these due to variable scoring rates over the course of a T20 match, as we progress from the Powerplay, through the middle overs, and into the death overs
My aim in this article is to explore which statistics in T20 are most consistent and predictive indicators of future value. On this website, Runs Added and Win Probability Added are often used to evaluate performances but whilst they are good descriptive statistics, they may not be the best predictive statistics
Read MoreThe world's oldest T20 competition starts again on Friday. The Twenty20 Cup may have been around the longest, but it has since been surpassed by the rest of the world in viewership numbers, attendance, and sponsorship. The ECB have made moves to catch-up, investing a new city-based T20 competition by 2020 but, for now, it is almost certainly true that the T20 Blast also attracts fewer stars than its bigger rivals
Read MoreSoon after the IPL first revealed Vivo as their new title sponsor, Cricinfo featured an article on their front page with the headline, "IPL bigger than EPL". Clicking on the headline sent me to a video which broke the incredible new $341m sponsorship deal and put it into context against two of the biggest leagues in the world - the NFL and the EPL. It is unbelievably impressive that a league which has only existed for 10 years could possibly be compared against those brands. But I was sceptical whether the video really contained evidence to justify the claim that the IPL was now bigger than the EPL
Read MoreIn limited overs cricket, it is a common refrain that batsmen win matches but bowlers win tournaments. Pakistan seemed to prove this point true in the Champions Trophy this year. With the group stages over, we saw the most explosive batting line-up in the tournament fizzle out against a resurgent Pakistan bowling attack. Even without Mohammad Amir, they quickly removed the top order and then proceeded to tame the previously untameable Ben Stokes, who lasted 64 balls but without hitting a single boundary
In the final, Pakistan continued to demonstrate the importance of top bowling. Amir returned and triumphantly dismissed Sharma, Dhawan, and Kohli - the highest run-scorers in the tournament. The brilliant Hasan Ali was fittingly crowned as the player of the tournament
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