SCIENTISTS 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
Read MoreThe concepts of win probability in sports fascinates me. I use it frequently when trying to understand the value of players or the impact of events within a cricket match. Here I try to remove the black-box nature of my win probability models
Read MoreIn a previous post, I looked at the great bowlers of T20 cricket and found unique tendencies for each one that made them stand out as outliers against their peers (except Harbhajan Singh). It was not possible to do the same thing with the batsmen. Only one player seems to have particularly unique tendencies and he stands out as an outlier on almost every single chart
Read MoreRecently, I have been working on a way to simulate each individual delivery of a T20 cricket match. Part of the challenge is to parse out the impact specific bowlers and batsman have on the outcome of each ball. So I created a spreadsheet which details how many times each player hit sixes, lost wickets, bowled dot balls, conceded wides etc.
It was at this point that the ability to easily make bubble charts distracted me from the task at hand, as I started to look for the statistical outliers in T20 cricket. This post uses some of those bubble charts to explore some of the unique tendencies of certain T20 bowlers
Read MoreSome teams are worth more than others. Can the most valuable franchises leverage their superior financial heft to increase their chances of winning the ultimate glory - the IPL title? Are the 2017 Royal Challengers Bangalore a common occurrence and a tale of caution not to overspend on a team of superstars, or are they the outlier in a league where money talks and high salaries are necessary to build a strong team?
Read More9 of the top 10 scores in T20 cricket have been posted by opening batsman. David Warner has often single handedly dragged Sunrisers Hyderabad to victories in the last two IPL seasons as an opening batsman. The average match will feature an opening batsman spending the most time at the crease and their performances stick most in the minds of fans
In contrast, the middle order batsman are often tasked with the dirty work: maximising their teams chances of winning from the situation they inherit when they come into the game. They must be versatile and their role could be wildly different from game to game
Read MoreToday's final represents the fifth time that top two seeds are meeting in the IPL final. The Mumbai Indians (1) are facing off against Rising Pune Supergiant (2). But this is the first time that one team has won every previous encounter as Pune did this season. Do Pune match up particularly well against Mumbai over and above what you might expect based on their overall performances this season?
Read MoreBen Stokes was front page news in February as he became the most expensive overseas player ever sold in an IPL auction. Rising Pune Supergiant(s) shelled out 4.5 crore for him - equivalent to £1.7m pounds - after a fierce bidding war with the Mumbai Indians
I want to try to answer the question of whether or not one player could possibly be worth that much money
Read MoreIf you had asked a few years ago, Narine would have been one of my top two picks for best player in the IPL: Gayle with the bat, Narine with the ball. His performance with the ball has slipped in recent seasons but could he possibly have reclaimed his status as one of the most valuable players in T20 having re-invented himself as an all-rounder?
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