High end cricket analytics is pretty amazing

📊 Amol Desai has an unbelievable deep dive into ‘handedness’ matchups, (i.e. is the off-spinner the best choice v. the LHB, and much, much more). It’s gone under the radar, but this is the level of analysis needed to be a professional analyst.

Look at this incredible graph! It’s a bounce map for off-spinners (OS) and slow left arm orthodox spinners (SLA) to both RHBs and LHBs. I’ve never even seen a graph like this before – just explaining it could be an entire story. And yet, it’s just a preamble for Desai’s piece. It’s a really good – if dense – analysis.

✍️ Aayush Puthran has a fantastic profile of Axar Patel, the small-town all-rounder who’s become a key mainstay of the Indian T20 team.

“Nadiad, a small town of approximately 250,000 people, had not produced a cricketer of any note before Axar. It’s a town that people aspire to leave – a common running joke being every household in the town has an NRI, with at least one member settled in either USA, UK or Australia.

…There is a theory that Axar would have been just as content with his life if he was not to become a cricketer. He was academically bright, holding an aspiration to become a mechanical engineer. “Scholar type,” is how Abhishek Desai, his friend from Nadiad, refers to him. Axar, uncertain if cricket would offer him a stable career, wanted to study.”

🔒 Venkat Ananth explores the growth of associate cricket in the shadows, and how the smaller nations have revolutionised cricket economics via online ingenuity in recent times.

“Historically, commercial value was a byproduct of victory: teams won, audiences followed, and brands eventually paid. Today, that order is inverted. In the new attention economy, visibility is being manufactured first—through digital agility, aggressive arbitrage, and institutional mandate—creating a market that exists independently of traditional power structures”

• “From a mess to history”
  ✍️ Jack Paynter on ZIM’s long redemptive arc, from a failure to qualify in 2024 to making the Super 8s in 2026.

• “Doesn’t Mean We Should Be Shit At It”
  ✍️ Dan Liebke has a hilarious insight into the AUS view; we don’t care about T20s, but why aren’t we winning them?

• “There’s a team to be moulded here”
  ✍️ Firdose Moonda with Jonathan Trott on the end of his AFG stint.

• “Fans are turning out in numbers”
  ✍️ Gomesh S on the tens of thousands at non-IND games this World Cup, including those who are showing love for the associates.

• “What SA did right, & what NZ did wrong”
  📊 Raunak Thakur on how SA outclassed NZ, placing them firmly in the contender tier.

• “Did Kishan win it, or did PAK lose it?”
  📊 Ben Brettell on how the IND-PAK game was closer than it looked, and came down to how PAK let Kishan run away with the powerplay.

• “The unbelievable Pathum Nissanka”
  🗣️ Tarutr Malhotra was blown away by the SL opener’s fireworks v. AUS.

• “Bennett & Zimbabwe are a real threat”
  🗣️ Tarutr Malhotra on Brian Bennett’s perfect group stage.

• “I gained 1 million followers in a week”
  🎤 Katya Witney talks to Lauren Bell about her WPL stint. [Apple/Spotify]

• “The Cost of Speed”
  🎤 Talking Cricket hosts Varun Aaron on the cost pace bowling on a player’s body, and why he always pushed the limits despite that cost. [Apple/Spotify]

• “Unlocking the Future of Cricket”
  🎤 The Last Wicket host former ICC Development Events Manager Eddie Fitzgibbon to talk about the future of associate cricket. [Apple/Spotify]

• “Should we care?”
  📽️ Sam Perry & Ian Higgins host journalist Alex Malcolm to discuss Australia’s elimination and whether anyone in the country cares. [YouTube]