Good morning!
I had an interesting conversation over the weekend about fielding strategies. Well, conversation. Someone asked me one question, and I went on a rant about fielding strategies like a mad man. Luckily, they were very polite about my ramblings.
The reason I bring it up is because I realised how starved we are of fielding metrics. His question was simple; has any team ever employed a run-out first strategy, and if not, why wouldn’t it be a viable strategy?
I found it fascinating because it brought together a lot of different disparate thoughts that had been rattling around in my head;
(1) our poor classification of run outs (different reasons off the top of my head – batter error, non-striker error, ball-watching, good fielding, last ball heroics), (2) a flawed but interesting paper that analysed fielding effectiveness (an elite fielder only saves you ~2 runs a game), (3) Jemi Rodrigues’ elite ODI running (she’s never been run out!), & (4) NZ-W’s 18 months of terrible running (they average more than 2 run outs a game!).
Long story short, it made me realise that there may be a way to analyse this question; expected run outs (xRO, to be fancy). I got the idea from football which has an “expected goals” metric that measures how often a goal should be scored from a particular shot position on average – so why couldn’t we measure how often a run out should occur from a particular field position on average?
The problem here is that we either don’t track that data (I’ve been under the hood of a lot of analytics dashboards and the data isn’t available) or it’s hidden so deeply that there’s basically a hundred people on the planet who can even access the raw data. Even if they are tracking metrics like xRO, it’s never going to become public.
Which is all a long-winded way to say it inspired me to start re-building the internal database I had built for our writers during the Women’s World Cup. There’s a lot of good dashboards out there today – courtesy Himanish Ganjoo sharing raw data – but none are built to create new metrics.
While xRO may remain a pipe dream for now, I am hoping that by providing a platform for both data access and easy data manipulation/analysis – I can help provide a second layer on Ganjoo’s revolution. Right now, you have to be undaunted by dealing with reams of data to analyse cricket. But, what if it didn’t have to be that way?
Anyway, until I can provide you with the raw data to play with, here’s some processed data on yesterday’s RCB-CSK game. There are some really good stories in here, even if you didn’t watch the game;
[I’ll be writing up a more detailed look at my database dreams soon enough, so keep an eye out! I’ll need your help to get it right.]
🏏 Cricket Roundup: RCB’s batting onslaught, CSK’s silver lining, & PAK’s (wrong) T20 batting prototype.
RCB beat CSK by 43 runs, & LSG beat SRH by 5 wickets.
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🔒 Will Macpherson on James Anderson & Ollie Robinson proving their international quality in the first round of the County Championship.
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Ahsan Nagi talks to coach Hanif Malik on PAK’s batter pipeline and infrastructure issues, while 📊 Rahul Iyer analyses why Hasan Nawaz’s evolution to return to the PAK side may work – but shouldn’t.
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Adam Burnett profiles Liam Hatcher, the 10-year veteran who had “overnight” success with a 44-wicket Sheffield Shield season, while 🔒 Tom Decent talks to Sam Konstas about missing out on a central contract.
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🔒 Cameron Ponsonby on the private v. state school problem in ENG cricket, & 🔒 Machel Hewitt wants to radically re-think the domestic West Indies Championship.
🗞️ Quick News: BBL needs protecting, IND’s schedule, & BCB’s chaos.
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Greg Chappell thinks the BBL needs protecting rather than further monetisation.
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Sarah Waris on why IND’s international schedule should be a model for other big cricketing nations.
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BCB’s Aminul Islam insists that he will not vacate his position, even as the increasing investigations have led to three more director resignations.
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Carnival Sorts/Associate Cricket on the attempts to keep USA-W cricket alive.
📺 A/V: The patchiness of Women’s Tests.