Pick the Test squad for the WI tour

Test cricket is back, and so is this blog.
Actually, it is quite interesting this time, as Sehwag & Gambhir may both miss the WI tour, and possibly the England tour as well.  So who are the 8 batsman that will make the squad.

The locks, IMO are:Vijay, Dravid, Tendulkar, Laxman (Vijay is the only opener around with some Test experience).
The selectors need to pick another opener, a middle order player, and two backup batsmen.  Who do you think those will be?  With Dravid's newfound fragility, Tendulkar could we walking in by the 15th over,
most often that not this series...
Composition: 8 batsmen, 5 pacers, 2 spinners, 1 keeper plus one more  backup (either a keeper or spinner).
Who are the openers who did well in the Ranji?  Could a discard like Dinesh Karthik (backup keeper and opener), Wasim Jaffer, or even Parthiv Patel (who opened once) make his way back into the squad? Young Mukund impressed the heck out of me when I saw him in the Iranis.
Meanwhile the middle order swells with contenders, including the incumbents, Pujara and Raina, and re-discovered Yuvraj and Badrinath, plus the brightest young star on the Indian firmament, Mr. Tough-as-Nails himself, Virat Kohli.  At most 3 of them will be picked, and likely it should only be two, with one of the reserve bats being another opener...
Its not going to be an easy job, but hopefully we don't see any total surprises (ala Unadkat) in the squad...
Bharat

Last ODI for Tendulkar or Ponting?

Tomorrow, India and Australia face off in an elimination game for the World Cup.  A semi-final spot is on the line, but other subplot is looming.

Two of the greatest batsmen of this generation will walk out in their countries colors, and for one of them, it may well be their last ODI  game.  Certainly their last World Cup game, because neither of them will be
around 4 years from now.


Ponting, a great great Australian cricketer, most-winning World Cup captain ever, is under increasing pressure to retain his own place in the side. He has lead 2 straight World Cup campaigns, presided over a dominating dynasty, had a Bradmanesque run with the bat.  All that means naught, as his form has deserted him and his expiry date seems to be looming.  Aussies selectors have a pattern of pushing out a winning captain from the ODI team to give his anointed successor a run as ODI captain -- a prelude to leading the team for the real thing, as it were.  Just as a reluctant Mark Taylor was ousted to make room for Steve Waugh, the talismanic Waugh himself was handed his marching  orders, to allow Ponting to step in.  The selectors don't seem quite as ruthless as in times past, but there has been a lot of talk about Ponting leaving after the World Cup.  An ideal time for him to show all and sundry he isn't done, but putting together a match-winning knock against India.


Tendulkar too may leave, but under very different circumstances.  In his late 30s he still remains India's premier batsman -- the Fountain of Youth must be flowing in his backyard -- as his superb technique has allows him to continually reinvent himself to overcome everything the opposition has thrown at him.  He may choose to retire from ODI's to focus on Tests, something he has hinted at in the past -- certainly, if India win the whole thing, the temptation will be overwhelming to walk in the sunset the way Michael Jordan did, after
his championship-winning basket in the NBA finals against Utah (hopefully, without the epilogue we saw with Michael:-)  The decision is purely his, as at this time there is no pressure to leave.  Here too, the hunger to dominate the opposition he has made his name against, will push him to put together another majestic knock
from the top of the order.


Either way, tomorrow will be the last time we will see one of these giants represent his country in a World Cup.  Game on....


Bharat

ICC hands down multi-year bans to Butt, Asif, Amir

CricInfo reports http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci-icc/content/current/story/499614.html

"Salman Butt gets ten years of ineligibility, five years of suspended sentence. Mohammad Asif gets a sanction of 7 years, two years of which are suspended. Mohammad Amir gets a sanction of five years' ineligibility."

So it appears as if each of the players got 5 years ineligibility, with varying length of suspension that would kick in if the player violated any conditions.  Butt's career is over.  Asif's effectively so.  Amir will be only 23-24 when his eligibility is restored, so he could in theory still have a long career ahead of him.  The question is whether he will be able to remain cricket fit, especially if the ban prevents him from playing cricket at any reasonable level.  Also, he may be able to appeal and get his sentence reduced to something like "five years ineligibility, two years of which are suspended" which is effectively 3 years.  Still a very said tale about a resplendent talent, and the only good one can hope for is that this will serve as a salutary warning to other youth who might otherwise be tempted.

Going into a bit more detail from the ICC website http://icc-cricket.yahoo.net/newsdetails.php?newsId=13055_1296910620

The Tribunal found that the charge under Article 2.1.1 of the Code that Mr Butt agreed to bat out a maiden over in the Oval Test match played between Pakistan and England from 18 to 21 August 2010 was dismissed, whereas the charge under Article 2.4.2 that Mr Butt failed to disclose to the ICC's ACSU the approach by Mr Majeed that Mr Butt should bat a maiden over in the Oval Test was proved.

The Tribunal found that the charges under Article 2.1.1 of the Code that (respectively) Mr Asif agreed to bowl and did bowl a deliberate no ball in the Lord's Test match played between Pakistan and England from 26 to 29 August 2010, Mr Amir agreed to bowl and did bowl two deliberate no balls in the same Test, and Mr Butt was party to the bowling of those deliberate no balls, were proved.

I'm sure the Crown prosecutors would want the transcripts of the proceedings and the various depositions from the defendants -- but I'm not sure those are admissible.  After all, they would violate the right against self-incrimination. 

There is one ray of hope.  The Tribunal notes that "The Tribunal has recommended to the ICC certain changes to the Code with a view to providing flexibility in relation to minimum sentences in exceptional circumstances."

Clearly, this implies that they would have strongly considered a sentence less than the mandatory minimum (presumably 5 years ineligibility) for at least one of the defendants due to "exceptional circumstances."  Hopefully, this means Amir may get some support from the Tribunal upon appeal to get his ban reduced to less than 5 years...

Bharat

Crown charges Butt, Asif & Aamir plus Majid; Trial to start March 17

BBC News broke into their wall-to-wall coverage of the Cairo crisis to just report that the Crown prosecution service has decided to charge the 3 Pakistani players, Butt, Asif, & Aamir & their agent Majid for "conspiracy to cheat" & "conspiracy to accept corrupt payments."  Not only are the players charged, the CPS said that if they don't return to the UK, they will demand their extradition from Pakistan.

This is BIG news.  The ICC panel is due to rule tomorrow, and I wonder if they had a hint of this timing, and so delayed their announcement.  If not, maybe they will delay their ruling, because it will surely be prejudicial (one way or another) to the Crown's case.  With the World Cup just 15 days, this will dominate the headlines for a while.

Quite a turn of events.  The trial is scheduled to start on March 17 -- right in the final stages of the round-robin for the World Cup, and before the KO's.  This will certainly dominate the cricket headlines as it coincides with cricket's highest-profile event.  Whoever is orchestrating it, by announcing this just before the ICC tribunal makes its ruling, and having the trial start right in the thick of the World Cup, certainly has a keen sense of drama and a nose for timing.

Bharat

Bowlers Statistical Analysis (1 of N): Where does Steyn rank in the All Time list?

After the RSA series, I began to think about  whether Dale Steyn belongs in the discussion of ATG (All Time Great) bowlers. So the fundamental question I got was "how one would project Steyn's career?"

Steyn's stats to date bear repeating: 46 Tests, 238 wickets @ 23.2, a mind-boggling strike-rate of 40 and 5.2 wickets / match. So, the first step was to find bowlers who were "similar" to Steyn.

So, lets begin by finding pace bowlers who ended up with more than Steyn's current haul of 238 wickets.  That gives us 25+ names, so lets cull it further by restricting it to quicks who took their wickets at the rate of at least 4 wickets / match over their career.

This criterion eliminated a whole bunch of folks, including Walsh, Kapil, Pollock, Ntini, Botham, Vaas, Willis, Gillespie, and Statham. This also eliminated the incomparable Barnes who took 189 wickets in
27 Tests at 7 wickets / Test!!!! Since I've used "mind-boggling" for Steyn's 5.2 w/Test, no suitable adjective remains. Which is fine, as the goal is to find bowlers who are similar to Steyn, and Barnes isn't similar to anyone else, in the sense of Bradman.

I would like to include Pollock in the analysis at least initially as he played in very similar conditions against similar opposition, and that can be achieved by relaxing the cut-off to 3.9 wickets / Test. That adds Pollock & Courtney Walsh back into the list. This first cut of the list, leaves us with a list of 16+1 pace bowlers, ranging from the good to fabulous -- with one criterion in common; they took a lot of wickets at ~4w/Test or higher.
Ambrose, Donald, Garner, Hadlee, Holding, Imran, Lee, Lillee, Marshall, McDermott, McGrath, Pollock, Steyn, Trueman, Walsh, Waqar, Wasim
Not all of them should belong in the discussion, but lets try to find objective criteria.

So, how would one go about finding "similar" bowlers to Dale at the same stages of their career? How about looking at everyone at the 46-match stage in their career. Here are some criteria to consider:
A Bowling Average (the traditional measure of a bowlers success)
B Wickets / match (or total wickets as we are looking at the same # of Tests)
C Strike rate (deliveries / wicket)
D Overs bowled (a measure of the wear and tear on the bowler)
E Dominance score (# of 5-fers & 3x10-fers)
F PI score (courtesy Mike Holmans) = average * strike rate

Clearly some of the criteria are overemphasized (D can be computed from B & C, F from A & C) but for now, let them stay in for simplicity -- can be fixed by eliminating it and adding more weight to other criteria.  You can also argue if 3x is the right weight for a 10-fer, given that the 5-fers are double-counted in the 10-fer.  The idea isn't to get the criteria precisely right, but to create a basis for discussion.

So lets now look at each of these players at the 46 Test stage of their careers, and see where Steyn fits in
this list & find potential outliers to eliminate from the list.

A) Average: Steyn @ 23.2 is #9 of 17 flanked by McGrath & Imran -- also, at the very bottom of the list are a couple of clear outliers in Lee (31.8) and McDermott (28.2)

B) Wickets / match or (total wickets): Steyn is #1 of 17, but closely followed by Lillee, Waqar & Donald, all > 5w/Test.  Walsh is a clear outlier with only 161 wickets (3.5w/Test) and Lee @ 3.9 w/Test is below the original 4w/Test cutoff.  (Interestingly Walsh did a lot better in his last 80-odd Tests than his first 46)

C) Strike Rate: Steyn & Waqar head the list, but no real outliers with all but 4 of the list having 50+ strike rates.  This is interesting because it indicates that only Waqar & Marshall are comparable to Steyn in this
attribute.

D) Overs: Walsh with <1500 overs bowled the least (probably a factor in his longevity) and Lee, Waqar (that name again) and Steyn, all have below 1600 overs.

E) Dominance Score (5-fers + 3x 10-fers): Lillee and Waqar head the list with 32 and 31 respectively, followed by Steyn, Imran and Ambrose in a clump ahead of the pack.  Changing the 10-fer multiplier to 2, obviously changes the scores, but provides the same qualitative description and separation. (A general test to see how stable a measure is, is to tweak it somewhat and determine if it still provides a similar qualitative result.)

F) PI: Waqar, Steyn and Marshall head the list (only one's below 1000), with Lee & McDermott clear outliers, and possibly Hadlee.

So what have we learned so far.  Actually, not a whole lot: Lee & McDermott don't belong in this list which is hardly surprising news.   Steyn is near the top in all measures except average, but since all the other measures capture strike rate in some way, he figures to be on the top of the list.

Steyn seems quite similar to Waqar, and possibly Lillee and Marshall, but we will figure that out later.

Now lets look at their entire careers.  It would be good to have the ages of each bowler at their 46th Test, but I didn't have an easy way to add the data, so I'm going to use the total Tests played as a proxy.

Although Steyn's career could end in the next game he plays, it is reasonable to expect he is right now in his prime, and will play another 20-40 Tests.  So, lets eliminate the bowlers who were towards the end of their careers at the 46th Test by using total Tests played as proxy, which eliminates Holding and Garner.
So culling this list, we get a murderer's row of a dozen bowlers (no Lee, Walsh, McDermott, Holding, Garner), many of whom would be part of any discussion on "Best bowlers ever", and in fact were discussed in CricInfo's all-time XIs:

Ambrose, Donald, Hadlee, Imran, Lillee, Marshall, McGrath, Pollock, Steyn, Trueman, Waqar, Wasim

Lets look to see if Steyn belongs in this august list, which was were this discussion started.  There is NO question that he does. His average of 23.2 is "only" 8th, but better than Imran, Lillee, Wasim and Hadlee at a similar stage of their careers. On all other measures, PI, SR, Overs bowled, he stands at or near the
top of the lists.

Pollock is perhaps an anomaly in that we would not figure in anyone's list of the greatest ever bowlers, but we also forget what a fabulous bowler the young Pollock was -- 190w @ 20.5 is very very very good.

So the purpose of this post is to identify the basic list of top fast bowlers, and use them as a basis for
a) defining similarity metrics to find bowlers similar to Steyn (or others) at the same stage of their careers (46 Tests)
b) project Steyn (and other bowler's performances) looking at these criterion
c) verifying projections for bowlers whose career's we know are over to determine if the criteria we use are reasonable

These verified criteria would be the basis of a future (no promises when) analysis of best bowlers.

The Dynamic Dozen again (heavily weighted towards modern bowlers  because of the 238 wicket cut off!):
Ambrose,
Donald,
Hadlee,
Imran,
Lillee,
Marshall,
McGrath,
Pollock,
Steyn,
Trueman,
Waqar,
Wasim

I haven't done the stats analysis yet, but guesses would be welcome as to
a) Who are the most similar (and dis-similar) bowlers from this list to Steyn at the 46-Test stage of their careers?
b) Which two bowlers from this list would be the most similar? most dissimilar? Again at the 46-Test stage of their careers.

Comments on the selection methodology welcome.  Also, once set up, it will then be appropriate to talk of further adjustments for opposition quality, # of Tests played in a career, different eras.  But as all these folks with the exception of Lillee and Trueman bowled in the last 25 years, that may not be needed now.

Bharat

ObDisclaimer: I may at some point choose to write a book on cricket statistics.  It is one of my "bucket list" items.  So any material you choose to post publicly may well lead to insights that find its way in
the book, certainly without obligation of any sorts, and possibly without attribution due to oversight (though I will certainly try to remember if someone provided starting insights and thank them).  All this may well be moot, as my bucket list keeps growing faster than the items I cross off...
Also, thanks to the fabulous folks who provided CricInfo's Statsguru tool, without which none of this analysis would be easy. stats.espncricinfo.com/guru

Select India's World Cup 15

Not the one *you* would pick, but the one you think the selectors will.


IMO, Kohli has played himself into a spot, so India's top 7 are:
Tendulkar, Sehwag, Gambhir, Yuvraj, Raina, Kohli, Dhoni


On the bowling side, Munaf is surely in (talk about "Carpe Diem)
Zaheer, Harbhajan, Munaf are locks so that makes 10, and surely Yusuf Pathan is the allrounder.

I believe Praveen Kumar is almost surely in, as he was held back to prevent further injury.


That leaves 4 people -- one more pacer, one more spinner, one reserve batsman and one reserve keeper --to fit into 3 slots.   What is your guess for the chosen XV??


Mine is
Dhoni, Tendulkar, Sehwag, Gambhir, Yuvraj, Raina, Kohli, Pathan, Zaheer, Harbhajan, Munaf,
PLUS
Nehra, Ashwin, Rohit Sharma
(Yes Nehra makes it based on his excellent performance in India.  Too bad Karthik is out of the picture here).
Bharat

Cricket books: "Wickets in the East" and "Spin and other Turns" Guha

As India wins a tight ODI against RSA, that one run victory turning abject despair in the pundits to rampant optimism, here are some of the cricket books I treasure.  All have pride of place in my library, and are read and re-read several times over the last few years. I will start with the category, I will call "
Just plain fun

"Wickets in the East" and "Spin and other Turns" Guha
These two have been combined and re-released as "The States of Indian Cricket"

Guha is an avowed Marxist, and in many of his later cricket books that agenda comes through.  Being Guha, the writing is superb, and the cricket descriptions wonderful, but these two -- his first two books -- were written by Guha the cricket fan.  He learned cricket on the knee of his uncle Durai, an LAS who would have played for India (as per Guha), had he not lost his right arm in a childhood accident. The books are replete with these tales and beautifully written.  They bring to life long-lost heroes -- where else would we learn so much about CK Naidu, Lala Amarnath (my father's favorite cricketer), Mushtaq Ali (my mother's) and so much about the history of Ranji cricket and the rivalries.  The book brings Indian cricket alive as no other book(s) I have read have done before.

As an aside, it has been my distinct privilege to watch two full Tests in Bangalore in Durai's company, and I can testify that he has yarns that didn't make it into the book, and is one of the most entertaining people to watch a game with. 

Just to add to the pot:
"Cardus on Cricket" Cardus
Cardus is simply the best cricket writer that ever has lived.  His turn of phrase is almost lyrical -- this compendium, has many of his best articles, press reports and essays.  A must have for any serious cricket fan.

Most Psmith Wodehouse's have cricket, and only hardly needs an excuse to read Wodehouse anyway.

Bharat