Saturday, August 13, 2011

The great indian batting line up of 2000s

India boast about their great batting line which is studded with Virender Sehwag (Runs: 7694, Avg. 52.69, 100s: 22, 50s: 27), Rahul Dravid (Runs: 12616, Avg. 52.56, 100s: 34, 50s: 60), Sachin Tendulkar (Runs 14851, Avg. 56.25, 100s 51, 50s 60) , Sourav Ganguly (Runs: 7212, Avg. 42.17, 100s: 16, 50s: 35), VVS Laxman (Runs: 8302, Avg.: 46.64, 100s: 16, 50s: 54).


In the 2000s India routinely fielded at least three of these five players in their batting line up and on occasions they all played. So I looked into the data when at least 3, 4 or all five played in a match and checked how much they each scored. Specifically I was interested in knowing when they all got to bat (three, four or five of them), did they all manage to score at least 50. The only way a team can benefit from its stars is if they all bat well together, otherwise individual stars are not enough to brighten the prospects of a team (of course Lara can do but even he managed to win only few Test matches on his own).

In the three figures below I have separated the data into first and second innings of Indian batting. This does not refer to the innings in the match. The gray boxes means that the corresponding player played in the match but did not get to bat in that innings. Light blue box means that the corresponding player made less than 50 runs and dark blue color means that the player made more than 50 runs. 

For collaborative batting efforts we are interested in knowing how often and how regularly at least three of then scored 50+ score in the same inning. The number are shown on the right of each subplot.

When at least three of them played together only in 11.43% cases all three managed to score 50+ runs, which is clearly a small fraction. Even more surprising is the fact that only 25% times two of the three made 50+ scores. These number drop in the second inning when only in 6% cases all three made 50+ scores.

Performance of five most successful modern Indian batsmen when at least three of them played together.

When at least four of them played together, in the first innings they never made 50+ score together (figure below). In 31% cases two of them managed to get 50+ in the first inning. The second innings remained a solo performance case when in 41% cases at least one scored a 50+.

Performance of five most successful modern Indian batsmen when at least four of them played together.
When all the five played together, media boasted about the strength of the Indian batting but never did all five made 50+ together. Playing all of them at the same time meant that at least two of them scored 50+ in about 40% cases in the first innings. Second innings again showcased individual performances.

Performance of five most successful modern Indian batsmen when all five played together.

This analysis shows that even though India has produced some very good batsmen in last two decades or so, but then have only rarely clicked together. I am not asking all of them to score runs in the same match but it is expected that at least three of the five score in the same inning, and unfortunately this has happened only 3% times in the first inning and 12% times in the second innings... but certainly only often enough that India could really exploit the batting abilities of these genius who as of now seem to like to work alone....to increase their individual scores and records...

right arm over
Arvind

2 comments:

  1. do u think 'partnership scores' would tell a true picture of a collaboration instead of 'individual scores?

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  2. Thanks Siva,
    Yes maybe. I will do that kind of analysis sometime. But here I was more interested in knowing of their contribution cross a minmum meaningful number.

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