Statistics in Cricket

We live in an age when greatness is determined more by the immediacy of our experience of an event or sporting achievement, rather than by any sense of historic perspective. In the circumstances, we need to be careful about selecting the context and the parameters for judging sporting performances.

To take the example of cricket, statistics are often very deceptive and tends to give the impression that we are presently witnessing the "age of batting". For, never in history have there been so many batsmen with batting average above 50. This warrants a more careful selection and application of batting and bowling statistics. It is unarguably true that bowlers try their hardest when bowling to the best batsmen, and batsmen are most watchful when facing the best bowlers. Further, batsmen and bowlers summon their best when facing adversity. The true test of character of a cricketer is measured by his performace when the team is facing the prospect of either losing or winning a match. The basic idea is simple, each sportsman tries his best and strives to excel when fighting with his back to the wall.

There are the usual filters like batting average when playing away from home, fourth innings average, average (and proportion of runs) in matches won, average against the stronger teams etc. But to separate the truly great from the statistically great we need to be even more selective. How about calculating the batting and bowling averages by controlling the following parameters.

1. Batting average while following on
2. Fourth innings batting average when the team is fighting to win or save a match
3. Batting average when the conditions are wet and cloudy
4. Batting average when the average innings score of the match is less than 250
5. Batting averages when the opposition, batting first, has run up a huge (500 runs and above) first innings score
6. Batting average when half the team is back in the pavilion for less than 100
7. Batting averages in the first innings when a team wins the toss and asks the opposition to bat
8. Bowling average when bowling to force a win
9. Bowling and batting averages in the deciding test of a series
10. Bowling average after winning the toss and putting the opposition to bat
11. Bowling average when your team has batted first and has been bowled out for less than 250 runs

This is not exhaustive, but will surely throw up some very interesting stats. I am looking forward to comparing the averages of Sachin Tendulkar, Sunil Gavaskar, Viv Richards and Don Bradman by controlling the aforementioned parameters.