Planet Rugby Forum

Mahoney wrote:Stats are remarkably similar.

India batting first:
P25 W17 D6 L2 - 68%, 24%, 8%

India fielding first:
P28 W19 D7 L2 - 68%, 25%, 7%

India won the toss:
P26 W18 D6 L2 - 69%, 23%, 8%

India lost the toss:
P27 W18 D7 L2 - 67%, 26%, 7%

Only really obvious conclusion is that regardless of the toss or who bats first, India mostly win in India.

Bastards

Mahoney wrote:Stats are remarkably similar.

India batting first:
P25 W17 D6 L2 - 68%, 24%, 8%

India fielding first:
P28 W19 D7 L2 - 68%, 25%, 7%

India won the toss:
P26 W18 D6 L2 - 69%, 23%, 8%

India lost the toss:
P27 W18 D7 L2 - 67%, 26%, 7%

Only really obvious conclusion is that regardless of the toss or who bats first, India mostly win in India.

Do you have stats for recent games?

I don't think South Africa won a single toss when they toured there last, all games were won by India batting first (there may have been one draw). I think Australia and England fared similarly.

To state the obvious, the smaller the sample size the less useful the stats are. You wouldn't want to put much reliance in fewer than 20 games, I wouldn't have thought.

But you can do this yourself:
http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine ... ;type=team

Last 5 years

Won toss
P14 W12 D2 L0 86%, 14%, 0%

Lost toss
P10 W6 D3 L1 60%, 30%, 10%

Batting first
P13 W11 D2 L0 85%, 15%, 0%

Fielding first
P11 W7 D3 L1 64%, 27%, 9%

So your perception has some validity - in the last 5 years they have won more tosses than they have lost and done better winning the toss and batting first (though they've done pretty well losing the toss and fielding).

But it's quite likely just reversion to the mean - because given how flat the stats were over 10 years, if they favour your hypothesis in the last 5 then they must have been skewed the other way in the previous 5.

What I am keen to find out is how one team or another manages to win a disproportionately large share of the toss. With a sufficiently large sample size, the only way to do this is to cheat and I'd like to know how to cheat in this way. The only idea that immediately springs to mind is Indian bookmakers (but they'd have to be good even so)

Blimey, I would be sore if I had South Africa's record when losing the toss away from home. In that same time frame, they've lost the toss 12 times and won one of those, losing 8 matches. There's a team that needs to grow a spine.

Shithouse England are almost identically bad whether they win or lose the toss. Watch and learn, Saffers

Fenman wrote:What I am keen to find out is how one team or another manages to win a disproportionately large share of the toss. With a sufficiently large sample size, the only way to do this is to cheat and I'd like to know how to cheat in this way. The only idea that immediately springs to mind is Indian bookmakers (but they'd have to be good even so)

The answer is they don't. Given a valid sample size they're at basically a coin flip...

They don’t. 27/53 is as even a distribution as you can get.

Apropos of not a lot I had a requirement a few years ago for a function that randomly returns one of two values. QA came back to me and complained because on 10 tries 8 were of one value. Ran it 100 times and got 52/48 or something like that. Small sample sizes aren’t useful.

JM2K6 wrote:

So you'd have found it easy to produce a wicket that could be a raging turner, or a featherbed, or a seamer, or with vicious bounce, or a slow dead pitch?

You must give all those test groundskeepers the secret of your success. They'd tear your arm off.

I don't profess to be an expert in any way shape of form - but I know, in theory, how to do some of those - albeit at a very amateur level - they'll know how to do all of them within the limits of the basic properties of the pitch. That's how Somerset have turned their featherbeds into bunsens (at times). The Groundsman's courses I've attended didn't cover how to make pitches with vicious bounce, but did suggest how to avoid them. Even our best 'featherbed' would probably be a bowler's paradise at test level. Club pitches are far, far, better than they were 20 years ago (much better equipment and training) but still very slow in comparison to a test pitch (even a slow one !)

Granted, oval. How did you get on during an extended heatwave, or an overly damp April? We're a temperate country; India is nothing of the sort.

JM2K6 wrote:Granted, oval. How did you get on during an extended heatwave, or an overly damp April? We're a temperate country; India is nothing of the sort.

We managed to keep the square pretty green with copious watering - but the pitches were a bit of a lottery. We tend to absolutely soak the pitch once per week, rather than a smaller amount more regularly - the latter is by far the better option (but needs someone on it every day). The problem we get is that the surface gets very dry but water is retained deeper in the soil and that leads to low bounce - the pitch 'gives' a little bit when the ball lands. Often the pitch can look great and play crap - but at least we never had any of them break up - even when we had big cracks appearing. But we only play 50 overs - our pitches would never last more than a couple of days, if that.

The main problem in early season is if the water table is really high - the pitch can look OK but is still soft underneath. We've got decent covers but they don't help much in such conditions. You just have to do your best. Despite that, it wasn't too bad this year - but we didn't start playing until May. Ironically, you don't want it too dry, too early, or it mucks up the rolling schedule.

I don't do quite as much on the ground these days though - quite happy to sit on the roller for a couple of hours though - it's quite therapeutic.

How about teams switching batting / fielding every 4-6 overs, like in baseball?

NaBUru38 wrote:How about teams switching batting / fielding every 4-6 overs, like in baseball?

I will hunt you down and cut you

Cheers oval, very interesting!

The Pakistan/Australia game is looking a bit different to expectations. Aussies are over 200 for the loss of just three wickets, all to a fast bowler, in the 4th innings. Certainly not what I expected here.

Rinkals wrote:Pakistan scores 483 over two days (164 overs). Three wickets fall on day one and seven (two of which were run outs) fall on day 2.

On day three 13 wickets fall.

If this was an isolated incident, I would say yes, pretty poor batting from Australia. But it's not. Pitches are prepared to be benign for the first day and most of the second day and then to deteriorate rapidly after that.

If you are saying that it's impossible to prepare pitches differently because of the unique weather patterns across a pretty wide swath of the planet, fair enough; I am not sufficiently well versed to argue.

However my suspicion that pitches are prepared to make batting last pretty nigh impossible is largely born out by recent results.

Australia are currently 352-8 in the 4th innings. Perhaps they just batted badly in the 2nd innings?

NaBUru38 wrote:How about teams switching batting / fielding every 4-6 overs, like in baseball?

For crying out loud, please don't give the ECB any ideas!

A5D5E5 wrote:

Rinkals wrote:Pakistan scores 483 over two days (164 overs). Three wickets fall on day one and seven (two of which were run outs) fall on day 2.

On day three 13 wickets fall.

If this was an isolated incident, I would say yes, pretty poor batting from Australia. But it's not. Pitches are prepared to be benign for the first day and most of the second day and then to deteriorate rapidly after that.

If you are saying that it's impossible to prepare pitches differently because of the unique weather patterns across a pretty wide swath of the planet, fair enough; I am not sufficiently well versed to argue.

However my suspicion that pitches are prepared to make batting last pretty nigh impossible is largely born out by recent results.

Australia are currently 352-8 in the 4th innings. Perhaps they just batted badly in the 2nd innings?

Yes, I see that. Brilliant fourth innings from Australia, Khawaja in particular.

Sort of blows my theories out of the water a bit.

In that heat and with that scoreboard pressure it's still a huge achievement.

The biggest thing is that teams simply don't come under sustained spin pressure very often and it's easy to get rolled when you do. Aussies learned fast here.

JM2K6 wrote:In that heat and with that scoreboard pressure it's still a huge achievement.

The biggest thing is that teams simply don't come under sustained spin pressure very often and it's easy to get rolled when you do. Aussies learned fast here.

They'd also spent a long time out in the field, in very high temperatures, before their 1st innings. Very good effort to bat it out for a draw in the 2nd.

JM2K6 wrote:In that heat and with that scoreboard pressure it's still a huge achievement.

The biggest thing is that teams simply don't come under sustained spin pressure very often and it's easy to get rolled when you do. Aussies learned fast here.

It has become very common over a long period of time. As soon as it started to turn and reverse swing for the quicks down like a deck of cards, 60 fo 10 after a very good start. 147 for no loss is the best platform that Australia has had home and away for a long time. In the second innings 87 for no loss then comes a three wicket collapse for no runs. Marsh brothers under the microscope again after very poor contributions when they were needed to step up to possibly even win the test. The three debutants did far more.

Zimbabwe won the toss and batted first in their game against the Bangas.

Managed to get a decent score (282) on a badly deteriorating pitch. Bangladesh then scored 143 giving up a lead of 139. Zim were all out for 181, leaving Bangaladesh 320-odd to win with 2 days left to play. Zim bowled them out for 160 to win by 151 runs.

I have no doubt that, had Bangaladesh had first use of the pitch, they probably would have scored over 300, possibly over 400 in the first innings and the game would have been over inside three days.

Obviously one cannot say for sure, but given the Bangaladeshi's familiarity with spin, I don't think Zim would have had a chance of winning this one if they'd lost the toss.

sturginho wrote:

NaBUru38 wrote:How about teams switching batting / fielding every 4-6 overs, like in baseball?

For crying out loud, please don't give the ECB any ideas!