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This is the second of a series of posts on how ‘Moneyball’ tactics are slowly infiltrating the way cricket is played. Follow the link for Part 1: https://nopicturesinthescorebook.co.uk/2-ways-worcestershire-defied-convention-to-blast-to-t20-victory/ .

County cricket, and particularly the County Championship, is a game steeped in tradition. If you were to take someone to their first game in over 100 years, it is likely they would still be able to understand the tactics of each team, such as the opening batters taking a cautious approach against the new ball or bowlers trying to bowl a similar line and length to get wickets caught-behind or bowled. They might ask you some funny questions, such as what are those strange things being dragged over the wicket when it starts raining? Or, what are those fluorescent strips on the bowler’s boots? But for most goings-on, they would understand what was happening, although it could be about to change.

A ‘Moneyball’ approach is synonymous for a sporting team’s use of statistical analysis to gain an advantage. The term originates from the book “Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game” by Michael Lewis (a very interesting read that I would highly recommend). The book describes the approach taken by Billy Beane as the general manager of the Oakland Athletics baseball team. Oakland were a small team, with small attendances and a smaller budget than most other teams. Beane decided that for a smaller team, like Oakland, to compete with the bigger teams he had to do something different and to break tradition.

The strategy he pursued was to use statistics to make evidence-based decisions. For example, instead of picking a pitcher because he had a ‘nice’ looking technique he looked at the statistical evidence behind a pitcher’s performance and picked purely from this, so although the pitcher did not look as good, in general they would perform better. By following this strategy, Beane was able to exploit a ‘first-mover advantage’, through purchasing players who were undervalued and following tactics that were underused, due to the historical bias of how the game ‘should’ be played.

The book has since been made into a film starring Brad Pitt as Billy Beane (again I would recommend). Teams across the world and in a multitude of sports have begun taking a Moneyball approach to their decision making. Yet still many teams keep making their decisions based on a traditional perspective of what works, rather than based on the statistical evidence of what actually works.

So what characteristics of the County Championship might create a Moneyball revolution to overturn some of the conventional wisdom that teams currently follow?

1. No relegation from Division 2

For the teams which finish low-down in Division 2, nothing changes. In baseball, there is no threat of relegation: teams like Oakland Athletics are guaranteed their place in the same league the following year. So, what have these teams got to lose? For teams that expect to finish low in Division 2, the worst that could happen if they try something radical is that they finish bottom of Division 2 and revert to their old tactics in the same division the following year. Here, the traditional county cricket structure gives the incumbent teams a stability that could be exploited due to their preserved status. 

2. Traditionally weaker teams

In baseball, there are traditionally ‘weaker’ teams, like Oakland, with relatively small attendances and lower budgets than the more well-off teams. The same can be said in the County Championship, where a few of the teams have far lower membership bases and lower budgets than, broadly speaking, the counties which host test cricket. This makes it hard for the smaller counties to compete on the same terms and by following the same strategies as the richer clubs. In order to compete, they typically need to try something a bit different and if it doesn’t work then nothing much is lost, as they were expecting to finish below the bigger teams anyway.

3. The structure of cricket as a game

Cricket is a game rich with statistics around player performance. The structure of the game, starting each ‘phase of play’ with a ball delivered to a batter, within a defined area makes cricket performance far easier to measure than continuous sports, such as football. This set structure and abundance of data makes analysing and quantifying the effectiveness of different strategies and players far easier in cricket than a lot of sports and is very similar to baseball in this regard.

Perhaps next season may see one of the traditionally weaker teams in the Championship take advantage of their ‘no-lose’ position and attempt a radical shift in tactics to upset the apple cart. Indeed, there has certainly been some headway made in the use of Moneyball tactics in cricket recently, but could it stretch the county cricket’s longest and most traditional format? I will be discussing the progress already made in my next post as part of this series.

by

Rory Mathews

This is the first of a series of posts on how ‘Moneyball’ tactics are slowly infiltrating the way cricket is played.

I am writing this post on the hangover of my first T20 Finals Day, which as a lifelong Worcestershire fan was quite something. The winning team consisted of 7 homegrown players[i], a number which has only been repeated by Somerset in 2005 (see table below), and as a supporter was a joy to behold. As impressive was the average age of these homegrown players, 25, showing plenty of promise for Worcestershire’s future, provided that they can hold on to these players.

The recent emergence of the T20 format over the past 15 years means that there are fewer traditions embedded than the longer form of the game, with a culture of risk taking that is inherent to the ‘go hard or go home’ style of play. Finals Day was no exception to this with Ben Cox, in particular, striking the ball 360 degrees with shots that didn’t have a name 20 years ago and the impressive Pat Brown delivering knuckle-ball after knuckle-ball with freakish accuracy.

So, for a county with a smaller budget than many, how did they get to get to this position of T20 success? George Dobell, made a fantastic point on Worcestershire success (before Finals Day) during the fourth day lunch interval of the Worcestershire vs. Surrey county championship winning game for Surrey, to which I hope to add my own insight. To paraphrase, Dobell suggested the club hit a low during the financial difficulties associated with the 2007 flood of the ground. This created a nothing-to-lose mindset among the leadership (largely Steve Rhodes) at New Road, which meant a creativity and defying of convention was needed for the club to remain competitive amid their financial constraints. The creativity flourished in

1. A long-term recruitment plan that invested in the county’s own, giving a chance to the promising youngsters emerging through the academy.
2. The game time given to these home-grown players, as well as sticking with them for several seasons, seems now to have paid dividends to Worcestershire’s patient following.

Of course, it may just be that Worcestershire have got lucky with a glut of young players coming through the catchment simultaneously. However, having played in the Worcestershire junior teams for a few years at a similar time to a few of those now on the books of the club, I would suggest that luck has very little to do with it. Instead, I believe that an intelligent recruitment and training strategy of youth, in partnership with the resources on offer in the county, namely private schools with excellent facilities and sporting reputations to uphold, laid the foundations for a squad of homegrown players.

A year after the 2007 floods, Worcestershire relocated their indoor school to Malvern College’s new multi-million-pound facility and with it formed a partnership with the school. By making use of the school’s boarding, the county was able to widen their catchment, offering promising youngsters from across the country scholarships to come and play cricket for the school and county in exchange for a high-class education. This seems to have proved fruitful, with (to my knowledge) at least three players to have represented the county, as a direct result of this partnership, and a few more potentially in the pipeline.

In addition to this wise recruitment, it would also appear that coaching and training has played a strong role in the development of these home-grown champions, right the way from school-level through to the first team. As well as the strong link with Malvern College, Worcestershire has seen a production line of players emerging from Shrewsbury School and satellite counties, through the club’s academy, up to the second team before then playing for the first team. Of the current Worcs squad, 3 players are from Shrewsbury School.

From my time teaching, I am a firm subscriber to what is known as a ‘Growth Mindset’[ii] to learning, something expounded by Matthew Syed’s wonderful book ‘Bounce’. Worcestershire have also invested in this theory, whether this was conscious or just good ‘sense’ is up for debate. They have committed serious hours of ‘smart’ practice, through training as well as crucial game time, to their youth players giving them a chance to develop their match skills to a competition winning standard. The now head coach, Kevin Sharp, appears to know what he’s doing with coaching, having nurtured many of the current first team’s players through the second eleven and even playing a crucial role in the development of Joe Root as a junior[iii].

Of course, other counties also have fantastic coaches and no doubt excellent facilities and coaching techniques, but what really stands out here is the commitment that Worcester have shown to their youth ranks in terms of game time in the first team; giving the players years to sculpt what they have learned off the pitch into deliverable in game performances, to a point defying tradition and going beyond other counties. To use a common saying it seems “there’s nothing like game time.” I believe that Matthew Syed would back this strategy of ‘smart practice’ through game time in overcoming any learning plateaus to reap high marginal gains in performance at first team level.

This is a brave strategy. Short-term results through following the convention of recruitment and nurturing of youth players would have been the easy option for Worcestershire. It is easy to criticise new strategies that don’t pay off. Yet they decided to defy convention and employ a long-term strategy that has now paid off. I would also commend the Worcester faithful, who have stuck with the team through this period of transition, although supporting youth is often a popular strategy and watching home-grown players turn out for the county (for myself at least) is a real treat.

By going against the grain in their recruitment strategy the success of Worcester hints of that success reaped by Oakland Althletics baseball team in their pioneering ‘Moneyball’ style strategy. I will be writing more about my thoughts on this in cricket over my next few posts.

In addition to this the influence of “the beard to be feared” in Moeen Ali shouldn’t be underestimated. Now though, I’m basking in the glory of the Rapid’s win and reminiscing on a wise pre-tournament bet (33/1), my first ever (dropped) crowd catch (see picture below of the ball not in my hands) and the potential of what may still be to come from this exciting homegrown squad.

By Rory Mathews

[i] I’m defining ‘homegrown’ as having made their professional debut for the county they are playing for

[ii] https://www.mindsetworks.com/science/

[iii] https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/40474015

What are the shortcomings with averages as a performance measure?

If, like me, you are a keen cricket player, you might find yourself having a cheeky check of your average on the Play Cricket website on a Saturday night after getting a decent score or, perhaps more likely, surveying the damage to it, after spooning a catch up for not very many earlier on in the day. You may even find yourself slyly looking at the averages of next week’s opposition and who their dangerman might be, during your lunch break at work. After doing just this, I loaded up my ‘Flaws of Averages’ powerpoint ready to teach my Year 11 GCSE Maths class and thought “hang on a sec, why are we so obsessed with averages in cricket then?!”

Over the next hour, I went into the shortcomings of each of the different types of average. The mean, what we all refer to as an average in everyday and cricketing terms, I told my class, has the problem that it doesn’t take account of the distribution of values. For example, if we took Player A and Player B who both had a dreamy average of 50 after the first two games of the season we would initially think that perhaps they are both very similar players. On further inspection though, we would see that Player A had scored 50 in both innings and Player B 0 and 100, giving us a completely different picture that just looking at the average wouldn’t have shown us.

This flaw in using averages as a measure is highlighted when looking at the averages of England’s two openers across the test matches this winter. Cook averaged 33.25 compared to Stoneman just behind on 30.23. For somebody purely looking at these averages to judge performance, there is little to distinguish between the two. However, those who have followed the tests would know that both players scored very differently, with Cook having a succession of low scores and one extremely high scoring innings in Melbourne (I was lucky enough to witness this and have put my video of the celebrations when he reached 200 below) and Stoneman regularly getting into double-figures and failing to kick-on further.

Hopefully, this illustrates the problem with just looking at averages when judging player performance. Fortunately, there is a measure called ‘standard deviation’, which can be easily calculated and I believe could provide us with some valuable insight for cricket that purely looking at averages would not give.

What is standard deviation?

Standard deviation is used to tell us how far away the values are on average from the mean, giving a concrete reference about the distribution of values and making up for the main shortcoming of the mean. In cricketing terms, this would be the typical difference between a batter’s average and what they have scored in each innings. For the normal punter, this is what we might call consistency, the lower a player’s standard deviation then the more consistent they are (good or bad). Going back to our earlier example, the consistent Player A would have a standard deviation of 0, this is because there is no difference between each of Player A’s two scores and their average. Conversely, the inconsistent Player B would have a standard deviation of 50, because we expect that they will either score 50 below their average or 50 above. If we look at Cook and Stoneman’s standard deviations from their scores across the winter they had values of 72 and 20 respectively, showing that although their averages were similar, Stoneman scored more consistently than Cook. Visually you can see this on the graphs below, the standard deviation for each batter is the average distance of the blue points (each score) away from the orange points (average across the winter), it is clear that Stoneman’s scores are closer to his average than Cook’s, illustrating his lower standard deviation and more consistent performance.

*Note for ease of calculation and I added Cook’s not out score to his next complete innings.

What has been written in the past about standard deviation and cricket?

I’m not claiming to be the first person to have thought about calculating standard deviation for cricket. Some very interesting blog posts by Anantha Narayanan and Ric Finlay extol the virtues of Jack Hobbs and Sachin Tendulkar’s performances through using standard deviation to create a consistency index for test players who have scored over 5000 runs. I find the insight into past player performance extremely interesting and these calculations involving standard deviation certainly offers a valuable perspective on the history books. What I think is missed, however, is how standard deviation may be used in the future to improve a team’s results.

How can we use standard deviation?

I would suggest that there could be a few ways to use standard deviation values that might be useful for any coach or captain when selecting a team or deciding upon the batting order.

Firstly, let us go back to Players A and B, who we are now told also both open the batting. Who would you prefer as an opener, reliable Player A or the occasionally brilliant Player B? If I was batting at number 3, I know that I’d prefer the steadiness of Player A, I could put my feet up for the first 10 overs knowing that it’s unlikely I’ll be in and by the time that I am the ball should have stopped swinging. This could seem like an obvious choice, we all know that a big part of opening the batting is to see off the new ball and if you have an opener that can regularly do this then it will probably boost the total of the whole team by giving the rest of the order a chance to play more freely.

It is also true that batting in different positions can be more suitable to varying techniques and styles of batting; a captain is unlikely to promote their high-scoring number 5 batter, that plays spin well, but is horribly exposed to swing, to the top of the order. Such a situation might seem like a no-brainer to somebody who knows a bit about cricket and snippets of knowledge like this are why we love the intricacies of the game and certainly shouldn’t be overlooked.

I would argue that, on top of these intricate details and the opinions of the coaches and captains, standard deviation should be thrown into the mix, when deciding who to promote to the top of the order. It offers some concrete evidence for a player’s consistency and could just give a team the edge over another by reducing their chance of losing an early wicket.

Secondly, let’s pretend that you are the captain of the 1^st XI of a club. Next Saturday, you know that your regular number 5 can’t play, because they must go to yet another wedding. The choice of who to call up from the 2^nd XI has a couple of obvious candidates who are averaging well above the rest of their team, yes, you guessed it, its Player A and Player B again. But who do you call up? You know that they are both averaging 50 this season and so are ‘really’ as good as each other. Well, of course you now know that maybe looking at the standard deviation of each player could offer further insight, but how would you use this information?

I would like to claim that this depends on the opposition. Let’s again imagine that your team is mid-table and top of the table is your next fixture on the list. You know that they are a good team and think that you can only beat them on a good day. If this was the case, I think that it would be worth ‘rolling the dice’ and plumping for the occasionally brilliant Player B. Suppose you call up Player B, who has a higher chance of scoring a magnificent hundred and guiding your team to victory compared to Player A, who scores another solid 50, which isn’t quite enough to overcome the top of the league.

Of course, Player B has a considerable chance of also getting a duck, but you’re playing against top of the league so what have you got to lose? On the other hand, if you were playing against bottom of the league and know that Player A’s consistent 50 scoring prowess is more than likely to be enough to guarantee you the win then it probably would be the sensible choice over the erratic scoring of Player B.

Say you did instead pick Player B who half of the time smashed a big score and heaped the misery of the bottom of the league team sending them to a huge defeat and the other half of the time getting out cheaply and sending your side to an unlikely loss. If you’re the type of person that likes to win then maybe getting a steady, but not huge, win each time through picking Player A is the way to go.

What further ideas does this prompt?

The potential uses of standard deviation stretch well beyond the couple of applications that have been discussed above. It would be extremely interesting to calculate confidence intervals for projected innings scores when batting or runs conceded when bowling and this could have strong influencing factors for coaches and captains when looking at their team as a unit. I’ve discussed the importance of a consistent opener for the rest of the team when seeing off the new ball, but it would be interesting to confirm this common piece of cricketing knowledge that is taken for granted with some concrete evidence.

This could be pursued by analysing the affect that consistent vs. inconsistent openers have on overall team scores or even considering if any value is gained by seeing off the new ball at all. Using standard deviation to create a consistency index (as done in the blogs I mentioned earlier) could also add value if incorporated into to a new measure of performance, rather than just looking at averages and strike rates of batters and bowlers.

What could we take away from this?

The scope for use of standard deviation seems to be vast and now I think that it would be great for international, county and even the most avid of club team selectors to start to use this measure when choosing their teams. We are lucky to have such a wealth of statistics collected in cricket and it would be a shame not to utilise them.

When selecting Cook’s successor as an opening batsman, whenever in the future that may be, we should use standard deviation on top of the regular criteria to scour the county game for a consistent player that can get us off to the start we need regularly and let our big-hitting middle order have free reign.

County coaches looking for a reliable opener or someone to shore up the middle-order should delve into the Play Cricket database to analyse the top club players and with a quick standard deviation calculation they could ensure a low-risk acquisition on the cheap for their team. For the club selectors and captains, it could be an interesting discussion point to calculate their teams’ consistency through standard deviation.

By Rory Mathews