Well, this is going well! Aus 15/3 after 4 overs. Although, as @penultima_thule says above, you can recover on these pitches.
Well, they ‘recovered’ to 125 and England stormed it with 50 balls to spare, by 8 wickets. Jos Buttler just playing a different game, and he didn’t even get MotM!
Pardon me if this has already been mentioned but a number of Australian Test Cricketers have passed in the last few days. All were still playing when I started to watch cricket.
- Alan Davidson
- Ashley Mallett
- Peter Philpott
If India’s 2 matches were MMA fights, they’d both be losses by submission in the 1st round. Rear naked chokes.
Listening to the Ind/NZ game and 110/7 seems obviously a dreadful score but…I don’t know, something tells me there is no easy win here.
(note how I’m being non-committal here, plausible deniability is everything!)
I think I may be able to see past an England India final now
Pakistan looking good so far!
England properly tested for the first time today, batting first and being put under early pressure, but a first T20I ton by Buttler (#UniverseJos, if I may), and a sustained bowling effort sees them through. Still not technically qualified, but it’s unlikely to see them knocked out now.
Maximizing NRR.
I’m watching the South Africa - Bangladesh match, and it seems that SA will restrict Bangladesh to a very low 1st innings total. Assuming it stays this way, SA is almost guaranteed to chase down the total. If SA wants to maximize their overall tournament NRR, would it be better to bat aggressively and finish the chase as early as possible; e.g. aim for a RR of 12, or drag the innings on a bit more; e.g. aim for a RR of 9?
I can work out some scenarios, but wanted to know if there is a formula that teams use.
The announcers just answered my question, as they mentioned that SA will want to chase down the total as quickly as possible. Since the chasing team only gets “credit” for the overs it needs, I thought that perhaps 10 overs at a RR of 8.5 might be better than say, 7 overs at a RR of ~12.0.
For some time it looked like they’d be relieved to get them at all.
This can be a little confusing for those perhaps getting into cricket for the first time so I’ll use your initial thoughts as a starting point.
For example. If a team gets bowled out after 10 overs and scores 80 runs their run rate would not be 80/10 (i.e. 8) it would be 80/20 (4) because the fact that they didn’t use all of their overs is irrelevant, the full 20 get counted anyway.
The chasing team though does indeed want to chase the total down as soon as possible because they do only count the overs they use. Say they won by scoring 84 runs in 7 overs. Their run rate would be 12, take away the run-rate of the opponent (4) and their Net Run Rate (NRR) would be 12-4 = 8. That is a great figure and much better than if they took 14 overs to score 84 (which would give them an NRR of 2)
NRR is one of an number of bias in cricket that favour the side batting second in limited overs cricket … apart from the most obvious which is they know the target in a game.
In multi day formats there is the known advantage for the team batting first that the pitch will progressively deteriorate. This is rarely a factor in limited overs games.
Duckworth Lewis has provided a workable target for matches with disruptions usually for rain but also heat, lightning or other causes
What limited overs cricket can’t currently handle are systematic advantages for either batting first (eg the pitches always crumble or light isn’t ) or second (eg dew which makes the ball harder to grip for the bowlers and comes on a bit quicker for the batters)
This tournament matches have been won disproportionately by the team batting second.
This is principally due to the pitches and the evening dew.
Teams batting first does not know what constitutes a par score. The team batting second is only concerned with the target set. A critical element is now whether the bowlers can con the umpires into changing the ball and get the benefit of 2 overs with a dry/harder replacement before it gets wet again.
You don’t want games and tournaments consistently won based on the toss. But how to enumerate the advantage and how to account for it is problematic. In effect it is the team batting first gets say an additional 10 runs or the two overs at their average rate.
Most time the precise delta won’t matter. Sometimes one run will be critical.
If the “win toss and bowl” advantage is small then possibly taking the toss out of the equation might work. e.g. having the innings order for each match is predetermined at the start of the tournament. Mind you the bookies would love to get hold of that information.
If the advantage is significant between two evenly balanced teams, I’m at a loss to know how to ameliorate it.
I don’t understand why NRR is the tie-breaker over the head-to-head result. With NRR, I feel like there is a good chance of a team “getting screwed”, so perhaps 6 teams should advance to the knockout stage, with the top seed in each group getting a “bye”.
I’m an American who only rarely follows cricket news, but I too was surprised at the disproportionate results in favor of the teams batting second at this T20 world cup.
Me being more of an aficionado of studying the metagames of sports, rather than being a sports fan in general, I did some brief research and found an article that gives several proposed solutions, the most interesting one being an auction between the two teams over who gets to choose whether to bat or bowl.
On Reddit, another suggestion I’ve seen is that the first team bats for 10 overs, then the second team bats for the full 20 overs, and finally the first team finishes batting their 10 remaining overs.
@TheGunIsMightierThanThePen
Thank you for finding that.
I think the idea has significant merit. Bravo!
There is a lot to be said for neutering the effect of the toss as much as possible.
One easy method for multiple test/ODI/T20 series against the same side would be to do the toss once at the start of a tour.
The choice to bat/bowl first would then alternate right the way through the series.
If the number of matches involved is even then the advantage pretty much evens out as well.
If odd, then advantage to the tune of a single game is retained by the team that wins the toss, a fairer solution I think with few downsides.
Doesn’t solve the problem with one-off or group matches but the auction idea is interesting.
AUS squish BAN for 73 in a fairly dispirited batting display.
AUS need to win in around 8;overs to get NRR above SAF
My bet 4-74 off 12
AUS 78-2 off 6.2 of village slogging but not far off exactly what was required.
78 /2 off 6.2 puts them ahead of SA. They still need to beat SA themselves though, right? Although if SA lose against England Aus can still go through on nrr.