By Greg Pearson
It’s Twenty20 World Cup time, and as I did for last year’s ICC World Cup, I’ve put the 3News Statistics Department to work to make some bold predictions on who will win the title.
For a start, lets get the disclaimer out of the way. We’re looking at this purely from a statistics point of view, which considering cricket is a pretty numbers-heavy sport isn’t a bad way of doing things.
Yes, the numbers pointed to the Blackcaps winning the World Cup last year and obviously they didn’t, but they did make the last four, which I’d like to point out were the same top four that our little prediction came up with.
Add to that all the different variables of cricket (weather, pitch conditions, who’s on the take) and there’s no way you can take any of this to the bank. So, without further ado, let’s begin.
In a nutshell, the basis for the predictions are each players batting averages, strike rates, and for the bowlers their economy rates.
With T20, the key to a successful innings is getting runs and getting them quickly. So, using this handy formula:
Batting Average x Strike Rate / 100
We can find the average innings in balls for each player. For example, here’s what the numbers for an estimated Blackcaps line up look like:
Runs Ave Strike Rate Ave Inn.
M Guptill 818 32.72 124.89 26.20
R Nicol 186 18.60 114.81 16.20
B McCullum 1443 36.08 132.75 27.18
R Taylor 702 22.65 117.20 19.32
K Williamson 170 28.33 126.87 22.33
J Franklin 296 22.77 118.40 19.23
D Vetorri 187 13.36 109.36 12.21
J Oram 441 22.05 143.18 15.40
N McCullum 188 15.67 103.30 15.17
K Mills 127 11.55 115.45 10.00
D Bracewell 31 15.50 172.22 9.00
And yes, that line up could easily change, we made our selection and put the numbers through the predictometer after hearing Tim Southee may be out of the first game but before the same news about Rob Nicol came through.
So with this new found information, we’ve taken these averages and compiled an average Blackcaps scorecard.
That means how far down the line up the Blackcaps will get, and who will use the 120 deliveries in the innings. And for the purposes of whole numbers we’ve used rounding.
How Out Runs Balls
M Guptill caught 33 (26)
R Nicol caught 19 (16)
B McCullum caught 36 (27)
R Taylor caught 23 (19)
K Williamson caught 28 (22)
J Franklin not out 12 (10)
D Vetorri
J Oram
N McCullum
K Mills
D Bracewell
Total 151 for 5 (20 overs)
Franklin is left not out and only faces 10 deliveries, which with a Strike Rate of 126.87 he smacks around for 12 runs.
But that’s better than the rest of the order who in theory don’t even make it out to the middle.
And as you may have noticed, all batsman will be caught out. In fact the most common mode of dismissal for every player is caught in the field (rather than by the keeper) with the exception of Daniel Vetorri, who more often than not is run out.
I’d also like to point out that the rounding does skew the figures slightly. Without the rounding the total is 148.76, and that’s what we’ll use to compare the Caps with the other teams, which we’ll get to shortly.
For the other side of the coin, we’ve done the same with the bowlers, working out how much each bowler will go for off their overs, giving an average bowling performance and an indication of what score each team concedes.
For arguments sake, we’ve worked on the assumption that 4 bowlers will bowl their full allotment of 4 overs, and 2 others will split the remaining 2. And this, in theory, is what the Blackcaps bowlers give up.
Overs Econ Runs Wickets
K Mills 4 8.39 33.56 1.16
D Bracewell 2 9.45 18.90 0.50
N McCullum 4 6.54 26.15 1.58
D Vetorri 4 5.50 22.00 1.25
Oram 4 8.63 34.53 0.72
Franklin 2 7.45 14.89 0.63
Total 150.03 for 5.84 (20 overs)
Not a good sign. As is the key with cricket, to win games you have to score more runs than you concede, and unfortunately for the Blackcaps, they’re a couple of runs on the wrong side of a good result.
So the Blackcaps are playing on average to a deficit, but what about the rest of the teams?
Here’s what our numbers say about the other top teams and how we rank them.
Batting Average Bowling Average Difference
South Africa 163.56 142.71 +20.85
Australia 158.89 139.45 +19.43
Pakistan 143.05 130.49 +12.56
India 164.49 157.01 +7.48
Bangladesh 139.78 135.40 +4.38
England 146.12 143.03 +3.09
West Indies 151.17 151.72 -0.55
New Zealand 148.76 150.03 -1.28
Sri Lanka 137.96 139.92 -1.96
There you have it, put all your money on South Africa to win the title, with a more than 20 run differential between what they can score and what concede.
Australia are close behind, followed by Pakistan – the best performing bowling side on the list – and India, the team with the best batting performance.
The Blackcaps come in a lowly 8th, only ahead of hosts Sri Lanka, and most worrying behind both Pakistan and Bangladesh – the 2 other teams in their pool.
As we said, cricket is a game of many, many variables and the Blackcaps didn’t win the World Cup as we predicted last year. But hey, no pressure then this time. Go on boys, surprise us.
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