Are Rajasthan Royals the Oakland A's of cricket? Devotees of excellent sporting literature will need no introduction to Moneyball, a terrific yarn about how the A's, a relatively low-budget baseball team ($41million - about £22million - to spend on players counts as low budget in American sport), consistently outperformed their more illustrious and wealthier rivals by dint of the unorthodox coaching methods of Billy Beane, their general manager.
The basic premise of Beane's coaching philosophy was that age-old wisdom, in the form of gnarled tobacco-spitting scouts, was subjective and flawed and did not stand up to the scrutiny of statistics and empirical data. And that many of the statistics used, such as batting averages, were too general and vague and irrelevant compared with less utilised and understood statistics such as, say, on-base percentage and slugging percentage (don't ask me, either).
Sunday, June 1, 2008
'Dravid had the seventh best side to work with' - Crowe
Martin Crowe, Bangalore Royal Challengers' chief cricket officer, has said that "everything went wrong" with their campaign in the first season of the IPL and that they have to start afresh next year.
Crowe cited team composition, lack of preparation for key players coming out of a Test series, and poor practice facilities at the home ground as reasons for the poor performance. He also said that the team management, him included, had to share the blame and that the franchise had to bring in players with the skills required to excel in the Twenty20 format. "There is no one or particular area that deserves more blame than anyone else," Crowe told Cricinfo. "People speculated at the start what type of team we were [a Test side] and that's the way it has turned out. We didn't have Twenty20 batsmen.
Crowe cited team composition, lack of preparation for key players coming out of a Test series, and poor practice facilities at the home ground as reasons for the poor performance. He also said that the team management, him included, had to share the blame and that the franchise had to bring in players with the skills required to excel in the Twenty20 format. "There is no one or particular area that deserves more blame than anyone else," Crowe told Cricinfo. "People speculated at the start what type of team we were [a Test side] and that's the way it has turned out. We didn't have Twenty20 batsmen.
Why percentage-players could not keep up with T20
Very often, they were capable of playing zero risk cricket, an invaluable ability in Test matches. But the IPL isn't so much about zero risk cricket as it is about managing risk. Suddenly a 50-50 chance is seen to be worth taking and occasionally, batsmen are game to play, by qualitative judgement, in 20-30 per cent success zones. That is how an Asnodkar plays, or occasionally a Vidyut or even a Saha and almost always a Sehwag.
People like Kallis or Chanderpaul or Dravid, some of the biggest names in cricket, have never put a for sale sign in their display window. These are stubborn men who challenge adversity and grind away at it. And so their perception of risk is always going to be different. To be fair, a Dravid emerged as the leading run scorer for his side but when he was bowled trying to cut a ball on middle stump, it didn't seem right.
People like Kallis or Chanderpaul or Dravid, some of the biggest names in cricket, have never put a for sale sign in their display window. These are stubborn men who challenge adversity and grind away at it. And so their perception of risk is always going to be different. To be fair, a Dravid emerged as the leading run scorer for his side but when he was bowled trying to cut a ball on middle stump, it didn't seem right.
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