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statsguru
Cricket geekery epitomised
By Will 2 months ago, No Comments; be the first!
It’s a wonder Andy Zaltzman is still a married man. Outstanding cricket geekery:
No Comments »Happy New Year, Confectionery Stallers, and welcome to a new year, a new decade (or the last year of an old decade, depending on your decade-defining proclivities). I am firmly in the New Decade camp, and so, I assume, is Jacques Kallis, if only so he can claim to be the 29th member of the highly exclusive club of players who have scored Test hundreds in three different decades.
(I have a full list of these 29 cricketing legends, but will not list them here for fear of antagonising my wife, who is anxious for me not to join the equally exclusive club of husbands who have spent excessive parts of two decades working out things on Statsguru. But a special mention for the great Indian batsman Vijay Merchant, who is the only man in the history of humanity to have scored just one Test century in three separate decades. Throw that little fact into your next conversation at work and see how people react. Hang on, I’m not quite finished with this one yet. If Kallis can somehow muster another five-wicket innings from his creaking limbs, he will become only the eighth bowler to take a five-for in three different decades, and join Kapil Dev as the only player to have both scored hundreds and taken five-fors in three decades. I’m done now.)
Ned Flanders uses Statsguru
By Will 2 years ago, at the end of January, 3 Comments »
Ned Flanders – aka John Buchanan – uses Cricinfo’s flagship geek-ahoy app, Statsguru. No great surprise I suppose, given that Buchanan makes Bill Frindall look vaguely hip and groovy. But it’s always interesting hearing it being used by coaches, and for what application.
3 Comments »Alert to all statto geeks
By Will 3 years ago, at the end of December, 3 Comments »
If you’re even remotely interested in cricket, chances are that there’s a lurking geek within you. Don’t worry – we’ve all got it and flaunt it. I notice that Cricinfo’s new statsguru, which has been under wraps for ages, has been let loose on you ‘orrible lot. It is a thing of total, unabashed brilliance…where you can find out such must-have things as the best five-fors conceding 10 runs or less, or spinners who have opened the bowling on the first day of a Test match.
Pub quiz masters: go forth and splutter.
3 Comments »Cricinfo launch match search facility
By Will 3 years ago, mid-May, 3 Comments »
I don’t care how biased I sound, because I know that Cricinfo’s Statsguru is used by everyone. Players, journalists, fans…it is an engine of stats, built by one person: Travis Basevi. In fact, Travis almost single handedly built the backend to the entire site.
And he’s come up with a new toy: a match search facility. So you can just stick in “Edgbaston 2005″ or “headingley 1981″ to find the Test or one-dayer you’re after. Fairly cool. Try it out.
The new Statsguru is astounding, too. Due soon, we think…
3 Comments »What Statsguru can tell us about the first final between Australia and Sri Lanka
By Scott 4 years ago, mid-February, 3 Comments »
I played around with Cricinfo’s statsguru program so I could write a post about the first final for the Cricinfo blog Different Strokes. Ironically, that blog is down, as indeed are all of cricinfo’s blogs. Some technical malady has smited them. So because I’m going to the game and won’t be here to post anything, I’ve taken the liberty of reprinting it here.
Thanks to Tuesday’s result, we now know that Sri Lanka will play Australia in the finals of the VB series. This is good for the series, because in my opinion, Sri Lanka are better equipped then South Africa are to cause an upset win in at least one of the fixtures and push the series into a third final. Which is something that has not happened for twelve seasons. The trend strongly is that the team that wins the first final goes onto win.
So for Sri Lanka, to win the first final is very important indeed. If they can somehow conjure up a win in Adelaide on Friday night, they will have a great fillip, and the second final is on their favourite Australian ground, Sydney. Between now and Friday, Sri Lanka’s coach Tom Moody will be working on a game plan to surprise the Australians, and he’ll probably use Cricinfo’s Statsguru program. Let’s see what Statsguru says.
The variations of scheduling help here, since these sides have met 15 times since 2002/03. This gives us a good sample to work with, and from these results, certain trends can be inferred.
Australia has dominated recent meetings between the sides, winning eleven and losing only four. The alarming figure for Sri Lanka is that Australia have batted first seven times in the fifteen, and won six out of the seven. Whereas, Sri Lanka have batted first eight times, and won three of those matches.
So Sri Lanka would like to bat first. In those eight matches where they batted first, they won three with scores of 343/5, 245 and 309/7. The other five scores were below that, and they lost all five. So they know if they bat first and can score 245 or more, they have given themselves a good chance to win.
And history at the Adelaide Oval certainly backs that plan up. Adelaide Oval has hosted 60 limited overs matches, and the team batting first has won 35, but recent history is strongly in favour of the team batting first, with eight out of the last ten being won by the side batting first.
However there is one small problem with this scenario for Sri Lanka. They have to win the toss and bat first.
If Australia win the toss and bat first, Sri Lanka have a problem. Of the last seven times Australia batted first they have won six of them. The only game they did not win, they scored 198/7. They have defended several scores in the mid 200 range as well as scoring over 300 three times. So Australia will be very confident that they can defend anything over 200.
So Tom Moody has to somehow find a weakness in Australia’s armour. Thanks to Statsguru, we can fine tune our search. Let’s look at the last 15 games where Australia won the toss, batted first, and lost the game.
What is interesting here is that while Australia has quite a few low scores in that lot, the mean score over the last fifteen is 221; and further looking around suggest that eleven of Australia’s last fifteen defeats came while batting first.
The common thread is that Australia have lost by losing a lot of early wickets, and getting either bowled out, or close to it.
So this should flow into Sri Lanka’s tactics. They have three bowlers who can take wickets, Vaas, Muralithiran and Bandara. My own feeling is that Sri Lanka should look to try and bowl these key figures early, and dispense with at least one of the powerplays until the 40 over mark. Because if history shows anything, if Australia still have top-six batmen in at the 40 over mark, the score will already be past 200 and Sri Lanka’s chances will be slim indeed. So the key thing is to attack at all costs, take early wickets, and keep taking them. If Australia are able to bat through their fifty overs, Sri Lanka will find it very hard to chase them down, and the history of the venue also points to that.
I somehow doubt that Tom Moody will instill this sort of attacking gameplan into his charges; Marvan Attapatu is not one of the attacking captains. However, thanks to Statsguru, we can see that to win, he’ll need to win the toss and bat, and failing that, he’ll need to use his bowlers in a very aggressive manner to stop Australia.
3 Comments »Using statsguru
By Scott 4 years ago, at the start of February, 1 Comment »
I wrote a post on using statsguru to analyise gameplans that Sri Lanka might use against Australia in the First final for Cricinfo’s Different Strokes blog.
1 Comment »South Africa vs Sri Lanka
By Scott 4 years ago, at the start of February, 1 Comment »
I mentioned earlier that Statsguru was a great toy. Put South Africa vs Sri Lanka head to head and the results are amazingly close.
All time; played 42, SA won 20, SL won 20. On neutral grounds, played 14, SA won 7, SL won 7.
So Tuesday’s game between the two will not only put the winner into the final of the VB series, but give one of these nations an edge.
I’ll tentatively tip Sri Lanka to win this one.
1 Comment »Cricinfo’s servers are cactus.
By Scott 4 years ago, at the start of February, No Comments; be the first!
India are playing Pakistan, as I noted.. and I can’t access cricinfo at all just now. I saw that they were selling radio streaming, so I guess that must have been more successful then they thought.
Buy more servers, you guys!
India made 328, with Sachin Tendulkar making 100.
This is very annoying for me as I was about to write a post about South Africa’s match against Sri Lanka tomorrow with some interesting facts that I found on Statsguru!
Update- Wow, Pakistan won!
Must have been an interesting game. They are showing highlights on television tomorrow in Australia and I will make a note to see it. Sachin Tendulkar went past 14,000 ODI runs in his innings, the game itself was decided by the Duckworth Lewis method when the light got too bad, and Inzamam was given out obstructing the field!
No Comments »