STATS: KSL 2018 Batting Rankings

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There are no real surprises in the 2018 Kia Super League Batting Rankings – no non-international players make the Top 20, though a couple were just outside it: Diamonds’ Thea Brookes at No. 21 and Thunder’s Eve Jones at No. 24.

England’s two spring batting debutantes – Alice Davidson-Richards and Bryony Smith – placed at Nos. 25 and 28 respectively, giving Mark Robinson little to think about in terms of World T20 selection; and whilst Sophia Dunkley had a good opening day, making her highest score of 66 against the Vipers, she was hard-pressed for opportunities with the bat thereafter, and those 66 runs ended up being well over half the runs she scored in the entire tournament, though she maintained a good Strike Rate of 120.

The positives for England are that Nat Sciver (No. 3) and Heather Knight (No. 4) both had very good tournaments – especially in the case of Knight actually, who was playing second-fiddle for much of the time to Man Women Person (sorry Michael… which is it??? Ah yes…) Player of the Tournament Smriti Mandhana at No. 1.

England will though be less happy with the performances of their two opening batsmen, Tammy Beaumont and Dani Wyatt. Did the Vipers under-perform because Beaumont and Wyatt under-performed, or vice-versa? A bit of both, maybe?

One player who will have impressed her national selectors is Rachel Haynes at No. 5 – Ashes-winning captain she might be, but she is not guaranteed a spot in the Australian XI – and her 324 runs at a Strike Rate of 128 will have done her case no harm at all.

Lizelle Lee at No. 2 of course is sure of a spot in South Africa’s XI – her runs go without saying, but she also fielded very well, and will probably be secretly relieved that Trisha Chetty has made her peace with the selectors and been brought back into the wicket-keeping role for South Africa, so that Lee can now focus on her batting in the West Indies, as she was able to do here with tip-top results.

Player Played Runs SR
1. Smriti Mandhana (Storm) 10 421 175
2. Lizelle Lee (Stars) 11 352 149
3. Nat Sciver (Stars) 11 362 144
4. Heather Knight (Storm) 11 368 134
5. Rachel Haynes (Lightning) 11 324 128
6. Sophie Devine (Lightning) 11 269 147
7. Beth Mooney (Diamonds) 9 267 138
8. Amy Satterthwaite (Thunder) 10 277 127
9. Nicole Bolton (Thunder) 10 274 120
10. Suzie Bates (Vipers) 10 245 115
11. Rachel Priest (Storm) 11 183 140
12. Tammy Beaumont (Vipers) 7 198 128
13. Harmanpreet Kaur (Thunder) 7 164 152
14. Lauren Winfield (Diamonds) 8 205 120
15. Amy Jones (Lightning) 11 202 120
16. Elyse Villani (Lightning) 11 175 128
17. Sarah Taylor (Stars) 10 177 123
18. Dani Wyatt (Vipers) 9 172 123
19. Sara McGlashan (Vipers) 10 164 123
20. Mignon du Preez (Vipers) 10 174 104

Batting Ranking = Runs * Strike Rate

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17 thoughts on “STATS: KSL 2018 Batting Rankings”

  1. Smriti Mandhana – wow. Just wow.

    Haynes is at 5, not 3? Still an enigmatic situation because she still seems to come into the Australian XI when Lanning’s unavailable, and as specialist captain too. How many times since the start of the World Cup have the two been in the same XI?

    As for Suzie Bates, her season started in record-breaking style (I remember Raf going into raptures about her) but has seemed to go nowhere but down, since then. Homesickness?

    Thanks for this table – England’s top 5 or 6 seem to be nailed on for now (subject to Taylor’s availability), and I have no concerns about Wyatt and Beaumont. I now feel that Wyatt is better away from home, where the ball doesn’t do so much in the air, or come too quickly off the pitch, so the West Indies may be ideal for her. And Beaumont too seems to do best when she has those few extra microseconds in which to set herself up for her ramps, reverse sweeps and so on. With Taylor, Knight, Sciver et al to follow, Robinson can feel that, bar Australia, no other team can match England’s strength in depth right now (although Mandhana, Lee or Bates, on their day can single-handedly swing games their way of course).

    Is this the last international level women’s cricket we get until the T20 tournament in the West Indies?

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    • Corrected Haynes typo – thanks!

      For England this is *probably* the last cricket until November, but there were hopes of arranging something last-minute for October, so maybe not.

      Don’t think Suzie is homesick exactly – think she sees England as home-from-home these days – but she is maybe a bit tired after a non-stop couple of years?

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      • Ta for that: Bates has definitely had a long season. But I’d have thought the South Africans are in the same situation? (Not to mention England’s internationals.)

        But yes, many months of continuous cricket, so it’s understandable.

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      • It is not just this season – Suzie has hardly stopped for the past three years, with internationals, NZ domestic, WNCL/ WBBL, county for Kent/ Hampshire and KSL.

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  2. Is runs X strike rate a fair comparison, given that some players only played in 7 games compared to others who played in 11? Wouldn’t average X strike rate produce a fairer comparison?

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    • Agree that these stats are more a measure of the player’s impact on the tournament than their form.

      More broadly I have looked at a lot of different tweaks and they all tend to give the same answers anyway, so keeping it simple makes sense from that perspective.

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      • Some systems I’ve seen use “Average Plus Strike-Rate” i.e. giving much more weight to the strike-rate. In the women’s game, anything over 140-150 total would be very good.

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  3. “and whilst Sophia Dunkley had a good opening day, making her highest score of 66 against the Vipers, she was hard-pressed for opportunities with the bat thereafter, and those 66 runs ended up being well over half the runs she scored in the entire tournament”

    Just on Dunkley (of whom I have been a fan for many years)….
    She had scores of 66,5,0 (15 overs left),4,10*, 2 (12.5 overs left), 2, 6*, 1 (10.3 overs left) and 2 for a total of 98 runs, so several opportunities and 66 was two thirds of her total score. Not really a great KSL with the bat. But her day will come.

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    • It’s not just the aggregate of runs or Syd’s ranking system though. That 66 was very good in the context of how anyone else batted on that day, and of course getting that is more a sign of quality than scoring 3 20-odds instead of the low scores as well. There were a few times when she should have gone on, yes. She’s an aggressive player who got herself often making the mistake of trying to push it too hard early on instead of playing herself in. An example, yorking herself in the KSL semi-final. To me, there’s little doubt Dunkley appears to have all the attributes to be an international cricketer. She’s a great fielder (in Stars’ top 2 or 3) and has that useful unpredictability with the ball that you might turn to when a wicket’s needed.

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  4. So Syd, does Winfield get into your T20 World Cup squad? Seeing as she was ranked above Jones, Taylor and Wyatt? . IMHO she’s not been given enough of a chance in the shortest format but we seem to be more inclined to pick her in ODI’s, which always seemed strange to me.

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      • Although it’s worth noting that her strike rate is relatively low (a problem that Aus had with both Lanning and Haynes until recently, and still a concern for me re Sarah Taylor).

        I do not know how good Loz is as a six-hitter but in T20s rotating the strike with the occasional four is no longer good enough.

        Having said which, of course she’s a great player and nobody would be happier than me if she comes good in the West Indies.

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  5. Interesting that the Vipers’ batters strike rates are lower. How much of it is down to slower pitches, especially at Southampton, and how much is down to poor form?

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  6. Pingback: STATS: KSL 2018 Bowling Rankings | CRICKETher

  7. If anyone is trying to select off a set of T20 batting statistics then take them with a large ‘pinch of salt’.
    (Rather like the discussion about bowlers bowling in the powerplay verses bowling bowlers bowling out of the powerplay), T20 batting statistics need a dose of context that grows in size the further down the order one bats. One almost needs to see many innings of (at least) the non-opening batsman to grasp their form. Statistics will only take one so far.

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