The CRICKETher Weekly – Episode 162

This week:

  • We’re at Beckenham watching Vipers get back on track in the RHF
  • Raf chats to Player of the Match Lauren Bell
  • Rumours that The Men’s Hundred could be abolished… but what about the women?
  • Why we’re uncomfortable about the proposed overseas draft in WBBL

The CRICKETher Weekly – Episode 160

This week:

  • WPL set to clash with WBBL – what happens now?
  • Players to watch out for in the RHF Trophy
  • New report into the finance of English cricket – is The Hundred sustainable?
  • West Indies sack Courtney Walsh, but was he the problem?
  • (Also… Syd is angry with the rain!)

The CRICKETher Weekly – Episode 159

This week:

  • #WPL going home and away
  • Frustrating pay disparities in England men’s & women’s cricket
  • We’ve FINALLY got some red ball domestic cricket… but why are the ECB keeping it so quiet?

PS – Can you guess the two players on the backdrop today, playing in a Super 4s game a few years back?

The CRICKETher Weekly – Episode 158

This week:

  • FairBreak on TV & why the ICC needs to intervene in the broadcast landscape
  • Australia’s pay rises & the importance of player associations effectively representing their women members
  • Will Phoebe Litchfield get to play in the Ashes?

WPL: Bowling Metrics – Do The Ishaque And Vac

It’s always tough to make an impact as a bowler in short-form cricket – you only get 24 balls at most, when the top batters get far more than that. (Imagine if batters had to retire after facing 24 balls?) Furthermore, although there has been a downwards trend in 1st innings totals, WPL has not been a bowlers’ tournament.

But this means that (as someone once said) every ball counts all the more; and the cream rises to the top with the likes of Sophie Ecclestone and Marizanne Kapp showing why they are always amongst the top picks for these franchise tournaments.

A breakthrough player can sometimes still spring a surprise though, and the big one at WPL has been Saika Ishaque (international caps: zero) who tops the ball-by-ball rankings having bowled with metronomic consistency – bagging dot after dot (a dot less than every other ball) while conceding a wide only every 134 balls. Oh… and she took some wickets too – 13 of them, which is unlucky for some – batters, mainly!

TEAM Balls Per… Avg Run Rate
Wicket Dot Single 2/3 4/6 Wide 1st Ins 2nd Ins PP
Mumbai Indians 14 2.20 3.00 30 7 53 7.48 5.56 5.61
Delhi Capitals 22 2.51 2.70 31 6 54 6.70 8.02 6.28
UP Warriorz 22 2.64 2.93 21 5 36 8.16 8.57 7.94
RCB 30 3.12 2.76 29 4 43 9.46 9.62 8.48
Gujarat Giants 22 3.07 2.77 38 4 26 9.23 9.84 9.36
 
PLAYER Balls Per… Avg Run Rate
Wicket Dot Single 2/3 4/6 Wide 1st Ins 2nd Ins PP
S Ishaque 11 1.94 3.19 134 7 134 6.64 4.82 6.30
IECM Wong 19 2.05 3.71 58 7 38 6.60 6.25 6.00
S Ecclestone 12 2.23 2.70 20 8 72 6.27 6.25 5.33
M Kapp 21 1.85 4.23 37 6 37 4.83 7.50 5.71
AC Kerr 12 2.21 2.82 41 6 0 9.20 5.20 0.00
S Pandey 17 2.25 3.21 68 5 45 6.36 7.91 7.33
NR Sciver 17 2.07 3.69 20 7 39 8.44 5.00 4.09
TG Norris 10 2.58 2.58 67 5 67 7.75 8.29 0.00
HK Matthews 12 2.71 2.28 19 10 33 6.25 6.33 6.80
S Asha 21 3.11 2.21 42 5 0 9.10 6.75 0.00
A Capsey 27 2.96 2.05 40 8 40 9.50 5.44 6.75
A Gardner 16 2.90 2.84 36 4 0 9.00 10.33 10.00
KJ Garth 15 2.58 3.19 27 5 19 7.75 8.35 8.33
RS Gayakwad 26 2.49 3.07 19 5 0 7.43 8.75 7.30
JL Jonassen 28 2.90 2.62 17 5 139 8.17 8.73 5.57
DB Sharma 16 3.11 2.38 18 6 29 8.06 8.00 5.00
S Rana 26 2.91 2.42 64 6 26 8.00 8.83 6.75
ML Schutt 44 2.83 2.89 27 4 133 9.67 8.00 7.09
RP Yadav 78 3.00 2.52 16 5 0 6.33 11.75 7.00
SR Patil 20 3.41 2.61 33 3 0 10.00 10.67 12.00
Renuka Singh 101 2.89 3.16 25 4 101 8.89 11.43 7.78
TP Kanwar 36 2.94 2.72 48 5 29 7.67 9.76 10.55
SFM Devine 20 2.46 4.54 20 5 12 8.25 15.00 8.00
Preeti Bose 30 3.75 2.31 0 3 0 10.50 10.00 13.20
K Anjali Sarvani 50 3.00 3.09 20 6 11 9.42 6.00 8.70
EA Perry 47 2.92 3.04 20 6 14 8.57 9.14 6.80
HC Knight 11 6.14 2.26 22 4 43 11.67 13.00 0.00
A Sutherland 31 3.72 2.82 93 3 23 10.71 14.00 7.50
M Joshi 26 3.47 3.06 17 4 13 8.50 11.83 10.67
©CRICKETher.com/cricsheet.org

WPL: Batting Metrics – The Real Value Of Jemimah Rodrigues

These rankings offer a little bit of a shift in perspective to those you’ll see elsewhere, because they completely ignore the total number of runs scored (or wickets taken) and look purely at ball-by-ball performance. They aren’t better or worse than the absolute rankings, but they are different… and we like different!

The epitome of this is Jemimah Rodrigues, who has looked poor value in terms of her absolute numbers. She was one of the most expensive players in the competition, costing Delhi Capitals 2.2 Cr – twice as much as Meg Lanning – but while Meg Lanning was the top run-scorer in the group stages with 310 runs, Jemimah was well down the pack, at 22nd with 117 runs.

And it is true that Jemimah has not been in the best of form – she’ll be disappointed with 117 runs and a highest score of 34*.

But what the metrics show is that even when she is out of form, she maintains her ball-by-ball numbers like (almost) no one else. She might not be finding the boundary, but she is getting off strike, taking a single every 1.8 balls (by far the lowest number of balls per single in WPL) and running like the clappers to also take a 2 or 3 every 15 balls. And this is what you want in short-form franchise cricket – no one is going to be in form every tournament, so what you need is players who will adapt to their lack of form, and not waste deliveries trying to bat themselves back into form at the team’s expense.

(It is even more important in The Hundred, with its ultra-short format, which is why it is a pity Jemimah priced herself out of the market by setting her reserve price to the top salary band. But to be fair, if I’d just made £220,000 in the WPL,  I probably wouldn’t think £25,000 was worth getting out of bed for either, so no shade on her for that!)

Compare and contrast with Ash Gardner – another of the highest-paid players – who after a brilliant T20 World Cup also struggled for form at WPL, but who seemed to let that get to her and didn’t really deliver in either absolute (10th) or ball-by-ball (15th) numbers.

Unsurprisingly, the highest-ranked English player in the ball-by-ball metrics is Alice Capsey. Capsey is the personification of the ball-by-ball approach to cricket, and as such I suspect we’ll look back on her debut in The Hundred as a watershed moment in the history of the women’s game. She came in, aged 16, and showed that you could go at a strike rate of 100 from ball one, and it changed people’s expectations. She’s yet to make a really big score, but she will… and does it really matter anyway if she’s hitting at 13.5 runs per over when she’s in the middle?

TEAM Balls Per… Avg Run Rate
Wicket Dot Single 2/3 4/6 1st Ins 2nd Ins PP
Delhi Capitals 21 3.04 2.67 25 5 9.29 8.82 9.39
Mumbai Indians 24 2.69 3.03 31 4 8.27 9.39 7.42
RCB 18 2.68 2.83 35 5 7.64 9.29 8.64
UP Warriorz 21 2.68 2.84 27 5 7.54 8.50 6.31
Gujarat Giants 17 2.45 2.79 27 6 8.10 4.89 6.38
 
PLAYER Balls Per… Avg Run Rate
Wicket Dot Single 2/3 4/6 1st Ins 2nd Ins PP
Shafali Verma 21 3.06 3.96 21 3 11.30 14.50 11.36
JI Rodrigues 23 5.00 1.80 15 7 9.22 7.00 0.00
JL Jonassen 24 3.43 2.53 16 4 15.00 8.25 0.00
SFM Devine 22 3.08 3.08 31 3 8.11 12.50 10.93
SR Patil 21 2.93 3.42 21 4 9.20 16.00 0.00
TM McGrath 30 2.98 3.13 30 4 9.33 10.92 9.00
H Kaur 32 3.37 2.98 64 3 11.31 11.33 0.00
M Kapp 49 3.03 2.26 49 6 11.60 7.40 0.00
MM Lanning 37 2.95 2.90 26 5 9.14 8.00 8.69
AJ Healy 26 3.07 2.87 33 4 7.75 11.00 8.85
A Capsey 17 2.48 4.00 52 3 13.50 12.80 10.00
S Ecclestone 42 2.47 2.80 11 7 6.50 9.50 0.00
D Hemalatha 16 2.95 2.71 33 5 12.20 9.00 9.00
NR Sciver 46 2.60 3.37 35 4 7.44 10.08 7.80
A Gardner 18 3.12 2.41 27 5 9.40 8.00 0.00
EA Perry 28 3.04 2.30 43 5 8.31 8.64 8.17
SIR Dunkley 11 2.28 7.13 14 3 11.00 0.00 11.00
HC Knight 21 3.04 2.58 43 4 6.50 10.36 9.00
HK Matthews 30 2.32 3.21 38 5 8.40 8.64 8.08
KS Ahuja 13 2.42 3.94 21 4 10.67 9.50 0.00
RM Ghosh 23 2.39 2.94 46 6 9.71 6.86 0.00
H Deol 27 2.84 2.56 27 5 8.67 5.50 6.11
Simran Shaikh 11 2.44 2.00 22 22 5.50 0.00 0.00
S Rana 9 2.43 2.43 17 9 6.50 7.00 0.00
S Mandhana 16 2.07 3.86 28 5 5.83 9.00 8.00
YH Bhatia 24 2.18 3.55 47 5 5.40 9.33 7.24
KP Navgire 21 2.02 3.75 26 7 7.00 7.30 6.18
DP Vaidya 15 2.92 2.24 38 10 6.00 6.55 6.00
DB Sharma 19 2.45 2.30 38 11 7.50 5.13 0.50
S Verma 23 2.42 2.30 46 15 5.75 6.00 2.00
S Meghana 14 1.95 4.00 42 6 6.40 7.00 6.00
A Sutherland 9 1.64 4.50 12 12 7.33 2.00 3.00
S Sehrawat 7 1.75 3.50 0 11 8.00 3.50 3.50
©CRICKETher.com/cricsheet.org