Spot-fixing - Random thoughts

I do not have anything to say about the spot-fixing except that there is a lot going on behind the scenes.

While the television channels and journalists are speaking & writing away to glory about Srinivasan, there are few points that are still puzzling to me

1. If Srinivasan gets into trouble because he is father-in-law to Gurunath, is Dhoni not to be troubled? After all, he is a Vice President at India Cements!
2. Sreesanth had alleged that the slap-gate controversy was covered up. This 1-2 weeks before he was caught. 12th April was the date he mentioned this. Sreesanth was then arrested, as we all know, and in this article Neeraj Kumar (commissioner of Delhi Police) provided a detailed explanation of its investigation that began in early April. Was it after his allegation? Did Sree have any wind of what was coming?
3. Why did I mention point #2? Because when he was arrested, his father blamed Harbhajan Singh and MS Dhoni for the arrest. Why of all people Harbhajan and Dhoni? 
4. As soon as news of Sreesanth's arrest came out in the open, his brother-in-law alleges foul play and the reason he mentioned was to stop the wedding planned in September!! Why would a wedding get stalled if you were innocent?

Anyway, few points that I thought were not being covered as much as the others and I will leave it to you to fill the gaps.

Best of best against Mumbai Indians

Mumbai Indians have finished IPL6 as the winners.

Let us arrive at a team that can take them on in a match for "Champions". This team is based on performances in the latest IPL and follows the same rules that govern the selection of a playing eleven (4 foreigners).

1. Michael Hussey (CSK)
2. Chris Gayle (RCB)
3. Virat Kohli (RCB)
4. Suresh Raina (CSK)
5. Shane Watson (RR)
6. Rahul Dravid (RR) - captain
7. Dwayne Bravo (CSK)
8. Dale Steyn (SRH)
9. Mohit Sharma (CSK)
10. Amit Mishra (SRH)
11. R Vinay Kumar (RCB)
12. Sunil Narine (KKR) - 12th man

Four players from the finalist CSK, three from RCB (who failed to qualify for semis), two from RR, two from SRH make the list while one from KKR is the twelfth man.

If we restrict the team to consist of only Indians, what will the team look like

1. Ajinkya Rahane (RR)
2. Murali Vijay (CSK)
3. Suresh Raina (CSK)
4. Virat Kohli (RCB)
5. Rahul Dravid (RR) - captain
6. MS Dhoni (CSK) - wicket-keeper
7. Yusuf Pathan (KKR)
8. R Vinay Kumar (RCB)
9. Amit Mishra (SRH)
10. Umesh Yadav (DD)
11. Mohit Sharma (CSK)
12. Robin Uthappa (PW)

If one tries to come up with a team comprising of foreigners only, the team will be

1. Michael Hussey (CSK)
2. Chris Gayle (RCB)
3. Aaron Finch (PW)
4. Shane Watson (RR)
5. Dwayne Bravo (CSK)
6. Thissera Perera (SRH)
7. AB De Viliers (RCB)
8. David Miller (KXIP)
9. Adam Gilchrist (KXIP)
10. Dale Steyn (SRH)
11. Sunil Narine (KKR)
12. Darren Sammy (SRH)

What is your opinion on this? Have I left anyone in these teams?

IPL6 for Mumbai

During my morning stroll to the local market, I noticed a vendor who was sporting CSK jersey. Obviously, the topic shifted from tomatoes to last night's IPL final. The Chennai lad mentioned that he switched off once Albie Morkel was dismissed (even though captain MSD was still at the crease) - why? Dhoni needed someone to farm the strike and the ask was too much even for the champion batsman. Fair. Question was asked regarding the decision to send Raina when Hussey got dismissed in the first over itself. Why not send someone like Badrinath who could have settled the innings? Fair once again. It is very enlightening speaking to such folks on the street who are still following the League even with all its controversies (maybe Srinivasan is also having similar conversations!)

The discussion then moved to the spot-fixing controversy that is ongoing. The young lad mentioned that it would be no surprise that couple of days later, there would be reports coming in that talk about the IPL6 final being fixed as well! Very interesting indeed. Interesting because I noticed in Facebook that there were updates from my friends and contacts on how CSK's initial run made the bookies put all the money on a probable win only for Mumbai to win at the last minute! Is this what we have come to? What happens to Kieron Pollard's match-winning innings or Lasith Malinga's toe-crushing yorker to Hussey? Is this not the real deal?

The match itself was a good contest with both teams losing early wickets and making a recovery to post a total, only difference being Mumbai had 23 more runs than Chennai. Sachin Tendulkar's absence from the team meant that he was not part of the eleven that won the title (just like Champions League) but it looks like it did not matter. SRT was enjoying as much as Ricky Ponting. Which team can comprise of players outside the playing eleven that had a combined experience of 60,000 test and ODI runs? Which team can manage a support staff that has Anil Kumble, John Wright, Robin Singh, Jonty Rhodes? Only a team that can be funded and managed by the Ambani's, according to the Tamil lad (it is quite popular in Tamil Nadu to relate Ambani to one who is rich and famous). Such a team could upset a gigantic team like Chennai SuperKings in the IPL final, hoped the team owners. On 26th May, the hope became reality.

2013 Champions Trophy - Indian team to be announced

The Indian team will be announced on 4th May for this year's Champions Trophy, pruning down the list from the 30-member squad announced earlier.

The probables separated by different categories are as follows:

• Openers - M Vijay, Shikhar Dhawan, Gautam Gambhir, Unmukt Chand. Based on the IPL performances, Gambhir and Chand do not have any performances to take note. Dhawan is high on confidence after his debut test as well as the matches he has played in IPL so far. Rahane can be the spare opener in the squad as well.
• Middle-order - Virat Kohli, Yuvraj Singh, Suresh Raina, Rohit Sharma, Manoj Tiwary, Ajinkya Rahane, Ambati Rayudu. Kohli, Raina will walk into the squad while Rahane is a good option to have. Manoj Tiwary is injured (again) and if he deems fit, he might be a strong contender along with the eternal selection - Rohit Sharma.
• Wicket-keepers - Kedar Jadhav, MS Dhoni, Wriddhiman Saha, Dinesh Karthik. There is no doubt on who is the main keeper. Karthik's blazing form in IPL means that he will play the dual role of spare wicket-keeper as well as a middle-order option.
• Spinners - R Ashwin, Amit Mishra, Ravindra Jadeja, Jalaj Saxena, Parvez Rasool. Since the Champions Trophy is being played in England, there is no need to have more than two spinners in the squad (especially when a lot of batsmen can bowl part-time spin as well).
• Medium/Fast Bowlers - Ishant Sharma, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Ashok Dinda, Umesh Yadav, Shami Ahmed, Irfan Pathan, Vinay Kumar, Praveen Kumar, Ishwar Pandey, Siddarth Kaul. It will be interesting to see which five bowlers will be selected for the tournament - my first preference would be  Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Umesh Yadav, Irfan Pathan, Vinay Kumar, Ishant Sharma. The performance of Bhuvneshwar against the likes of Gayle, Dhoni has been remarkable while Umesh has shown that he has recovered well from his injuries. Irfan provides an all-round option to the team wile Vinay has been one of the top five wicket-taking bowlers in IPL. Ishant Sharma comes in mainly for his "experience" as well as his speed. Praveen Kumar can be a good alternative if the selection committee needs to look beyond Ishant.

The final squad will thereby be

1. M Vijay, 
2. Shikhar Dhawan, 
3. Virat Kohli, 
4. Suresh Raina, 
5. Ajinkya Rahane, Amit Mishra
6. Rohit Sharma/Manoj Tiwary, 
7. MS Dhoni, 
8. Dinesh Karthik, 
9. R Ashwin, 
10. Ravindra Jadeja, 
11. Bhuvneshwar Kumar, 
12. Umesh Yadav, 
13. Irfan Pathan, 
14. Vinay Kumar, 
15. Ishant Sharma/Praveen Kumar

Update: The team was announced and as predicted, no Gambhir and Yuvraj were there in the squad. Amit Mishra is present in the team in place of Ajinkya Rahane while my suggestions of Manoj Tiwary and Praveen Kumar were rejected :( Not bad to see that my thinking was very close with Sandeep Patil and his team :)

IPL6 - Bowlers value

Looking at the bowlers just like we did the batsmen, I was trying to figure out which bowler is giving the best value to his team. In order to do so, we looked at the Top 25 bowlers again (in terms of wickets taken in this year's IPL) and evaluated their Averages, Economy and Strike rates.

 Average is not much of an issue in T20 matches (where the norm as seen is below 25 runs per wicket) while Economy rate is probably the best indicator of a bowler's utility value in this context (if a bowler gives less than 7 runs per over, he is deemed to have done a good job). The best value for money actually comes if the bowler takes a wicket (given by the strike rate), indirectly curbing runs scored (as Ravi Shastri would say, a dot ball in T20 cricket is like gold).

 Let us apply the formula to the bowlers and what do we have? Not much difference from the overall charts - Faulkner seems to be the wild-card for Rajasthan Royals (a five-wicket haul helping his cause) while spinners Narine and Mishra are doing pretty well.

Bravo and Vinay Kumar round off the top five at this time but it will be interesting to have a look at this table throughout the tournament for latest updates.

Rotation Rate in IPL6

Rotation Rate was one topic that I touched sometime ago. See this post for more details. Now, let us see how the players fare in the current IPL. It is a surprise that Chris Gayle ranks last in this list of Top-25 players! Obviously, Gayle plays a lot of boundaries as well as a number of dot-balls! I am sure this is one area that Jennings will request Chris to work upon. For those who like to see Gayle on top, please sort the table on Runs and voila!

The Chris Gayle match

The match that RCB played against Pune was splendidly tilting towards Chris Gayle! What a match it was - the statistics are staggering.

IPL6 - Stats Table

The latest points board is listed below, sorted on the number of wins by a team (divided by the matches played) The predictor based on the numbers of Top 50 bowlers and batsmen suggests the totals as follows

IPL6 - R-B Scorecard

The R-B scorecard for the tournament is attached above - it will get reflected with the latest match as soon it is over.

Update - This will not be updated further after the Gayle-storm that we witnessed in Bangalore on 23rd. Very rarely we get to see such a graph and I want to leave it here.

Update-2 - On second thoughts, the graph will be moved to a different post and the charts will be updated as usual.

T20 - what is the norm?

IPL6 is starting next week and the question on my mind was what to expect? Will there be a glut of runs or a comeback by the bowlers with a restraining performance? To do any forecasts, the next question was about the past track record. We are lucky to have data (only the top 50 players of the edition have been considered) from five previous seasons of IPL to analyze. That is exactly what I set out to do.


The numbers seem to differing within 10% of each other - let us look at them in detail. One glaring statistic is that the best season for bowlers is IPL2 when the tournament was held in South Africa (bowlers had the best average and strike-rate while batsmen had the least average and strike-rate).

Batting

• Strike-rate - The average strike-rate over the five editions is 128 runs per 100 balls. What this means is that the average score in a IPL T20 match will be 154 as per past data. 
• Average - The average average (no, its not a typo) is 29.77. The numbers are very close the past three years - amazing stuff! If each batsman scores 30 runs, five will get score past 150

If the average score is 154, then the team that scores this total will lose 5 wickets (assuming 30 runs per wicket). Will we see the scores of 140-150 for the loss of 4-5 wickets then? Let us see.

Bowling

• Strike-rate - The bowling strike-rate is 20.33 over the five editions. This works out to six wickets in the 20 overs (which is one wicket more than what we had assumed earlier)
• Average - The bowling average is 25.42 for five years. What this means is that for six wickets, the team will concede 150 (25 runs x 6 wickets) runs.

Again, using this data, let us tinker the conclusion after the batting numbers. 

Scores of 140-160 runs for the loss of 4-6 wickets will be the norm in IPL6. Will we see this?