Statistical challenge: Estimating a batsman's equivalent of a bowler's performance and vice versa.

[rkt.india]

Traditionally..statisticians list 5W hall as a celebrated landmark as much as a 100.

thn murli has over 60 100s

[patriot]

Traditionally..statisticians list 5W hall as a celebrated landmark as much as a 100

thn murli has over 60 100s

Why be surprised ? Murali has freak numbers and has been a virtual bowling machine one man army for Lanka. He averages well over 6 wickets/match for nearly 130 tests. How many bowlers in this history of the game average even 5wickets/match over 100 tests ?

[rkt.india]

Why be surprised ? Murali has freak numbers and has been a virtual bowling machine one man army for Lanka. He averages well over 6 wickets/match for nearly 130 tests. How many bowlers in this history of the game average even 5wickets/match over 100 tests ?

[saneindian]

All it takes is one good ball to get a batsman out whereas bowlers pick wickets even when they bowl rubbish. Bowling wides too can result in wickets. There have been many instances in test matches where bowlers start with a rubbish spell, take some rest, come back bowl more rubbish, comeback the next morning and bowla dream spell. Apply his situation for a batsman. There wont be too many instances of a batsman struggling in one session of play and yet surviving. Also when was the last time you heard a batsman sturggling his way to a 100? The other issue is, a bowler may take 4-5 wickets when a team is looking to score quick runs. A batsman under the same scenario is more likely to get out. Though the attempt is good and even your criteria seems to be fairly good, I am not sure if you would get results close to actual number. On that thought, maybe you could reverse the scenario and use the similar criteria to calculate hw many wickets SRT, Kallis, Ponting etc would have taken if their runs were to be converted to wickets. The reults there may tell us if the method used is really good or not.

[Temujin Khaghan]

very interesting. i would love to see the quantitative contribution of the four great allrounders.

[f.b.m]

F.B.M - Your attempt is like Ananth Narayanan - makes no sense and offers no explanation but seems to be an effort that has a lot of work behind it.

This is about as much fail as one can have in one post.

[SJS50]

This is a very interesting subject but a very easy one to make serious errors in. Before I put in my two penny worth me reiterate that one needs to take these things with more than a small pinch of salt :) A year or so back there was a debate on how to evaluate all rounders. Someone like Sobers is a much better batsman and someone else like Imran is a better bower. Just for this limited purpose I started looking at how to compare the bowling feats with the batting. One of the most interesting (and less hazardous than others) according to me was the five wicket (or more) hauls versus the centuries. How much is a five wicket haul worth in runs? How much is a six wicket haul worth and so on. It becomes much harder to move from a 7 wicket haul to an 8 wicket haul for example than from a 5 to a six wicket haul, for obvious reasons (there are only ten wickets (maximum) to take and the chances of the other bowler/s taking the rest increase exponentially as you go from 5 to 6 to 7 and so on. To cut a long story short, I came to these stats for all the Test matches played till then. I do not recall the exact date but I can find out though it cant change much in the time that has elapsed. 1. There have been (I use the present tense for convenience although the figures are about a year old) 2212 five wicket hauls in Test matches while the centuries have been as many as 3279. This is too big a difference (almost 50% more centuries than five wicket hauls) to be ignored. Thus clearly a five wicket haul is more rare (and thus needs higher weightage than a century if we are to use a simple method. 2. The closest equivalent of a five wicket haul in Tests (by frequency of occurrence) is between 113 + (2256 scores) and 114+(2189 scores). We will come back to this later 3. The rest is easier as can be seen from this table

[B]Feat    	Number	Feat          	Number[/B]
6 wkt + hauls	841	150 + scores	897
7 wkt + hauls	285	200 + scores	289
8 wkt + hauls	76	250 + scores	74
9 wkt + hauls	16	300 + scores	23
10 wkt hauls	2	400 + scores	1

The closeness of those numbers makes it easy to equate the 6-10 wicket hauls with the corresponding scores like this. . .

[B]Wkt Haul	Equivalent score[/B]
6              	150-199
7              	200-249
8              	250-299
9              	300-399
10            	400 +

Then comes the issue of what to do with the haul of exactly five wickets per innings. I think we have to, in order to be fair, forget the century mark. It is not just arbitrary in the sense that far too much importance is added to that single run which takes a batsman from 99 to hundred than the one which takes him from 100 to 101. For a bowlere its not a question of just bowling another ball or another over. He has to get another wicket and there are only ten of them. The batsman's extra run could be one from 500 or more in that innings. Also a batsman on 99 has the luxury of the captain waiting for him to try and reach that mile stone. The same does not apply to a bowler. The fact that almost 600 of Test centuries are of scores between 100 and 106 is a good indicator of how the importance of those extra runs for record purposes is used by batsmen. That luxury is not available to bowlers. Thus I have no problem is equating a five wicket haul to a score between 115 to 149. The 115 is for getting a slightly rounder figure. If one is a stickler, one could go for 114 or 113 and if one wants to be more generous to the batsmen and use the excuse of further rounding off, one could go for 110 :) It is difficult to get information on four wicket hauls easily but if one could, it may be possible to equate a four wicket haul to a score, lets say, of between 80 and 114 (whatever). Okay this is food for thought and to have fun with stats and to realise how great Murali's five wicket hauls are. , , , puts him in line with Tendulkar , no ? One can go further and take the match hauls (or ten wicket hauls and look at two five wicket hauls as two separate hundreds in a match. Gives the Indian fans kumble the equal of Lara's 400 run score ! And what of Laker's triple century and a quadruple century in the same match !! Some of these numbers are obviously more difficult to accept. For example the very fact that a batsman's century or double or triple tends to increase the amount of time consumed while the bowler's wickets curtail it. Hence no batsman will ever have the time to make an equivalent of Laker's record but this does put his record's uniqueness in perspective. One can also do an excercise with match hauls of wickets and weigh it against runs scored in a match and come up with some kind of equivalence. Its fun and time pass as long as you dont take it so seriously as to come to blows. . . well verbal blows at least Take care :)

[Ram]

From a purely analytical point of view, this’d probably be a good exercise. But from a pure utility standpoint, the results/conclusions you will get wont even be worth the kilobytes of memory space they take.

[bharathh]

Why do you want to equate batting and bowling? Bowling as an art is completely different from batting.

[f.b.m]

This is a very interesting subject but a very easy one to make serious errors in. Before I put in my two penny worth me reiterate that one needs to take these things with more than a small pinch of salt :) ...... Its fun and time pass as long as you dont take it so seriously as to come to blows. . . well verbal blows at least Take care :)

This is all well and good but what about runs conceded in taking those 5 wicket hauls? Would 5/180 from Danish Kaneria have the same weight-age as Jerome Taylor's 5/11? Would it show that 3 of Kaneria's wickets were tailenders whereas all of Taylor's dismissals are specialist batsmen/wk? ps: I'm posting this in full knowledge that this whole line of statistical masturbation is complete bs. I can post my whole thought experiment of making cricket a single variable sport and how it makes no sense at all, in case someone is interested..

[b555]

sad seeing the spirit of cricket being taken away by numb3rs :((

[dial_100]

I dont know...if this will ever make sense to draw equivalency in these two areas..next is what??? finding equivallency in umpiring or fielding?? Anyway, my main important point here among possibly many is the concept of bowling and batting, which are so different. On a bad day, unlike bowlers, batsman gets out, he loses opportunity to score any more. But bowler on a bad day can take a break for a session or two and come back bowl brilliantly to take 5 wkts in the last session, he still remains the best bowler in the innings. But batsmen cann't do that. If batsman is not timing properly or seeing the ball properly, he still has to go through his innings, and lose wkt, batsman is not the best for that innings. Bowler gets to chose who he will bowl to but not the batsman..On a difficult pitch he can't avoid a bowler. So no comparison.

[Mr Eintstein]

When you do all this take averages into account. and btw, this is quite clearly a statistics heavy thread. If all you're going to do is make stupid smart alec comments about statistics ruining cricket etc, then just stay out in the first place.

[SJS50]

Read my lips . . .

. . .Its fun and time pass as long as you dont take it so seriously . . .

As Mr Einstein put it so aptly this IS about stats so why decry it. Its like going to an "RIP Bedser" thread and saying "he was crap". . . kidding. :) To answer some of the other points. . . Of course it is difficult to equate one five wicket haul with another but doesn't the same apply to centuries ? As regards averages, I agree they are important, not least because we have all grown up considering them as the most important way to evaluate cricketers. But it is more difficult to do so when taking batting versus bowling. Trust me it has been tried before. It keeps raising questions which are very pertinent. So one tried to look beyond averages. I agree with the posters who say it is impossible to compare batsmen with bowlers entirely. It has to be. Why, its so difficult to compare batsmen with batsmen :) Thats why this was done for all rounders although it would help if one went further with four and three wicket hauls etc for example. One can use some other criteria as well. for example Wkts per test versus runs per Test. This brings in something akin to the averages. One can do more but it is too much trouble for something for which there is not much enthusiasm.

[f.b.m]

Of course it is difficult to equate one five wicket haul with another but doesn't the same apply to centuries ?

No. A 100 means the guy has scored at least a 100 runs without conceding his wicket. A 5 wicket haul can vary from absolute dogshite (as Pakistan fans would know) to 5/0 or 7/1 spells which white haired people would know about. Yes some 100s are more important than others but that can be compared to a vital wicket (like Ishant's wicket of Ponting in Perth) to many useless wickets that come before a declaration or something. If you mean that some hundreds are superior because of their strike rates, you can make the exact same argument for bowlers without bringing in runs conceded into the picture. Bottomline: Any conversion from wicket hauls to runs is bs without taking runs conceded into account. Then again, the whole thing is so why not partake in the mega statsguru-bukkake session that seems to be taking place these days.

[SJS50]

No. A 100 means the guy has scored at least a 100 runs without conceding his wicket. A 5 wicket haul can vary from absolute dogshite (as Pakistan fans would know) to 5/0 or 7/1 spells which white haired people would know about. Yes some 100s are more important than others but that can be compared to a vital wicket (like Ishant's wicket of Ponting in Perth) to many useless wickets that come before a declaration or something. If you mean that some hundreds are superior because of their strike rates, you can make the exact same argument for bowlers without bringing in runs conceded into the picture. Bottomline: Any conversion from wicket hauls to runs is bs without taking runs conceded into account. Then again, the whole thing is so why not partake in the mega statsguru-bukkake session that seems to be taking place these days.

:)

[bunny]

Separate the set of players into batsmen and bowlers. (So only the top 6 batsmen and the top 4 bowlers). Now let's say the top 6 vs top 4 average = 35. Now, if Sachin averages close to 45 against top 4, then his utility is +10. If Shane Warne averages 30 against top 6, then his utility if +5. The confusing thing though is that a bowler might be taking more wickets per match by bowling more overs (usually spinners do). So, utitlity = +5 * wickets / inning. But, somehow I believe averages are more predictive, and in that sense the utitlity of the bowler would be +5 * (6/4) (top 6 vs top 4). = 7.5 I think this can be modified/extended to handle the case of allrounders, tailenders etc. Though I feel that this exercise is much more fruitful in ODIs and T20s because one can pick bits and pieces players. In tests, usually the best strategy is to go with 6 batsmen and 4 bowlers.

[patriot]

No. A 100 means the guy has scored at least a 100 runs without conceding his wicket. A 5 wicket haul can vary from absolute dogshite (as Pakistan fans would know) to 5/0 or 7/1 spells which white haired people would know about. Yes some 100s are more important than others but that can be compared to a vital wicket (like Ishant's wicket of Ponting in Perth) to many useless wickets that come before a declaration or something. If you mean that some hundreds are superior because of their strike rates, you can make the exact same argument for bowlers without bringing in runs conceded into the picture. Bottomline: Any conversion from wicket hauls to runs is bs without taking runs conceded into account. Then again, the whole thing is so why not partake in the mega statsguru-bukkake session that seems to be taking place these days.

I wish you read and understood the context better. The context of the OP is purely QUANTITATIVE measure of UTILITY of TEST CRICKETERS by a SINGLE METRIC i.e. RUNS. Most of the conundrums in this conversion, cease to exist because they balance out. We are NOT talking STRIKE RATES here, EITHER batting OR BOWLING. Infact, you are utterly wrong when you say that " conversion from wickets to runs is bs without taking into consideration runs conceded for the wickets ". Anil Kumble's 5 for 150 odd delivered the knock out punch in the Adelaide game in 04 and he has similarly he has taken many 5 fors and 6 fors conceding 100 -120+ runs , that have been decisive factors in the game. On the other hand there are plenty of 5 fors by quickies with much lesser runs conceded that may have not resulted in a positive result because of the context of the game , run wise. Infact, in matches where 450 + has been scored by batsman in either side a 5 for 120 by a single bowler would probably hold more utility in the match context than big centuries scored by batters on either side. Which is why it is BOWLERS who make the difference in TESTS more so when they yield results in either a low scoring match or a high scoring one ( where batters from either side score plenty ). Again coming back to the point that I have been trying to prove through this experiment -that UTILITY wise top test bowlers WILL ALMOST ALWAYS triumph top batsman - because they make the end difference. Which is why I find through this experiment TOP BOWLERS - runs equivalent utility is ahead of batters - like I have shown in previous posts. Think of the great Australian batting line up of the past, you have the super prolific batsman. Ponting has scored almost 10,000 runs in a single decade. Then you have the Hayden's , Langer's Steve Waugh's etc ...but Shane Warne along with Mcgrath were their triumph match deciders. . Way ahead of any other test match batter . By my experiment Shane Warne's 708 test wickets are equivalent to test runs as follows: Decade of 90's - 351 test wickets * 24.182 ( which is avg of avg of TOP 15 test bowler's of 90's) = 8487.882 test equivalent runs. Decade of 2000 - 357 test wickets * 26.89 ( which is avg of avg of TOP 15 test bowler's of 2000's ) = 9599.73 test equivalent runs. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 708 Warne test wickets = 18087 equivalent test runs. Seems a lot, but if you have followed a bit of cricket, you would know that Warne was arguably the heart beat of the Aussie winning machine. So it isn't any wonder to see his UTILITY WORTH. Finally, if it makes it simpler to understand why a top bowler's utility,far exceeds that of a TOP batsman - in a playing XI, you have 7 batters in a side ( lets assume none of the 4 bowler's can bat ) and 4 bowlers. If you have 2 superstar prolific batmen and 2 superstar prolific bowlers . Isn't it basic math to understand why the bowler's utility will be more than a batter ? I have conducted an experiment above with data from last 40 years of test cricket with an error of just 5 % , in terms of converting wickets to equivalent runs . If you can come out with a more accurate experiment, please be my guest.

[Kriterion]

good thread. perhaps a much simpler, if less fun, method would be to simply equate Murali's current/eventual wicket haul with Sachin's current/eventual run tally. do the similar thing with the top averages of guys who took bowled more than 1000 overs and batted in at least 50 innings. then do the same thing with strike rates and also economy rates (limited overs matches only). as a response to marirs_mania who postulates that such an endeavor will only create ludicrious comparisons, i will counter and say that the ONLY thing such a comparison will do is to create a quantitative way to measure statistical achievements up against each other. thus a bowler's wicket is equal to 16.979 of a batsman's runs (sachin/murali or 13447/792). thus a bowler's average is related to a batsmen's average by a factor of (bradman/barnes or 99.94/16.43 = 6.083)...thus the calculation is done thus and so: a bowler who averages 20 will equate to what batting average? simple algebra yields the answer: (20/16.43 = 99.94/x, x = 82.101) a batsmen who averages 45 will equate to a bowler who averages (99.94/45 = x/16.43, x = 36.489). there is apparently no comprehensive record of batting strike rates.