Introduction of "Error" as a stat in cricket...

[Ultimate_Game]

this used to be there in the titan cup 1996. during the titan cup' date=' espn-star sports were showing stats on tv which had runs saved & runs conceded for every fielder including dropped catches. dont know why they were discontinued[/quote'] They did and that too way back in 96! Didn't know that and must have missed it on TV. Stats shouldn't be based on factors such as the no. of threads that will be spawned off or the no. of debates we may have regarding the merits or demerits of various players. The idea is to provide a holistic picture about the players and their overall contributions. It's amazing that the discipline in which players spend maximum amount of time on an average (a player spends on an average 2-3 times the amount of time he spends batting or bowling in a match) doesn't have any statistic other than no. of catches which in itself is incomplete and gives a distorted view of a player's abilities. It's akin to having stats for total runs scored by a batsman but not having batting average. With advent of T20 and more focus on fielding I don't see any reason why stats regarding fielding are still ignored.

[vamos_rafa]

They did and that too way back in 96! Didn't know that and must have missed it on TV. Stats shouldn't be based on factors such as the no. of threads that will be spawned off or the no. of debates we may have regarding the merits or demerits of various players. The idea is to provide a holistic picture about the players and their overall contributions. It's amazing that the discipline in which players spend maximum amount of time on an average (a player spends on an average 2-3 times the amount of time he spends batting or bowling in a match) doesn't have any statistic other than no. of catches which in itself is incomplete and gives a distorted view of a player's abilities. It's akin to having stats for total runs scored by a batsman but not having batting average. With advent of T20 and more focus on fielding I don't see any reason why stats regarding fielding are still ignored.

I was trying to say something in tongue and cheek manner. I think you could not understand whom I was referring to :((. And regarding what you have said about fielding, yes it is an integral part of cricket. But the reason that it is unmeasured per se' is that there are very few people who are selected solely on the basis of their fielding abilities. I would say only Jonty Rhodes or Eknath solkar would really make the cut for this. But, catching this data is a useful idea. Someone mentioned that runs saved is a very subjective topic. I would say that just like a batsman getting out because of an umpiring error is similar to a fielder misfielding because of a bad bounce.

[Ultimate_Game]

I was trying to say something in tongue and cheek manner. I think you could not understand whom I was referring to :((. And regarding what you have said about fielding, yes it is an integral part of cricket. But the reason that it is unmeasured per se' is that there are very few people who are selected solely on the basis of their fielding abilities. I would say only Jonty Rhodes or Eknath solkar would really make the cut for this. But, catching this data is a useful idea. Someone mentioned that runs saved is a very subjective topic. I would say that just like a batsman getting out because of an umpiring error is similar to a fielder misfielding because of a bad bounce.

Runs saved may be subjective but at least dropped catches and misfield (as long as the misfield results in a run or more) is comparatively easier. As for being subjective, these stats will even out in the end just like batsman's average and will give a fair indication of a player's fielding abilities and what he is worth on the field.

[yoda]

Are you telling me a dropped chance (a la Gibbs in 99) or a run-out affected are not game-changers?

Anything can be a game changer, that's not the point. In baseball a dropped catch typically means an extra run or two and when scorelines read 1-0 and 3-2, it is not just a game changer, it could be a game decider. In cricket, especially tests, if a fielder drops a catch and the batsman makes an additional 25-50 runs, it may not even mean much unless the side is getting all out.

[Pagalpanti]

You don't need stats to point out that Kamran Akmal leads this department. :P

[f.b.m]

But I don't see any difference between judgement made by a scorer regarding awarding an error and judgement made by an umpire in giving a batsman out. Ultimately the scorer would be the same for the whole match and over a period of time the stat will even out just like a batsman's average does provided that a batsman has played for a while.

There are different scorers in different matches. Some fielders might consistently get more difficult catches than others (short leg fielders for example). There are many factors.

And I wouldn't worry too much about agility/enthusiasm etc. Just like a batsman can be tall/fat/short/stocky etc. but all that matters is runs scored and batting average, similarly all that matters for a fielder is run-outs affected, runs conceded (misfields) or catches dropped - does not matter what the attributes of the fielder is. The whole point is to bring fielding as a discipline into the mainstream just like batting or bowling. IMO this is one area cricket is lacking and can improve upon, i.e. no recognition of fielding as a discipline.

Agility and enthusiasm means everything in fielding. As I've said before: a good fielder can rack up more misfields and dropped catches because he would dive and reach distances that Ramesh Powar cant. You havent addressed this point. Also more fundamentally, fielding isnt recognized as a discipline because there can be no objective benchmark like runs, wickets or number of deliveries (no subjectivity in any of these) which are the numbers that batting and bowling stats are based on. And simplifying it down to dropped catches or misfields really doesnt paint the full picture.

[Ultimate_Game]

Agility and enthusiasm means everything in fielding. As I've said before: a good fielder can rack up more misfields and dropped catches because he would dive and reach distances that Ramesh Powar cant. You havent addressed this point. Also more fundamentally, fielding isnt recognized as a discipline because there can be no objective benchmark like runs, wickets or number of deliveries (no subjectivity in any of these) which are the numbers that batting and bowling stats are based on. And simplifying it down to dropped catches or misfields really doesnt paint the full picture.

As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts the stats will be scored by the scorer similar to in baseball. Thus if the scorer deems that Powar should have stopped a particular ball or should have caught the ball he will penalize Powar for it. Similarly if somebody like AB De Villiers gets a hand to the ball or makes an unbelievable effort to try and stop the ball but is unsuccessful and the scorer deems that the ball wasn't really catchable or stoppable, De Villiers wouldn't have the error against his name. It's the same principle as baseball as the same subjectivity is there in baseball as well. I see this as no different to batsmen adjudged LBW by various umpires in different matches. Some umpires give line decisions in favor of bowlers while others are more conservative and won't easily give a batsman out LBW. Similarly some scorers might be more hard on fielders while others will be more tolerant. But just as the batting average and decisions even out in the end, so will the fielding stats over time as the scorers will be same for all the fielders in the same match just like umpires. Again, the point I made is that if a cricket player spends majority of his time fielding over his career why not have some stats to reflect the same? Why such a step-motherly treatment to a pretty important area of the game which has gained importance over the last few years with the advent of T20 and also with advances in TV coverage of cricket games as gone are the days when we used to see batsman's behinds while the bowler was running in or camera cutting in a different place while the ball traveled to a different zip code. I mean isn't it unfair to show the stat where it says Dravid has 160 catches and Mark Waugh 140 without qualifying those nos. with Dravid having 48 drops along with just 6 runouts affected whereas Waugh just had 14 drops against his name with 17 runouts affected?