Indian pitches: a veritable graveyard for bowlers!

[Guest BossBhai]

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[Bongosamaj]

Pls lay down the details you want me to zoom in on .

Err, that is your job, not mine. I don't think it evens out,i think different countries have had different # of times where batting was easy/hard and as such, i DO NOT KNOW what you consider to be the factors that make it 'even out'. Hence i am requesting you to provide some info on just what factors are at play here for you to conclude this:

I agree with the fact that pitches keep changing their behaviour and its more visible if we zoom in on a time slice.... but my take is that it generally evens out especially when the dataset is soo huge and vast.

. You are saying it evens out, i am saying no, it doesn't since different countries have had different # of times when bowling/batting was easier there. So why are you asking me just on what details to focus on to show 'it evens out' ? I don't know, i don't think it evens out ! If anything, i am curious to see just what data leads to the conclusion that 'it evens out' !

[Guest BossBhai]

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[Guest BossBhai]

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[Bongosamaj]

but what is unmistakable is that Aus is the easiest place to bat at best is second to WI or Pak depending on which stat you like most.

Lets see. Australia : Highest RPT in 1980s but 3rd highest runs/wicket average ( thus, harder to bat than in India). 2nd highest RPT and 5th highest runs/wicket in the 1990s ( India is 4th, thus OZ is marginally easier in tthe 90s) and 2nd highest runs/wicket average (India is joint third, thus again, marginally easier than India) in the 2000s. Pakistan : 5th highest RPT in & 2nd highest runs/wicket average in the 80s ( second only to India, thus harder than to bat in India), lowest RPT & 3rd lowest rpw in the 90s ( definitely harder place to bat than India) and highest RPT & RPW in the 2000s era.. West Indies : 3rd highest RPT but 5th highest RPW in the 80s ( out of 8, thus making it harder than most places to bat in and harder than India), 8th highest RPT & 8th highest RPW in the 90s ( defintiely one of the hardest places to bat in in the 90s) and 5th highest RPT & 5th highest RPW in the 2000s era (again, harder to bat than in India). So, if rankings were made, out of India, Australia, Pakistan & West Indies, from the 3 decades you provided, the conclusion is this (in the order of easiest place to bat to hardest, in descending order) : 1980s: 1. India 2. Australia 3. Pakistan 4. West Indies 1990s: 1. Australia 2. India 3. West Indies 4. Pakistan 2000s: 1. Pakistan 2. Australia 3. India 4. West Indies ========= conclusion : Australia is an easier place to bat (based on your stats) than India but Pakistan & West Indies most definitely are not in the 3 decades presented overall. Pakistan has been easier in recent times but overall, its definitely been harder to bat than in INdia ( 2 decades harder, 1 eaiser comparatively) and west indies most consistently harder to bat in that India through ALL three decades provided. So, yes you are correct for Australia ( if one were to correctly analyze the limited statistics presented in a correct fashion) but you are wrong in case of Pakistan & west Indies.

[Bongosamaj]

very well then so I take it that you are happy with the metrics RPT and WPT but you just want to look at on a per decade basis (along with the no-followon thingy)

Err no, i am NOT okay with them. As i said, i don't think RPT and RPW ( not WPT) is a concise enough guage- there are still too many cricketing real life variables that it does not incorporate. Why arn't you getting this ? My point is simple : 1. Your guages are not very precise for any certainty in conclusion (just a very general idea which still misses many tangiables & intangiables) 2. Even if your stats analysis were to be taken into consideration and i was proven wrong in point #1, the logical analysis of the data YOU provided ITSELF leads to the conclusion that India has been one of the easier places to bat over the last 3 decades of cricket, ie, more easy than most places. So i am contesting your theory on TWO seperate counts- its overall validity and the conclusions you are drawing from your own dataset. How can i make this any more clearer ?

[Guest BossBhai]

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[Bongosamaj]

are not acceptable to you how did you form an opinion that XYZ country is easy/hard/notsoeasy/notsohard to bat ?

By analyzing your own metrics ! Let me put it in very simple example: I am the teacher, you are the student. I give you a problem and you make errorneous assumptions to solve the problem AND you muck-up the arithmetic. Then you come to me and i tell you : 1. Your assumptions were wrong and 2. even if they were right, your answer is still incorrect because you mucked up the arithmetic. Same case here. I am saying that 1) Your theory is too imprecise to be taken as anything but a very general/rough-guide idea and 2. Even if your theory is considered for the purpose of being a general/rough-guide, the conclusions you present are INCORRECT based on the logical extrapolations of your own theory. How is this not clear yet ? Not only is your theory imprecise, your conclusions are INCONSISTENT with the logical extrapolation of your own theories. Ie, wrong on two counts.

as well to which most people agree

Inconsistency from your part. You are on record claiming just a few days earlier that this is not a popularity contest when someone showed you how many people disagreed with you ( on the Bradman thread IIRC). So why are you now playing the 'popularity' card ?

[Guest BossBhai]

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[Bongosamaj]

meaning there is guage out there that is much more accurate according to which things could be different ...

I said no such thing or implied no such thing about the bolded part. I said that the guage presented is pretty imprecise and generalized. Infact, i do not think there are ANY good statistical guages out there to cogently represent cricket in a strong statistical way. Kindly do not put words in my mouth!

Can I know the theory that is more precise ?

The theory that says 'statistical analysis is just part of the story, the rest of the story is subject to opinion, thus cricketing ideas are not facts but opinions when looked close enough, barring the oddball exception cases in extremely few individuals or in extremely small periods of time. That theory is more precise but less quantifiable explanation of the phenomena. PS: Do you concede count #2 ? That by your own statistics, India is one of the easier places to bat in (which is more or less, in line with the opening post of the thread, in which the poster says that India is an easy place to batin) and while you were correct about Australia being an easier place to bat in, you were incorrect about West Indies and Pakistan being easier places to bat in ????

[Guest Hiten.]

Head Coach here is the stat that I was talking about .... very simple stat that counts every single Run that has ever been scored in Test Cricket ... and takes a ratio of RunsPerTest ... This table is sorted by the RunsPerTest Column and you can see who tops the list

 
Country       TotalRuns    Tests  RunsPerTest HomeTeamRunsPerTest 
Australia     373,138        361    1034        537
West Indies   201,638        196    1029        520
India         200,696        207     970        491
Pakistan       43,509        150     957        494
Zimbabw        41,953         44     953        468
Sri Lanka      79,454         84     946        489
England       414,024        440     941        481
South Africa  165,257        176     939        479
Bangladesh     20,994         23     913        412
New Zealand   145,179        161     902        439
 
 

wtffff.... Runspertest in Ausi is really high and as expected NZ is @ the bottom, Test matches in NZ last for maximum 2 and half days :cantstop:

[Guest BossBhai]

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[Bongosamaj]

because no matter what I present you are going to tell me "Cricket is not quantifiable"

Yes. My objective is to show you that cricket is a game and a matter of opinion for the large part, not a set of mathematical certainties or even accurately quantifiable by statistics beyond an imprecise point. I don't see why that means we shouldn't be having this discussion at all, since i am saying that your viewpoint is incorrect.

And going by that the ICC should not have statisticians on their payrolls nor should any of the experts on various TV Networks pay any attention to stats

its called capitalism 101. Make people pay attention to nonsense details for the sake of business venture. Rankings make good selling items. Doesn't mean there is any real realiability or meaning in these very arbitary 'rankings'. PS: What about point #2 ? Your own stats show that India is definitely one of the easier places to bat in by test standards and that it definitely is an easier place than Pakistan and West Indies from the timeframe you provided.

[Guest BossBhai]

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[Guest BossBhai]

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[Bongosamaj]

They existed even before the TV networks took over cricket or there were Relational Databases or computers for that matter

Err, capitalism and marketing gimmicks too, existed before Tv networks. Duh !

Cricket is a statisticians delight ... anybody who doesnt see that is in denial.

Correction : Cricket is a wannabe-statistician's delight. It is a sport filled with lots of meaningless numbers and numbers that still do not get anywhere close to much meaningful conclusion from the statistics, since the field of values have far higher standard deviation than permissible in ANY sort of statistical modelling. And i can state this with some authority - EE is just about THE MOST stats-heavy field taught in universities outside of actually majoring in statistics. So unless another fellow EE contradicts my perception of statistics & cricket or I have a statistician (in the official sense) contradicting me, sorry to say but your counter-opinion is of not much value here. And incase you don't notice- statisticians already know this and there are hardly any qualified statisticians (who have much better things to do anyways for the most part) take care of statistical analysis even in the most official sense. Sorry but the analysis such as yours or S.Rajesh from crickinfo are highly flawed from a purely statistical perspective and not very well placed in statistical processes either. Cricket has a whole bunch of numbers that every tom-dick-n-harry likes to crunch. But the conclusions led from the numbers are very very poorly formed from a statistical validity point of view.

[chanakya]

EE stands for? btw stats itself is flawed in most cases anyway.

[yoda]

as the datasets are substantial it takes quite a lot to get these numbers to shift proffesor ... so even a 2 point difference in avg makes a substantial difference. Sort of like the temp of ocean.:D

Good point.

[Guest BossBhai]

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[The Outsider]

And i can state this with some authority - EE is just about THE MOST stats-heavy field taught in universities outside of actually majoring in statistics. So unless another fellow EE contradicts my perception of statistics & cricket or I have a statistician (in the official sense) contradicting me, sorry to say but your counter-opinion is of not much value here. And incase you don't notice- statisticians already know this and there are hardly any qualified statisticians (who have much better things to do anyways for the most part) take care of statistical analysis even in the most official sense.

Bongo, it's because of statements like these that you tend to rub people the wrong way at times. Fine, you are doing Electrical Engineering but to extrapolate from there that no one else knows as much statistics as you do except if he is an Electrical Engineer or a statistician is a bit presumptuous. I can safely say, in my former field, Astrophysics some of the latest and most sophisticated statistical methods are used. Some of the research gets published in Statistics journals instead of Physics/Astrophysics journals. The data set observational Astrophysicts deal with is enormous. You can search for statistics related papers from Astrophysics at http://xxx.lanl.gov/archive/astro-ph among the latest and you will find they would be as statistics heavy as in any other field. Regarding statistics and cricket, there are two things, one of which you have pointed out, it's a sport and a lot of it is subjective. Also, even if one were to do some complicated statistical analyses they won't serve any purpose. The vast majority of your audience are not statistics expert and would not understand your analysis. But it's not to say statistics are useless. Simple intuitive analyses which can be understood by a large number of people and offer useful pointers are fun to read and do offer some genuine insights.