While games are won on the pitch, the work of understanding cricket often comes down to statistics. Understanding these numbers can help you get more out of the game you love.
Since the very beginning of organised cricket in the 18th century, players and pundits have been using statistics to better understand the sport. There are literally centuries of data to pull from, giving analysts a lot of numbers with which to work.
Each game generates a huge amount of data, from batting averages to maiden overs. Understanding all this isn't crucial in order to enjoy cricket, but it can absolutely deepen your enjoyment of the sport and lead to a whole new appreciation for it.
One of the most interesting things about cricket statistics is just how many uses there are for the various bits of data the sport creates. In fact, some of the skills you can develop from analysing cricket can be put to use in other aspects of your life.
To start understanding the game of cricket on a statistical level, a good place to begin is with batting. Batteries score hundreds of runs every game, and the stats around these runs help us understand everything from how players are performing to how the weather affects play.
One of the first statistics you'll be exposed to when you start looking into cricket is batting average. This is a nice simple statistic to understand: it's the total number of runs a batter scores in their career, divided by the number of times they've been out.
Although it's simple, this statistic can tell us a lot about individual batters. According to ESPN's Cricinfo statistics database, the average batting average for international cricketers is 27.17, so if you see a player who consistently scores more than 30 runs before getting out, you know they're a good player.
A quick look at the best batters shows that the top five in test cricket are:
The other side of this statistic is the bowling average, which unsurprisingly tells us how players do at bowling rather than batting. It is calculated by taking the number of runs that are scored by the opposition while a player is bowling, and dividing it by the number of wickets that player takes.
This means that the lower a bowling average is, the better the player is at that part of cricket. After all, that means the player is conceding fewer runs, and therefore getting their team closer to winning the game.
By using Cricinfo again, we can see that by this metric, GA Lohmann was the best bowler of all time with a bowling average of 10.75. That means that on average, batters were unlikely to score 11 runs before getting out while he was bowling.
There's a problem with some of the numbers we've listed here. For example, take a look at the batting averages of the top five batters, listed above; there's a massive difference between DG Bradman's batting average of 99.94 and the others.
If you were to average out all five players, their batting average would be 68.87; however, this is significantly higher than most of their actual scores, because the high batting average of DG Bradman is skewing the results. This means we can't just take these numbers at face value; we need to dig into them a little more.
An example of this comes from The Cricket Monthly's Andy Zaltzman, who wanted to understand how to accurately measure the skill of the world's top cricketers. The problem was that someone who has a short period of good play, then retires, will often seem better statistically than someone who is incredible, but keeps playing long past their prime and has a series of bad performances that pull their average down.
To solve this, Zaltzman came up with Peak-33: a player's numbers in the 33 matches of their career in which batters scored the most runs and bowlers took the most wickets. By focusing on the 33 best matches, we're only looking at the best performances of a player's career, while also ignoring anyone with a short run in the sport.
This shows just how useful statistics can be. By looking at exactly how we're arriving at specific numbers, we can ensure we're getting the most accurate picture of the overall situation.
You can use this in many other aspects of life, from measuring your workouts at the gym to learning the games at an online casino. Whenever numbers can come into play, you can use statistics to gain a deeper understanding of whatever it is you're doing.
