Risk maagement and cricket

Cricket, like baseball, is a game of percentages, statistics and risk. Test match cricket is the ultimate sporting experiment. Is the effect when one side is batting and the other bowling reversed when the roles are reversed?

Over two innings and five days, the best side usually wins. The reason why Test Match cricket is the greatest of all games is because of the character, skill and intelligence that it calls upon each of the players to display.

Today was a great example. Kevin Pieterson, who is the most talented batsman in the world, was beginning to turn the match around for England, who've been in deep trouble for the whole game. Another hour or two from Pieterson and England would have been favourites to win. Pieterson went for glory - a 6 to bring up his hundred - and got out. Earlier, Ian Bell had given his wicket away to the first ball of a new spell by Makhaya Ntini.

The reason this is significant is that both incidents will contribute to England losing the game - it was high stakes. And second, both could have been avoided by a calm assessment of what was worth a risk and what wasn't. This may sound obvious, but I would provide England with the following statistics:

1. How many deliveries into a new spell does the risk of playing an attacking shot diminish?
2. Which shots carry the highest risk and against which bowlers?
3. How many deliveries after an interval does the risk of getting out diminish?
4. Who has the best strike rate (balls per wicket taken) and who has the lowest in the opposition bowling? The idea would be to attack those with the lowest and defend against those with the highest.
5. In-match updates of risk factors.
6. Risk analysis of near misses, especially to provide 5.
7. Regression analysis on the factors which go into scoring a century (i.e. caution after an interval, against a new ball bowler, against the best bowlers)
8. Average levels of (composite) risk taken per ball to score a century.

I am convined that if a risk mindset could be established as part of a batsman's thinking, results would rapidly follow.

Indian Predictions

This series is really hard to predict.

Two sides, both strong in bowling and, with injuries affecting both sides, poor bowling. Therefore on the face of it quite evenly matched.

I am going to go for a draw at Lords, an England win at Trent Bridge and another draw at the Oval. 1-0 England.

Monty will narrowly be England's leading wicket taker, followed by Sidebottom.
Can't look beyond KP for run scorer, even if he is 'tired' followed by Vaughan.

We'll get murdered in the one dayers, natch.

The West Indies

I remember when the West Indies came to England in 1984, because they really messed up my summer. I was at my cricket-obsessed peak at this stage, and I was bursting with pride about the England team. We had the best players in the world - Botham! Lamb! Big Bob Willis! How could we fail?!

Me and my slightly flared cricket trousers waited with breathless anticipation and I rushed off to Old Trafford to see a one dayer. As expected we reduced the Windies to about 80 for 7. This was so easy!

Viv Richards then played the best one-day innings ever, 189 not out, and we lost massively.

Then the Test series, and the Windies smashed us into tiny, humiliating smithereens, played their very loud horns, had the coolest wrist bands and left. 5-0 defeat.

I was left bereft, emotionally crushed, and I also wore a really bad jumper to the School Disco that year and everyone laughed at me very deeply.

It was a low point, to say the least.

*******

But now it's all changed. And I've changed too. West Indies cricket is dying. I am taking no pleasure at all from this present series. I want the West Indies to come back, the magnificent, proud force of old. But they won't. Not without help.

Instead the ICC sit and watch and talk about giving money to Zimbabwean cricket, as though propping up a murderous regime will somehow help develop the game - and as though this is even the point. It makes me so angry the way priorities get mixed up.

West Indies cricket is dying on its feet. The ICC must deal with this, yet they do nothing. People are dying in Zimbabwe every day from a disgusting despot, and our politicians sit and talk, and think only of legacy.

Sydney in the rain

We won the rugby world cup in Sydney in the rain and afterwards I confess I got drunk in the rain. We last beat Australia at home in a Test in Sydney, and after that I went for a run in the rain. Today we won the one day tournament…in Sydney in the rain.

What I seem to be saying here is that sometimes England wins sports matches in Sydney, in the rain.

That Cricket

England won a one-day international today, against Awstraya. It’s nice to type that, but it would have been nicer if they had shown any sort of fight before this. It has been terrible, and I witnessed the two low points of this Ashes tour (in my view) - Perth and Melbourne. Melbourne especially was abysmal. The stand between Symonds and Hayden was enough to make me sick in a small bucket. Genuinely, Ventnor CC have more spark and fight than England and I sat and watched as we acquiesced in our own death, like a new client at Dignitas.

What was also sickening was some of the things we saw around the ground. A lack of focus in practice, getting pissed, terrible body language, complaining about homesickness and ‘being away from our families’, not being together on Christmas Day, and above all, seeing the condition of some of the understudies.

In Perth we sat behind Rob Key, Chris Tremlett, Ravi Bopara, Tom Smith, Owais Shah and Rikki Clarke for a day. They were there for the Academy, where, supposedly they were being trained and monitored for fitness and supervised by a special England fitness adviser. I think the fitness adviser may have been Dawn French.

With the exception of Tremlett and Bopara, all of them were significantly overweight. I might even have said SIGNIFICANTLY, that’s how fat they were. Not only that, they were tucking into several burgers, hotdogs, fizzy drinks and ice creams throughout the day in an almost comedic Homer Simpson-type fashion. It was like one of those reality programmes with fat people wondering how they can possibly have got fat when all they eat and drink is this here coca cola and those there pancakes. EXCEPT THEY WERE PROFESSIONAL SPORTSMEN. All the while whilst we sat and parsimoniously sipped water behind them. How can this be?

Oh, it be.

If you were paid to be a professional sportsman and were good enough to be in with a shout of playing for England, what would you do? Genuinely? Their whole demeanour shouted ‘I’ve made it’ rather than ‘I am desperate to make it’ and it made me as sick as they should have felt after their fun at the fair.

I’ve heard that Australian cricketers are hungrier than ours, but now I’m not so sure. It was the single most depressing thing I have seen and I would like to know the following:

1. Could I beat all of the above in a bleep test? Because I think I could.
2. Exactly what nutritional advice do they get at the Academy?
3. What precisely does the England fitness coach do?
4. Why do no journalists pick this up and ask questions about what the HELL is going on? Give a job to my mate Joe Owen he’d ask difficult questions.
5. Why do no county chairmen ask the same things?

In fact, I pose these questions to Matt Thacker who runs this fine magazine here:www.alloutcricket.com What say you Thacker?