Cover Points : Rahul Dravid

Hindsight is 20-20

gchakravarthy — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 11:19:00 GMT

Ok ... what just happened?

We all have come to terms with the fact that the 2009 edition of the Indian Premier League is NOT actually being in India. But how many of us were ready for the rest of the topsy-turvy ouctomes in just 2 days of IPL?

All 8 teams have played at least one match each and here's what's happened:

Last year's finalists both lost their first matches.
Last year's champions, in fact, ended up with the lowest total in "IPL history".
Last year's worst 2 teams won their first matches and that too with huge margins.
Last year's champions, in fact, lost to last year's worst team.

As far as individual performances go, the so-called old-timers, the ones who are supposedly "not suited for the shorter game", the "slow movers", the ones who are not considered good enough to be part of their national team, were indeed the stars of the first round:

Rahul Dravid ended up with a 120+ rated 66 to give his team's bowlers a something to defend
Anil Kumble, one of those bowlers, ended up with figures of 3.5 overs 5 wickets for 5 runs!
Sachin Tendulkar held his team's batting order in order and did what Rahul Dravid did for the Royal Challengers.

Batsmen were supposed to take everything the away bowlers and into the stands:

Anil Kumble has already been mentioned above
Ojha and Vettori did exceptionally well for the Chargers

You heard it ... this IS South Africa we are talking about and it is spinning like a top and the top spinners are out to hunt.

Captains were swapped around:

Gilly for VVS
KP for the Wall
Paaji for Bhajji (even though Bhajji did it since Sachin was out due to injury the last time around)
McCullum for Dada

One thing that stayed in line with expectations was the importance of an all rounder. This was illustrated in the match up between Kolkata and Deccan which staged quite a first in that it had or captains 2 players who were truly all rounders. McCullum and Gilchrist are each wicket-keeping batsmen, openers at that, AND captains of their respective star-studded teams.

It was quite intereting to note that South Africans refer to their kids who attend school as learners and not students. So even as Lalit Modi hands over a cheque for ZAR100,000 to a South African school and thier learners jump up in joy, one can't but wonder what the older but equally keen and astute learners of cricket will be learning from the benefit of their hindsight from the first IPL season. Those IPL "leader caps" might exchange very strange hands this time around.

The T20 format might not have too much of a history, but has enough for cliches to have come out already. "All it takes is one over for the match to turn completely" anyone?

Well, looks like all it takes is one season for some seasoned cricketers to turn their limited overs career around.

Fab Four not over yet

dcsiva — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 17:04:00 GMT

Straight Point recently wrote about the Fab Four for those who might be sleeping. And there has been a chorus of disapproval of their recent lack of runs.

I too am wary of statistics. What is the value of a statistical analysis? Or, even simpler, just the numbers themselves as a record of achievement? I simply don't know.

When the IPL started there was a lot of discussion about the value of numbers in evaluating performance. See the following old post by David Barry for an account of sabermetrics and cricket. Barry's excellent most recent post looks at bowlers' performance over time, asking if they get better with experience.

If a rolling five match Test bowling average is good enough for him, it's good enough for me. Here, more precisely, are graphs of each of the Fab Four's rolling 10 innings Test averages (edit: click on the images to see the full graph):

I defy anyone to pick out any kind of meaningful pattern here. For example, one might be tempted to say: "Look at Dravid's numbers over the last year...they're consistently hopeless...he ought to be dropped immediately." Well then just glance at Tendulkar's graph instead and note the low 10 innings average in 2006. Would dropping him then have been a sensible thing to do? Second guessing your way through all of this noise is a bad idea.

Here's the average of the rolling 10 innings average of the Fab Four (gulp!):

There have been very very few times that the average of the each of the Fab Four's rolling ten innings average has dipped well below 40. The last time in fact was at the tail end of 2000. That is, just after India doing very badly in Australia, before some easy Tests against Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, and then the epic battle with Australia in that series.

If there's any value at all in looking at past performances, these graphs suggest that there is no long term decline in Fab Four efforts. Let them figure out when to retire by themselves. Or am I not awake yet?

Losing the Fab Four

dcsiva — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 10:32:00 GMT

As Kevin Pietersen is setting up England for a consoling win against South Africa, both because of his century and the players' responses to him being made captain, Sangakkara is pulling Lanka back into the game against India.

But the really big news has to do with the Famous Fab Four. Start here with Straight Point, then have a look at VM's response on Dhoni getting the Khel Ratna, before shifting to back to Straight Point on "Vir-Gati". And, finally, onto to Ottayan on strategies for getting rid of the Fab Four.

I think the way forward is clear with everyone except Tendulkar. And even he has started losing sponsorships. The end is near for the Indian middle-order of the last decade and more. But we'll be clamouring for the good old days soon enough.