Time for cricket to catch up and value fielding

The problem is that everyone seems to focus solely on: A) Individual players, and B) Catches/drops, C) All wickets being equal, and D) Comparing Cricket to Baseball. Until we stop doing these things, we're not going to make any progress. A) As someone already stated, it is extremely difficult to compare a slip fielder to a boundary fielder. I propose that fielding stats are used to measure a team as a whole, not as 11 individuals. Baseball has 9 set positions. Sure they shift around a little on occasion but 99.99% of the time they are standing in the same spot. They are also played almost exclusively by the same guy every day, making it easy to track and compare like for like. Cricket has like 40 different positions which are often played by multiple players throughout a match and for different amounts of time. It is impossible to track all of these players playing multiple positions, then compare them to other players (who are also playing multiple positions for a few overs every match and bla bla bla) This is why cricket teams should be judged as a whole. B) "But we are already basically judging the team as a whole!" Yes, however the statistics being used are inadequate. For example: On March 2nd, 2011, Ireland defeated England 329 to 327. What happened? Can anyone tell me how England lost this match? I'll save you some time, No. The stats aren't going to tell us how Ireland beat England, but I will. England gave Ireland 33 extras (compared to the 23 that Ireland gave England). So instead of winning by 8 runs, England lost by 2. Also, 33 extras is the most Ireland have ever been gifted in the history of them playing ODI's. Anyway, I created a new stat called "Batted Runs" which excludes any extras from a team's run total. This gives us a better idea of how the team handled balls which were actually put in to play. Yes, I realize that a fielder could pick up a ball and heave it in to the parking lot, thus giving the other team some extra runs but let's be honest, this never happens. I also created a stat called "Dot Ball Percentage". Sticking with Ireland, did you know that when Ireland lose, they have a dot ball percentage of 54.07%. In games that they win, their dot ball percentage is 61.81%. Australia have a dot ball percentage of 55.78% in losses and 63.87% in wins. Dot balls come from good bowling as well as good fielding (taking away those cheeky singles!) so again, we have to judge the team as a whole. C) Traditionalists, look away now!!! ***Catches do NOT (always) win matches*** A catch for one team may not be as valuable as a catch for another team. Using correlation theory, I put together some equations which compare the type of wicket with the amount of runs allowed. Basically, for each wicket of X type, how many runs are allowed/saved. What we want here is to be as far from 1 as possible. Example: The wicket-to-run correlation of one run out for Australia is -0.6649. This is called negative correlation, as in "Run outs go up, runs allowed go down". Australia's wicket-to-run correlations are as follows: run outs: -0.6649, catches: -0.4271, LBW: -0.1254, bowled wickets: 0.0867. So taking wickets by bowling is actually BAD for Australia (positive correlation - bowled wickets go up, runs allowed go up). Ireland's wicket-to-run correlation values are: run outs: -0.1281, catches: 0.0631, LBW: -0.2303 and bowled wickets: -0.1620. So for Ireland, catches are the enemy here while LBW's have the highest negative correlation. D) Comparing Cricket to Baseball is like comparing the UK to the US. While one gave birth to the other, they have evolved enormously over the years and are now completely different entities. Instead of trying to use baseball type stats to analyze cricket, we should be trying to create cricket specific stats to analyze cricket. Comments, rebuttals, etc. welcome. Mike

I don't have a problem with it.... We don't sit there and analyse whether a batsman got dismissed to an absolute gem of a delivery, or a rubbish ball that he chased and nicked. Averages etc aren't compiled that way. A subjective evaluation is the most that gets made.

I'm not that sure your examples hold that much water... Misbah has the equal fastest test century and bailey the equal most runs scored of a single test over. Maxwell and afridi are both hugely inconsistent - they might go off, or they might hole out first ball. I'd prefer either of the former if set to either of the latter walking in to face their first delivery...

Source for what I am saying btw: http://www.foxsports.com.au/cricket/australia/former-test-batsman-greg-blewett-hints-at-longerterm-role-after-becoming-aussie-fielding-consultant/story-fn2mcu3x-1227024183113 “Darren approached me a while ago actually and just wanted to sound me out and see if I was interested in joining his team in some sort of coaching capacity,” Blewett said. “It just happened to work out that the fielding slot has become available.”

That's not a great story and somewhat worrying... To be honest, it shouldn't be difficult to get an experienced fielding coach for Australia, even outside the baseball world. We have six Shield teams and 8 BBL teams and all of them would have fielding coaches - can't you start there and select the bloke he's produced the best fielding in either/both comps?

At the moment, you just need to be one of Lehmann's mates. Blewett even admitted that Lehmann was trying to get him involved with the team on a short-term basis as a consultant, and then it was just happenstance that the fielding position opened up. He wasn't headhunted for the role by any means. Coaching is such an arcane pursuit that it's hard to have a KPI for it apart from results and confidence of the playing group.

Its a good question Bush. What were the credentials of Tim Neilsen running the team when he barely scratched out a FC career? What was the point of Andrew Hilditch being a selector, nay, judging on the technical deficiencies of batsman when he himself was appalling against the short ball? But then again, what are the credentials one needs to be a cricket coach/selector?

Cheers Bush Oh, I wasn't baiting for a debate/argument on anything. I was just genuinely interested in how many pitches are thrown. I know very little about vaseball.

Haha, that's a good point. Watching a guy like Andrew Roiko field at Toombul is always a real treat. He's 6'6" but moves like a panther. Unlike outdoor, there's nowhere to hide in an indoor court too - no skiving off down at fine leg!

Hi Tony, You use George Bailey as an example saying his fielding in England would have raised his average from 28 to a respectable 42. The problem there is that 42 would no longer be a respectable average. 60 would be a respectable average under your system and someone like Steve Smith who is, on current form, the worlds best batsman and who is also an excellent fielder would probably have an average of about 75. I'm sure there could be statistics and averages developed for fielding/catching/run outs etc but applying those retrospectively would be difficult or even impossible

And that's just it, isn't it? How great would it be to have those numbers? Get to the end of the WC and be able to say that "Hey, look at this! Andrew Symonds saved an average of 17.2 runs per match, on top of averaging 40 with the bat and 30 with the ball". It may not be workable at domestic level, but there's so much interest in this kind of information that I think it's just a matter of time before these metrics leak in (probably via T20).

Good points. I am surprised fielding stats haven't fomalised as yet. Surely the national teams keeps tabs on player performance in the field.

Agree with run outs, assists, catching percentages and misfields. Not sure you can include stops. Highly dependent on where players regularly field. Someone who spends a lot of time at covers/mid-off is going to be getting 20-30 stops a game as opposed to someone fielding at fine leg who might only get 5. I think the first step is to track negative fielding efforts first - in a way that will identify the best fielders as they're going to have close to zero in those categories. They track errors in the baseball I believe, that's probably as good a place as any to start.

I agree, when i said, trying to formalise a runs saved is the primary issue. I meant in that it really can't be quantified and that runs saved should be the objective of fielding stats. See my comment below for the data i think could easily be collected to give an idea about how good a fielder is.

It is about 280-300. I was talking Test Cricket re larger number delivered. Though it needs to be remembered that it's easy to keep fielding statistics in baseball, as a very small number of those pitches thrown result in hits compared to the number of runs in a game of cricket off the same number of balls...

Thing is though, what sort of fielding is defined as runs saved? Technically speaking if a batsman smokes a cover drive straight to a fielder inside the circle and he stops it fairly routinely, if no-one is behind him, he's just saved 4 runs. In baseball you can easily quantify the results of fielding because batsmen are forced to run once they hit the ball into play. A stop by the fielder will result in an out in almost all instances. In cricket that's just a dot ball, move along, nothing more to see, as the batsmen won't take a run if it goes straight to a fielder inside the circle. Not quite sure how you can categorise runs saved, since a lot of fielding is fairly routine, and the fact the ball was hit to a fielder means no runs were saved as none would be taken. Unless there's a misfield. Which you can quantify. I think it will be a lot easier to track negatives as opposed to positives, because you can easily see the results of misfields and dropped catches - simply count the runs a batsman makes that they otherwise wouldn't have had the chance of making. Counting potential runs that were never scored due to good fielding is a lot more difficult.

I think trying to formalise a runs saved is the primary issue. I don't think that is necessarily the most important factor in fielding. It is a benefit derived from good fielding. But executing catches and stopping the ball as effectively and efficiently as possible are the primary goals.

I believe it's about 280-300.

Curiously, how many pitches are bowled in a standard baseball game? I would have thought somewhere between 350-400?