A couple of years ago Cricket Australia changed the points structure for the Sheffield Shield. This included adding in points for every run over 200 scored in the first 100 overs of the innings and points for taking the fifth, seventh and ninth wickets within the first 100 overs.
Basically,the idea of this is to encourage teams to be more attacking. I get it, people like attacking play.
In some other parts of the world this might almost make sense, but Australia really has never had an issue with players not being attacking enough.
However, we certainly have had plenty of criticism regarding the ability of the Australian Test team to be able to dig in and eek out a draw when required, or even just being able to just bat time and grind out runs in difficult batting conditions when required.
The current point system is completely counter productive when it comes to building the sorts of skills into our cricketers required to bat for long periods of time on slow pitches that make it hard to score. It doesn’t build the ability to keep it tight with the ball, keeping the runs down and eek out wickets over a long period of time on a flat wicket without giving too many runs away.
Let’s have a look at the final ladder for the current Shield season.
1 South Australia 5 wins 0 draws 5 losses Points 49.63
2 Victoria 5 wins 2 draws 3 losses Points 49.13
3 New South Wales 5 wins 3 draws 2 losses Points 47.57
4 Queensland 5 wins 0 draws 5 losses Points 46.66
5 Western Australia 4 wins 3 draws 3 losses Points 44
6 Tasmania 2 wins 0 draws 8 losses Points 27.19
So, four teams finished with five wins from 10 matches, that was the most. So there wasn’t any real standout team there. However, South Australia finished top of the table with five wins and five losses, ahead of Victoria and New South Wales. These teams also had five wins, but Victoria had two draws and three losses and NSW had three draws and two losses.
So what we are saying here is that you are better off losing a match but scoring your runs a bit quicker, than scoring a bit slower and getting a draw.
The system is specifically designed to allow a team with five wins and five losses finish ahead of a team with five wins and just two losses simply by virtue of scoring runs faster.
It can cause an unfair advantage for teams whose home grounds tend to favour fast scoring too, since it’s all about the number of runs and wickets taken in that first 100 overs. There are no points for a first innings win, and scoring 300 in the first 100 overs of a single innings gets you as many bonus points as you get for a draw.
So you are better off going for the smash to get a few more runs in the first 100 overs and losing, than you are in playing out a draw.
If Australia wants to be able to be a dominant Test team both abroad as well as at home, then the team needs to know how to win ugly, how to grind out wins in conditions that don’t allow really attacking cricket to succeed.
We have a points system that gives more value to batsmen averaging 30 with a strike rate over 90 than a batsman averaging 50 with a strike rate of 45. Similarly for bowlers, it favours a bowler with a strike rate of 40 who goes at six runs per over than a bowler with a strike rate of 65 who goes at two runs per over – despite the latter having a vastly better average.
Using bonus point type things as tie breakers for teams with the same record is reasonable, but to have it result in dramatically favouring style over substance is only going to have a negative effect on the Test team.
Come on Cricket Australia, let’s come up with something better by the time the next cricket season rolls around.
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