Stand up if you’re familiar with ice hockey?
Ok, a few of you. Now sit down if you can’t jive with probability theory. For the few of you still standing, you’ll know that this situation can be described by a conditional probability.
That is, the likelihood of event B happening given that event A has already occurred. In this case, it’s the remote chance that a hockey fan has some level of education. But what does this have to do with cricket? Bear with me.
An interesting paper came out late last year, and it’s caused quite a stir. It’s called “Pulling the Goalie: Hockey and Investment Implications”. Find it on Google. The long and short of it is this – you’re a coach and your hockey team is a goal down, when should you cut your losses and replace the goalie with another attacking player?
It turns out that NHL coaches tend to pull the goalie with a minute to go. Sound pretty intuitive? Well here’s the catch. As long as you don’t care how much you lose by, you should pull your goalie way before the end of the match – with about six minutes to go in the final period in fact.
What it boils down to is this – while you only increase your chances of winning by a tiny amount, you probably would have lost anyway.
Righto, how does this apply to cricket? Over the last five years, the baggy greens have been good at two things, namely, losing the toss and losing matches. In fact, they’ve managed to lose a fifty-fifty coin toss about 63 per cent of the time. And when they lose the toss, they’ve only managed to win 13 of their 32 starts. If these trends continue, we’re all but no chance of regaining the Ashes.
Unfortunately, we can’t affect the toss, but here’s my “pull the goalie” moment. What if we could reduce the probability of losing? For example, the opposition has to take twenty wickets to win a match. So why don’t we just pick eleven specialist batsmen? They’d each, on average, only need to face about 60 balls per innings to ensure a draw.
Statistically, that’s very doable, even with the current crop. Then, as long as there would be some non-zero probability of taking twenty wickets ourselves, our relative advantage could be substantial. Granted, it’d make for a boring bat-a-thon. But trust me, the maths checks out.
Essentially, the success of this strategy depends on this – we assume that loading the team with batsmen will decrease the probability of losing proportionately more than it will decrease the probability of winning. Sure, some Tests we’d still lose, like being put in on a raging green top, but without the eleven batsmen we surely would have lost them anyway.
Win the toss, bat big, and be patient with the ball. Lose the toss and bat for time. That’s what I call pulling the goalie.
Scott Hoban
Roar Rookie
Maybe not 11 batsmen... but 9ish+2ish... I think we need to play Lyon (who you can argue is a batter) and 1 specialist pace bowler (Starc, Cummins, Hazelwood or whoever.)... Then the likes of Head, Stoinis, Maxwell, Laubaschagne, Marsh (but dont play him) and others can part time bowl... we might not get them out, but they will bat for long enough that it doesn't matter... and given we hold the ASHES who cares if each test is a 5-day bore
Mark
Guest
Would Glen get a spot in the 11 ???
David
Guest
Great idea, just wrong design. The way the lower order has our performed then top order with the bat, let’s pic 11 bowlers.
Michael Gates
Roar Rookie
I also reckon when you play test cricket you should open with your bowlers & let the batsmen bat last
DaveJ
Roar Rookie
Like your thinking there, though the main flaw is the one pointed out by James below – without bowlers, the opposition could declare early so each batter would need to see out a lot more than 60 balls. On an average scoring rate of 44-55 that’s the equivalent of each player averaging around 40 if they last 80 balls. Yet our main guys have been struggling to average 30! Are we really confidently that the next lot in line will do much better? But at least this approach is applying a degree of logic to averages and numbers. The point of averages is they are a rough guide to the probability of future performance without being a guarantee. So you can look at past performance and say that the probability of someone who averages 33 in first class after a few years like Labuschagne, M Marsh Stoinis achieving an adequate Test average (high thirties plus) or score centuries, is extremely low. And that the added bowling contribution of an all rounder with such a mediocre batting record is, on average, very unlikely to compensate for the runs foregone by not picking a specialist batsman with an average 5 to 10 runs higher. But that seems to be too demanding for our selectors who like to go on gut feeling rather than experience and logic.
JamesH
Roar Guru
It was a bit tongue-in-cheek, given how woeful we've been (although if you're using 11 batsmen @ 60 balls each, isn't that 110 overs?). I'm still not sold that we would ever win a test against good sides. Can you imagine bowling to India with only part-timers? Mitch Marsh and Marcus Stoinis opening the bowling, with Maxwell, Smith, Labuschange and Renshaw offering change-up spinners. Ew. Surely the odds of us taking 20 wickets in that scenario are lower than the odds of us getting bowled out twice?
James T
Guest
Problem is that without bowlers the opposition would probably score 500 in a day, leaving a lot more time for bowling.
IAP
Guest
It's a bit underarm-ballish (ie. it's within the rules but not the spirit of the game), but it could work. The same theory could apply to tennis - players normally average more than 50% of their first serves in, so if they get 2 goes they'll get one of them int, so they shouldn't slow their second serve down.
vrx
Guest
We struggle to find 2 batsmen to replace W and S, let alone 11
Evanfinity
Roar Pro
In order, our innings durations were: 1st test: 98.4, 119.5 2nd test: 108.3, 93.2 3rd test: 66.5, 89.3, 4th test: 104.5 Based on this worst-ever series batting results, and assuming a Normal distribution, the probability of surviving less than 100 overs is around 55%. But this is (a) with 6 batsmen and not 11, (b) not just batting for time, and (c) losing the toss three times.
JamesH
Roar Guru
Yeah, I wouldn't back our best 11 batsmen to face 60 balls on average. For each batsman that gets out cheaply, that figure goes up for everyone else. I'd be staggered if our top 6 faced anywhere near 60 balls on average against India.
Dan
Guest
Great idea !!! We should try it and see what happens
Viren Mohan
Roar Rookie
Given that the lineup has to be announced before the toss, how is a team supposed to dump all their bowlers and parachute in 4-5 batsmen? Maybe Australia were in fact headed on the right track by trying to cram the side with “all-rounders”
JOHN ALLAN
Guest
Do we have 11 "batsmen" capable of lasting that long?
Evanfinity
Roar Pro
Cheers. This is how I see it... If your opponent bats for 250 overs there would be a maximum of 200 of overs left in the match. Assuming you don’t make the follow on, and they enforce it, each of your batsmen would need to survive around 55 balls per innings for earn a draw. This is a fair bit less than the expected value. The probability of all your batsmen surviving less than their long term average, and twice each in a match, is very low. And that’s not even considering the low probability of any team batting for 250 overs to start with - regardless of opposition or pitch condition.
Presto
Roar Rookie
Love the idea. But still don’t think we have 11 batsman who could do it. Often it’s our bowlers who score more runs than most of our batsman. Lyon Patterson.
Tim Carter
Roar Pro
Wouldn't the batters be too tired to stay in if they're forced to share 250 overs of bowling between them per innings?