Control and Jeopardy
My friend Sidharth Monga (of ESPNCricinfo fame) and I were discussing the control figures the other day, and got to talking about the relationship between the frequency of false shots, and the frequency of dismissals from false shots. As I write this on the morning of Friday, August 28, 2021, IND are 215/2 in 80 overs in the 3rd innings of the Leeds Test. The false shot figures (courtesy of Sid at ESPNCricinfo) are:
1st innings - 77 false shots in 244 balls faced (3.2 bf per false shot)
2nd innings - 111 false shots in 792 balls faced (7.1 bf per false shot)
3rd innings - 87 false shots in 480 balls faced (5.5 bf per false shot)
Our hunch was that the more frequent the false shots, the greater the frequency of dismissal, not just per delivery, but per false shot.
Over the years, I’ve received control figures from ESPNCricinfo for various essays I’ve written for them (the full list is available here). I dug out the individual batting innings I had, and found that I had roughly 1700 innings with control figures for them. These are from ENG v IND (2011, 2012/13, 2014, 2016/17, 2018) and SA v IND (2015/16, 2017/18), in addition to all the innings (upto the end of the 1st ENG v IND Test 2021) for Williamson, Root, Kohli, Pujara and Steve Smith. I group these innings by integer values for balls faced per false shot (excluding not out innings).
The picture looks like this. 6 Balls Faced Per False shot includes all individual innings which recorded between 5.5-6.5 BF per false shot, and so on.
The frequency of false shots is a measure of a combination of factors - the conditions, the quality and depth of the bowling, and the quality of the batting, in that order.
The difficulty of batting conditions can be gauged by looking at the balls faced per false shot for an innings. This can tend to vary during an innings. For example, while IND played 87 false shots in 80 overs, 65 of those 87 can in the first 48 overs. Only 22 came in the last 32 overs. This was because of a combination of things. The ball got older, the bowlers possibly tired and England bowled spinners even though there was not much in the pitch for the spinner.
Surviving period of high jeopardy requires luck. IND could easily have lost 3-4 wickets in the first 48 overs. But they did, fortunately for them.
A deeper look at the records will refine this picture further, but the outlines suggest that Control basically provides a picture of jeopardy in cricket.
Listen to my conversation about Control with ESPNCricinfo’s S. Rajesh if you’re curious about the measure.