England begin their series in India with a win... Again
Ollie Pope produced the third extraordinary individual batting effort IND have copped in their last six Tests to put ENG a position of defending 230 in the 4th innings. They won by 28 runs on a wearing pitch.
ENG picked an XI well suited for the conditions. They picked 2 Slow Left Arm orthodox bowlers. Among all visiting bowlers, SLAs have enjoyed the most success against IND in IND in the last 10 years or so. They can attack the stumps more effectively than any other type of bowler. For better or worse, ENG also stuck to their preferred batting approach of taking chances against the bowling. IND’s bowlers induced 244 false shots in 1008 balls, to ENG’s 212 in 1145 balls. IND bowled better than ENG.
The ball turned more in the 4th innings (5.2 degrees on average) than it had in the first three. IND turned the ball more (4.0 degrees in the first innings, 4.2 degrees in the third) than ENG (3.7 degrees in the second innings and 5.2 degrees in the fourth), in the early part of the match. ENG won an important toss. It was a new ball wicket. The first 40 overs produced 605/18 (33.6 runs per wicket), overs 40-80 produced 446/9 (49.5 runs per wicket). This is especially striking since better batters tend to face the earlier overs. The figures for each batter are given at the end of this post.
The difference was Ollie Pope’s magnificent 197. Pope survived 75 false shots. No other player in the match survived more than 29. No other ENG batter in the match survived more than 18. Of the 823 centuries scored since the beginning of 2012, only 7 have been scored by batters who played a false shot more frequently than one every four balls before Pope did it in Hyderabad.
In their last six Tests IND have copped three of the top 30 innings in terms of false shots survival in the last 12 years. Travis Head’s 163 in the World Test Championship final involved 56 false shots. Dean Elgar’s 185 at Centurion involved 60, and now, Ollie Pope’s 196 involved 75. This is probably a coincidence. Yashasvi Jaiswal’s 171 in Dominica in July 2023 involved 54 false shots in 387 balls. Karun Nair survived 61 (in 381 balls) for his triple hundred in Chennai in December 2016. Such innings are rare. The average dismissal occurs once every 9.8 false shots over the last dozen years.
In the Bazball era (since June 1, 2022), ENG survive on average 10.9 false shots per dismissal. Over the same period, AUS survive 10.8, IND 9.6, SA 9.1, SL 10.0, NZ 10.2, PAK 8.8 and WI 9.4. ENG produce 3.4 runs per false shot to IND’s 3.1, AUS 3.1, NZ’s 3.3, PAK 3.5, and so on. Based on the false shot measurements, the theory of Bazball is that the batter should take chances more often even though this will result in more frequent dismissals (ENG have lost a wicket more often than any other team in the Bazball era), because it will also produce quicker runs, and on the whole, ENG will come out ahead taking greater risks. The evidence of Bazball also shows that this works as a rule - in the sense that it wins ENG Test matches - when ENG’s bowling is better than the opposition bowling. AUS were able to hold ENG off in the 2023 Ashes due to the quality of their bowling.
The evidence from Hyderabad does not suggest that the ENG bowling is better than IND’s. Over five Tests, IND should come out ahead of ENG. Should IND miss one or two of their bowling mainstays (Ashwin, Jadeja and Bumrah), it will be a closer series.
How prescient! Apologies if you've already covered this in more recent posts which I've not read, but would love to see a false shot percentage at the end of the series to see how well this played out across all the significant innings in the series.
Very interesting to see that Eng's false shot to dismissal ratio and runs per false shot has changed a little but not dramatically under bazball. I wonder if it varies on a player by player basis. Off the top of my head, Foakes and Stokes have not changed their approach too much in terms of Strike Rate, where as the change amongst the rest of the top 6 has been quite drastic.
Awesome analysis. Particularly interesting that ENG have lost the most wickets in the Bazball era. Whole team committing means they still come out ahead... Great read.