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.
Great analysis and a great day for Test cricket in India & Australia!!! In analyzing a batter’s performance, do you think it makes sense to consider the type of false shot? For example do edges result in more dismissals than misses or vice versa? I hope this is not a stupid question. Thanks!!!!
It's a common question. A false shot is classification. Either a batter is in control of the delivery or the batter is not in control of the delivery. Being in control of the delivery means the ball going where it was intended to go, hitting the middle of the bat, left alone etc. When a batter is not in control of a delivery, the outcome, whatever it maybe, is not due to the batter's design. So whether its an edge which goes to hand, or a play and miss, or an edge which goes between slip and gully - is unintentional.
The classification works well. I've written quite a bit about it both here and on cricinfo. You're welcome to browse. Here's a summary of the false shot record by team in the Bazball era (from June 1, 2022 onwards).
Is there an argument that false shot percentage may not capture the level of risk involved in, say, playing and missing a reverse sweep to a ball pitching outside off?
That if you really are playing a reverse sweep instead of a forward defensive in that situation, the higher chance of a false shot may not tell you the same thing about the risk, or the risk/reward ratio, that it would in other situations?
I suspect that the answer is no! But interesting that bazball has coincided with such a statistical outlier of an innings from Pope.
I'm not convinced that outliers represent very much. They're rare by definition.
I think it is interesting that IND have copped 3 innings where a batter survived 50+ false shots in their last 6 Tests. They've also bowled teams out for 130, 150, 176 and 55 in those six Tests.
So one way to think about this is that the other ENG bats in Hyderabad who survived no more than 18 false shots were all threatening to break out like Pope. Another way to think about this is that Pope's innings was a genuine outlier given that no other ENG bat approached this even remotely, and that Pope himself has not approached this before in the Bazball era (the most he has survived is 35 false shots).
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.
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.
Great analysis and a great day for Test cricket in India & Australia!!! In analyzing a batter’s performance, do you think it makes sense to consider the type of false shot? For example do edges result in more dismissals than misses or vice versa? I hope this is not a stupid question. Thanks!!!!
It's a common question. A false shot is classification. Either a batter is in control of the delivery or the batter is not in control of the delivery. Being in control of the delivery means the ball going where it was intended to go, hitting the middle of the bat, left alone etc. When a batter is not in control of a delivery, the outcome, whatever it maybe, is not due to the batter's design. So whether its an edge which goes to hand, or a play and miss, or an edge which goes between slip and gully - is unintentional.
The classification works well. I've written quite a bit about it both here and on cricinfo. You're welcome to browse. Here's a summary of the false shot record by team in the Bazball era (from June 1, 2022 onwards).
https://twitter.com/cricketingview/status/1751645024930910379
Is there an argument that false shot percentage may not capture the level of risk involved in, say, playing and missing a reverse sweep to a ball pitching outside off?
That if you really are playing a reverse sweep instead of a forward defensive in that situation, the higher chance of a false shot may not tell you the same thing about the risk, or the risk/reward ratio, that it would in other situations?
I suspect that the answer is no! But interesting that bazball has coincided with such a statistical outlier of an innings from Pope.
I'm not convinced that outliers represent very much. They're rare by definition.
I think it is interesting that IND have copped 3 innings where a batter survived 50+ false shots in their last 6 Tests. They've also bowled teams out for 130, 150, 176 and 55 in those six Tests.
So one way to think about this is that the other ENG bats in Hyderabad who survived no more than 18 false shots were all threatening to break out like Pope. Another way to think about this is that Pope's innings was a genuine outlier given that no other ENG bat approached this even remotely, and that Pope himself has not approached this before in the Bazball era (the most he has survived is 35 false shots).
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.
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.