Cricket Australia introduces newer statistical techniques in the T20 format

Cricket Australia is overhauling the old-fashioned statistical approach with a hope that it will pay big dividends at the Twenty20 World Cup. It remains the only major cricket tournament that Australian men’s team is yet to win.

Steve Stern, an American who moved to Australia in 1994, developed a formula by the International Cricket Council with calculating totals in rain-affected ODI and T20 matches – it is now the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern method.

“There’s no salary cap for us so we’re not trying to do an Oakland A’s,” CA’s performance guru Pat Howard told AAP of the approach that somewhat mirrors sabermetrics, the analysis used in Moneyball.

“But we wanted to really challenge our traditional thinking on averages and we got him involved in reviewing some of our stats.

“Particularly in the T20 format, we’re coming up to the BBL and having a good look at what stats we use and how we can do better.”

Pat Howard contacted Stern shortly after he presented at a conference that coincided with the World Cup semi-final in Sydney earlier this year.

National selectors will keep a keen eye on the upcoming KFC Big Bash League season, with the ICC World T20 to start in India next March.

CA will use a formula from Stern to regularly release BBL rankings – similar to what the International Cricket Council does with its batting, bowling and all-rounder charts.

In addition, Howard is using the statistician’s methods to feed more nuanced numbers to Rod Marsh’s selection panel.

“For example how people start their innings – obviously every ball missed or wasted is something you’re going to need to review, Looking at the mix between scoring shot percentages versus the ability to get on with it from the get-go.”

Instead of using averages and strike-rates with bat and ball, Stern developed a ‘net runs attributable’ figure that measures a player’s contribution.

The QUT professor recently presented a study of the Indian Premier League to the Actuaries Institute, highlighting the need for numbers with more contexts.

Stern told AAP, “Scoring five runs in the final over of a T20 is not very good, but doing that in the first over is pretty good, you really need to look at when the runs happen in a game, not just how many somebody scored. Is it a pressure situation or not?”

He noted batting averages were particularly poor because they rewarded a not-out score.

“There are 20 overs and 10 wickets so getting out is nowhere near as big a deal when compared to a Test, the tradeoff between losing your wicket and scoring slowly is totally different. Theoretically there should never be a dot ball at the end of a first innings.” Stern said.

Stern also analyzed IPL auction prices in his Actuaries Institute speech, with one of the trends being that economical bowlers were often undervalued.

Stern believes his equation is a better model for assessing T20 players’ contribution and future likely contributions.

“But it’s all a work in progress,” For example there was an IPL match when Mitchell Johnson had three catches dropped in three consecutive balls. It doesn’t take this into account…statistics just don’t deal with some of the complex aspects of the game,” he added.