England should CONTINUE to play bazball and other teams MUST EMULATE
England in test cricket.
Excellent Analysis by S Rajesh HOW and WHY Bazball should be PERSISTED with.
Test cricket will DIE if teams don't ADOPT england's aggressive style.
The difference in STRIKE RATES for in-control deliveries compared to OPPOSITION "hugely makes up" for "SLIGHTLY lower" control percentage
than their opponents.
England's ultra-aggressive approach ensures that they try to maximise
the runs they can score off deliveries that they are on top of: their
strike rate off in-control deliveries is a whopping 84.16, compared to
54.71 by the opposition. (Their strike rates when playing false shots is
also better than all other teams, but we'll come to that a little
later.) This huge difference in strike rates compensates for the
slightly lower control percentage - 78.59 to 82.29 - in these 18 Tests.
In other words, the runs they score when in charge makes up for the
excess risk they seemingly take in playing that brand of cricket.
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https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/ashes-2023-the-risk-and-reward-equation-and-why-it-works-for-bazball-england-1390523
The risk-and-reward equation, and why it works for England's Bazball
Despite a lower control percentage than their opponents in most Tests,
England have still achieved a 13-4 win-loss record
When Zak Crawley reached his hundred during a stunning onslaught on Australia's bowlers in the fourth Ashes Test at Old Trafford, this is
how ESPNcricinfo's ball-by-ball commentators described the ball off
which he reached the milestone:
Width outside off, carved on the up into space at cover, and Crawley has
a mesmerising century! Off 93 balls, and with a control rate of 64%.
He's gone hard, run towards the danger, and set England up for a real
Ashes shot
In the end, the Manchester weather denied them a real shot at the Ashes,
but that innings from Crawley was the very epitome of everything that
defines England's approach under Bazball. And while 93 balls is an
eye-popping number, the other stat in those couple of lines of
commentary is just as revealing: when Crawley reached his century, he
had a control percentage of 64. Let's talk a little more about that number.
For every ball that a batter faces, ESPNcricinfo's ball-by-ball scoring
team records a binary control metric. This metric records how
convincingly a batter played each delivery: all deliveries left alone
(without resulting in a dismissal) or middled are marked in control; and
those where the batter was beaten, got an edge or mistimed a shot are
marked not in control. These can also be referred to as false shots
played by the batter.
A caveat before proceeding any further: all not-in-control deliveries do
not have equal wicket-taking potential. A delivery that just misses the outside edge by a whisker is probably more threatening than a ball which induces a mistimed cover-drive, with the ball dribbling harmlessly to
the leg side. However, for the purpose of this exercise, both are marked
as not-in-control. Over a long innings or a set of innings, this metric
gives a fair indication of how assured the batter was at the crease.
Crawley's 64% control at the time of reaching his hundred meant that he mistimed, edged or was beaten 34 times out of the 93 balls he had faced
at that point. By the time his innings eventually ended on 189 off 182
balls, his control percentage had improved to 70.88, which means he
played 53 false shots. Though the control percentage improved, it was
still the sixth-lowest among all centuries since 2013. Given that, on
average, a top-order batter plays around 11.1 false shots per dismissal
in the last five years, it's obvious that Crawley had the rub of the
green going his way in that innings.
However, it is expected that a batter will play more than 11 false shots
in a long innings (over a 200-ball innings, even 90% control means 20
false shots). What's even more interesting is the control numbers for England's batting unit since they've adopted this new approach.
Usually, Tests are won by the team which exhibits more control with the
bat. In other words, they are won by the bowling team which consistently
asks more questions of the opposition batters. Of the 173 Tests which
have produced decisive results in the last five years (since August
2018), 123 (71.1%) have gone in favour of the team whose batters had the higher control percentage in the match.
That 50 Tests went the other way is illustrative of the quirky nature of
the game - a batter could play flawlessly for his first 35 deliveries,
but an error off his 36th could result in his dismissal, for a score of,
say, 20, and a control percentage of 97.2. An opposition batter in the
same game might achieve a control percentage of only 80, but could end
up with a century. Extend the corresponding logic to most of the batters
of each of those teams, and you could end up with the winning team
scoring more runs but having a lower control percentage. Or a team could
be going for quick runs aiming for a third-innings declaration, which
could result in more false shots.
Even with those possibilities, though, in more than 70% of the games
which had a result, the team with the higher control ended up as the
winner, which suggests a reasonably strong correlation between those two factors.
That's where England's numbers since Bazball become interesting. They
have achieved an enviable 13-4 win-loss record during this period (with
one draw), but only in five of those 18 matches have they had a higher
control percentage with the bat than their opponent. (A rider at this
point, though: the sample sizes are still relatively small, as it's only
a little more than a year since Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes took
charge as coach and captain respectively.)
That, in turn, means England, unlike other teams, have been winning a
lot of Tests even when their batters have returned lower control
percentages than their opponents. In 13 such Tests, they have won eight,
lost four, and drawn one. Compare that with the results for all the
other teams when they have returned lower control percentages: five
wins, 28 defeats. England's win-loss ratio in such matches: 2.00; the
win-loss ratio for all other teams: 0.179. That's a factor of 11.2.
Perhaps no other metric illustrates more effectively just how different England's approach to Test cricket has been when compared to other teams
in the last 14 months.
For comparison, in the period between January 2018 and May 2022, England
had a 10-14 win-loss record in Tests when they had a lower control
percentage than their opponents. That was still better than the overall
37-91 record for all teams in this period, but nowhere near the winning
ratio they have racked up over the last year.
How is it that England have been winning despite lower control numbers?
The key to answer that question is to not just look at the balls when
their batters played false shots, but also at the outcomes when they
were in control. England's ultra-aggressive approach ensures that they
try to maximise the runs they can score off deliveries that they are on
top of: their strike rate off in-control deliveries is a whopping 84.16, compared to 54.71 by the opposition. (Their strike rates when playing
false shots is also better than all other teams, but we'll come to that
a little later.) This huge difference in strike rates compensates for
the slightly lower control percentage - 78.59 to 82.29 - in these 18
Tests. In other words, the runs they score when in charge makes up for
the excess risk they seemingly take in playing that brand of cricket.
That is best illustrated by looking at the total runs scored (off all deliveries faced, including the in-control balls) per false shot played.
To calculate this, we divide the total bat runs scored by a team off all deliveries, by the total number of false shots (or not-in-control
balls). So, if a team scores 300 bat runs in an innings and plays 100
false shots, their runs scored per false shot is three.
In these 18 Tests, that figure for England is 3.56; for their opponents,
it is 2.94. Given that the ultimate aim in all cricket matches - even
Tests - is to score more runs than the opposition, this shows England
are actually managing their risk better than the opposition by getting
more value per false shot. Coincidentally, in Crawley's 189, his runs
per false shot was 3.57 (189 runs, 53 false shots), which almost exactly matches England's number in their last 18 Tests. Talk about following
the Bazball template to the T!
Because of this approach, even when their batters commit errors, they
mostly do so when attempting to score runs. Only 25.4% of their total
false shots have come when playing defensively; the rest have come about
when trying to look for runs. That is a much lower percentage than for
most other teams: Sri Lanka and New Zealand are within ten percentage
points, but for most of the other top teams, this percentage is over 40,
which indicates a larger chunk of errors happen when not looking for runs.
It is not surprising, therefore, that England's batting strike rate of
46.79 for not-in-control deliveries since the beginning of June 2022 is
the highest among all teams during this period. Australia are third at
39.64, about 15% lower than England, while India (36.52), Pakistan
(35.72) and South Africa (35.49) are all in the mid-30s.
The other aspect of attacking batting is the effect it has on the
opposition think-tank and their strategies. Unless the opposition have
plenty of runs to play with or the conditions are extremely
bowler-friendly, a flurry of boundaries forces the field to spread out, leaving fewer fielders in catching positions to snaffle the genuine edges.
The number of false shots played per dismissal is a fair indication of
how many errors batters get away with, due to various reasons. In the
period since June 2022, England have lost a wicket every 10.95 false
shots, which is second only to New Zealand's 11.21, and higher than the corresponding number for Australia (10.73), India (9.97), South Africa
(9.23) and Pakistan (8.47). In Ashes 2023, England lost a wicket every
11.5 false shots and scored 3.1 runs per false shot, compared to 10.67
and 2.87 for Australia. The combination of a relatively high runs per
false shot and false shots per dismissal means England score more runs
per dismissal, which almost always is the formula to winning Test matches.
All of this suggests that while England's approach looks risky with
higher false-shots numbers - mostly attempting non-defensive shots -
than you'd normally associate with a winning team, they make those risks
work in their favour. For any other team, these control percentages
would probably not lead to consistently winning matches, but it works
for England, because of their drastically different approach to batting.
It's a fine balance, and one that requires a sensible approach to
aggression, but so far England have managed to find that balance more
often than not. The 13-4 win-loss is a strong testament to that.
--- MBSE BBS v1.0.8.4 (Linux-x86_64)
* Origin: A noiseless patient Spider (3:633/280.2@fidonet)