Pappus' plane - cricket stats

Near the end of the discussion here, there's a comment from me about the changing nature of the way runs are scored in ODI cricket. Most of it, of course, is coming from boundaries, which are much more common today. But it is interesting that there's been no real changes in the rate of non-boundary scoring since 1990.

Here's a graph showing the yearly overall "non-boundary strike rate", that is the runs that are actually run, divided by the number of balls not hit to the boundary (times 100). Top eight sides only. (There's some missing boundary data, especially before 1990. The actual non-boundary strike rates for these years are lower than those in the graph.)



(I've called it "run sr" in the graph, run as in running.)

I would have thought that batsmen today are more adept at "milking" bowlers, but the non-boundary strike rate has never got above 3 runs per over for any long period.

If you suppose that there are three types of balls:

- good balls that can't be scored off
- OK balls that can be worked around
- bad balls that can be hit to the boundary

then it seems that batsmen these days are able to hit the OK balls to the boundary more often, but can't do much about the good balls. (Edit: No, wait, that's not right. They're getting better at milking the good balls at the same rate as they're getting better at hitting the OK balls for four. Roughly. The constant non-boundary strike rate with an increased frequency of boundaries means that the percentage of dot balls is getting lower.)

At a team level (now including all teams, since 2000, but I've forgotten what I did with Kenya, probably I discarded them because they play against minnows too often):

team          sr    run sr
Australia     83.6  50.6
Sri Lanka     75.5  47.4
South Africa  78.3  47.0
Pakistan      77.3  46.7
India         78.8  45.7
England       74.4  45.4
New Zealand   75.2  44.7
West Indies   74.2  43.9
Zimbabwe      67.0  43.3
Bangladesh    63.4  38.6

Bangladesh are really bad at working the ball around for singles, etc. There's a clear gap between Australia and Sri Lanka, then a gradual progression down through to Zimbabwe. Then there's a huge dropoff to Bangladesh.

India are a bit of an anomaly, with their high overall strike rate coming more heavily from boundaries than the other teams. It's probably not just a factor of their grounds — opposition teams in India have the highest non-boundary strike rate of away teams anywhere.

Top eight sides since 2000, individuals, average at least 30, at least 1000 runs.

Player          mats  inns  runs  avg   sr    run sr  diff
JN Rhodes       71    66    1994  41.5  86.1  59.7    26.3
DS Lehmann      44    39    1219  42.0  78.8  56.0    22.8
MEK Hussey      77    60    2079  54.7  85.6  55.3    30.4
L Klusener      91    73    1592  33.9  87.6  54.9    32.7
A Symonds       157   133   4300  40.2  94.1  54.1    40.1
MJ Clarke       117   105   3486  42.5  81.0  53.9    27.2
MS Dhoni        101   91    3064  44.4  89.0  53.6    35.5
SR Waugh        46    38    1134  40.5  79.9  52.6    27.2
PD Collingwood  124   114   2956  31.1  74.6  51.5    23.1
RP Arnold       136   123   2984  32.8  72.1  51.5    20.6

Symonds and Dhoni are best known for their hitting, but they're good at the less flashy stuff as well.

Unhonourable mention goes to Chris Gayle: overall strike rate of 80.3, non-boundary strike rate of 37.3, lowest of all the players who made the qualification. Lazy.