| Criconomics: Everything You Wanted to Know About ODI Cricket and More | Surjit S Bhalla and Ankur Choudhary | Rupa Publications, 2015

The true measure of our passion for cricket – as the television networks would suggest – is not in its playing and watching, but in the time and energy spent on analysing the big games and predicting outcomes. Criconomics: Everything You Wanted to Know about ODI Cricket and More (dedicated to the schoolboys of Peshawar’s Army Public School and to Australian cricketer Phil Hughes) would agree. The book would also have us believe that all the passion expended in cricket analysis is misplaced if it is not grounded in empirical evidence — that is, the meticulously kept records of every ball bowled and every run scored in modern cricketing era. This rich data allows sophisticated statistical analysis in order to predict far more reliable outcomes than our intuition will ever allow. For example, sung for Pakistan before every major tournament, “Hum Jeetainge” (we will triumph), has a weak basis considering empirical evidence — as demonstrated by our dismal performance in the last World Cup or, more recently, against Bangladesh in One-Day Internationals.

Rigorous statistical analysis of empirical evidence is exactly what well-trained economists (the authors’ daytime profession) do in predicting an economy’s performance measured in economic growth, inflation, employment etcetra. Hence the title Criconomics, which is a sequel to Surjit S Bhalla’s earlier book, Between Wickets, extends the analytical method of assessing cricket Test match performance to One-Day Internationals.

Authors Bhalla and Ankur Choudhary argue that we can arrive at a credible prediction of a win only after accounting for the state of the pitch on which a match is played; the relative bowling and batting strength of the competing teams; and the actual and predicted scores in the recent past. This accounting is done via hard-nosed statistical analysis and appeal to some rocket scientists (literally!). I will leave the details on the method to the reader. I promise you it is a great read.

Oval test match 1954 | File photo

Armed with their method, the authors proceed to rank teams and players. Thus, in 1990-2009, team Pakistan, with a score of 104, was expected to perform four per cent better than the average team in that time. Most teams were closely bunched together — with scores ranging from 102 to 107. The outlier was the star performer Australia with a score of 114. Zimbabwe (83) and Bangladesh (73) were expected to lose every time they played. More recently (since 2010), the relative ranking of predicted performance has changed. India has moved up, with a score of 104, and Pakistan’s score has fallen to 103. With Australia crashing to 108 and New Zealand slipping further down to 99, the bunching has, however, continued. Zimbabwe and Bangladesh have exchanged their relative scores but are still expected to lose every time they play.

Overall team performance is affected by a team’s batting and bowling performance. According to the Criconomics method, Pakistan’s batting score fell from 103 in 1990-2009 to 100 in 2010-2014, while the bowling score jumped up from 100 to 105. India’s batting score jumped from 101 to 105 but the bowling score changed little. This lends credence to the view that One-Day cricket is dominated by batsmen where India has had a greater success rate than Pakistan — at least since 2010.

Criconomics extends the analysis to predict the performance of individual bowlers and batsmen and then ranks them. In the process, it gives us a marvellous shorthand method for predicting performance (MES or Match Equivalent Score): for a batsman it is the minimum of his strike rate (runs per 100 balls) multiplied by three and his batting average (runs per innings) multiplied by eight. The list of top 10 batsmen, by this method, is topped by Viv Richards, followed by AB de Villiers. Our Zaheer Abbas is number four, while Sachin Tendulkar and Virender Sehwag are ranked 14 and 15. Thus, we did well to nominate Abbas, our most eminent cricketing personality, for the presidency of the International Cricket Council.

This lends credence to the view that One-Day cricket is dominated by batsmen where India has had a greater success rate than Pakistan — at least since 2010.

There is an analogous MES for bowlers: it is the minimum of the economy rate (runs per over) multiplied by five and runs per wicket multiplied by eight. The list of best 10 bowlers, topped by Joel Garner, has no South Asians. Muttiah Muralitharan is ranked 18, Kapil Dev 25, Wasim Akram 32, Imran Khan 35 and Waqar Younis 60.

The Criconomics method predicts match outcomes with an accuracy of 65 per cent, which makes its predictions far more reliable than human intuition. Alas, this doesn’t do much for our cricket song because it would now go “hum jeet sakte hain” (we can win) rather than the more triumphant “hum jeetainge”.

You can have emotion or you can have rigour. The choice is obvious.

Pakistan team lifts captain Mushtaq Mohammad on the shoulders | File photo