Yeh Dil Maange More? - Part 1

A few nights ago, Yusuf Pathan was making his way through the Kolkata Knight Riders' inadequate bowling attack. On one particular delivery, he struck the ball so hard, that it rose high for a few seconds before landing in a no-man's land area.

At this, my mother exclaimed "Had there been a fielder standing right there, he would have been out!"

This kick-started a chain of thoughts. What if there were 15 players in a team? Would the average score of a team playing a Test, an ODI or a T20 be higher or lower? What if there were 5 players?

So,I set about solving this problem and thanks to the extensive data available at http://www.cricinfo.com, I have been able to dig out some much needed information. Here's an attempt.(I would really want to develop this exercise and would need your comments on improving this further.)

Let us take a few assumptions before proceeding any further.
1) I am only considering a One-Day International only, with 50 overs a side.
2) For the ease of data collection, I have included data from all countries playing ODIs (recognized by the ICC)-Countries from Australia to UAE.
3) Data from all past matches have been included, including the ODIs that were abandoned or those which produced no results.
4) For the purpose of solving this problem, I shall proceed assuming that there are more than 11 players in a team.


Facts governing the course of scoring in the match

1) More the number of players, more the number of lesser quality batsmen and bowlers.
2) 6's will not be affected, 4's and other runs will be affected.
3) Batsmen coming in the end are generally coming in towards the end of the team's innings, so they hit hard and get out. This assumption stays true for the newly added batsmen too.


Batting Averages for each player against any opposition:

Player 1: 32.34
Player 2: 31.90
Player 3: 32.81
Player 4: 34.70
Player 5: 30.50
Player 6: 26.36
Player 7: 21.07
Player 8: 16.63
Player 9: 13.15
Player 10: 10.51
Player 11: 07.54


On the curve for the averages itself, I have superimposed a 6th degree function which approximates the curve the best. The function is-
y = 0.0006x6 - 0.0264x5 + 0.4687x4 - 3.9523x3 + 15.62x2 - 26.261x + 46.544
With the R2 (Remember statistics?) value as-
R2 = 0.9981

The significance of the value of R2 is such that the closer the value of R2 is to 1, the better fit the curve is to the original data.

I have extended the same curve using the values of the averages from batsmen from position 8-11 to extrapolate these values for the new hypothetical players using a quadratic function. I used a quadratic function because it seemed to fit the curve the best possible way and gave non-negative values for the averages for the hypothetical players.



The averages for the new hypothetical players has been found to be-


Player 8: 16.63
Player 9: 13.15
Player 10: 10.51
Player 11: 07.54
Player 12: 04.57
Player 13: 02.4212
Player 14: 01.915
Player 15: 00.2376

The new function used is -

y = 0.2063x2 - 4.2051x + 20.801
And the new R2 value is-
R2 = 0.9948

Result #1
Therefore, extrapolating just the averages of each batsman according to the rules we laid down shows that the Average of the Total Score of a Team of 15 rises by 3.55% only.


But merely just adding the averages for the 15 players will not give us our answer. We need to consider strike rates and run rates too.

Watch this space...

Theory or Practice?

You can either believe in God or in Probability.

Take your pick.

Slow Death

I take a train to work everyday. In fact, two. And that's one-side. I need to negotiate one of the most filthiest stations in all of Suburban Mumbai for that, and believe me, I would like to get done with it quickly. Besides, I'm almost always late for work.

So when I'm stuck walking behind a silly lady who takes ages to crawl a few steps, or walk a few feet, I feel like punching her from behind her head. And its not just the women. So, instead of just walking slightly faster, these smart-alecs cross the tracks instead. Wonderful.

So I'm being mean. Sue me. But these are perfectly healthy men and women who could be role models for the DRDO. Its as if they aren't using their legs at all, they're just thinking they're walking fast. And they never give way to others at all. And when you finally overtake them, believe me, it gives yourself a huge sense of achievement. Are they scared that their feet might pop off from their sockets in the ankles if they use them too much?

What do you tell such people? Do you tell them that their feet might decay of gangrene due to excessive inactivity ?

The best part is that you will find the same people sweating it out at the gym at 6 in the evening.

Arbitrary Coolness?

Ever wondered what goes on in the back of someone's head when they call themselves "Random". "Hey luk at moi, m random, im 2 random fr words", or, “I’m so random, I cud do nethng rt now.”

 

Huh? What does that mean? Does that mean you're whimsical? Does that mean you can't think coherently for more than a minute? Does your head hurt when you do that?

 

Wikipedia casually defines randomness as 'a lack of order, purpose or cause'. Ok, that helped. It’s probably being 'randomly cool' about it. (Was that an oxymoron?)

 

Why is it that people think their Facebook photo albums will get more thumbs-ups, if it is titled "Random" or "Random pics"? Even when all of those photos are in a bar, restaurant or even a classroom, when it is pretty clear, there’s nothing random about them. It’s on the T-shirts too, you know. I guess it has now joined the league of the Me-Too T-shirts which proudly display ‘what education did to them’ or how ‘contagious their attitude is’. Robert Brown (of the Brownian Motion fame) would be so proud.

 

So what’s the mystery behind this word? Why is it that people think they could garner a higher acceptance among their peers, if they could call themselves or their actions as ‘Random’? If everyone is so random, we wouldn’t be random anymore. (OK, now my head hurts). Call someone random and you see a wonderful 32-bit smile on his/her face. (OK, that didn’t go as I had planned.)

 

Please refrain from calling me or this post as random. You shall be missing random teeth the next morning.

By the way, the picture on the right was displayed on the first results page of Google Image search when I searched for the word ......