Ignorance Is Your Friend (IPL Wrap-Up, p. 1)

From the very start of the IPL, we at Outside the Line decided that the objective of covering the league's first season would be simply to learn. This was a massive venture, of truly unheralded proportions in cricket circles, and we'd try to resist the temptation to reach premature conclusions and make grandiose statements, and just concentrate on observation. There would be plenty of time to collate our notes and announce our findings later.

Well, that time is now. The verdicts are starting to come in from all angles.  Some hit the mark, some miss it somewhat, but they all have a little something to add to the debate. The most important thing now, however, is not to overreach and to start draw conclusions where the evidence is tenuous. The future of every form of cricket for decades to come will probably depend on what happens to the IPL in the next year or so, which means we should tread slowly and gently.

So as Part One of Outside the Line's IPL wrap-up, here are a handful of everyday questions that are still unclear or undecided in our minds, and that no amount of half-lucid, mid-morning cursory observations from a single season of play will be able to resolve. Part Two, still to come, will involve the grander questions about the league and future of the sport in general. But first:

Things We Have NOT Learned From The First Season Of The IPL

What is a par score?

Intuitively, the first response would be to say something like 170. Early on in the tournament, it seemed like it would be a little higher-- later on, as pitches deteriorated somewhat, it was a little lower. But the very idea of a “par score” is itself coloured by what we already know about one-day cricket. In the 50-over game, a par score these days would be around 260 or so. Is 170 supposed to be the exact equivalent of that in Twenty20? Is it supposed to be an average score? Or is it rather the score you must obtain batting first in order for the odds to be even going into the chase?

The teams batting second in the tournament ended up winning 60% of the games. That tells us either (a) teams don’t know how to set a total yet, (b) it’s a lot easier to chase totals in Twenty20, no matter what the opposition sets for you, or (c) a little bit of both a) and b).

At the moment, I would lean towards (c). Eventually, though, we can expect teams to learn how to bat first, and how to maximise the efficiency of their hitting (they are way too conservative at the moment -- they’re using deadweight at the top of the order when they don’t need to, they’re conserving wickets too intensely, they’re treating a normal, acceptable trickle of wickets as a ‘collapse’, etc.). By the time that happens, even if the gap closes, will (b) still hold true?

It may be well do so. Knowing the amount you need to chase is generally a very handy mental tool to help guide your innings, especially when the format is shorter and gives you less overs to deal with, thereby minimising the potential for getting dismissed taking risks. Even after teams learn about the format and learn how to assess the wicket and bat accordingly (let’s not forget, most players have only played a couple dozen Twenty20 games in their life -- it’s still as new and novel for them as it is for us), it could be that the natural advantage of chasing still holds, albeit weakly.

What should a bowling unit comprise?

Given the restrictions afforded by the salary cap, the 4-foreigner rule, the catchment rule, etc., what’s the ideal arrangement of bowlers for an IPL squad? It’s become obvious that, since quality bowlers are rarer in this format probably in any other, at least one strike bowling spot per team should be filled with a quality foreign import. But beyond that, what else can we tell?

The most successful teams early on were those with foreign spearheads… Delhi had Glenn McGrath, Pablo Escobar Mohammad Asif, and Farveez Maharoof, and they often went in with all three in their attack at the same time. (And that's not even counting Daniel Vettori, who was available for only a handful of games.)

Rajasthan had the two Aussie Shanes leading the bowling (of course, one of those Shanes was incredibly more influential on the team’s fortunes than the other, MVP trophy notwithstanding), and they later added another foreign strike bowler, Sohail Tanvir, who by now we must all admit is a complete freak of nature and utterly beyond rational description.

On the other hand, the Kings XI Punjab had what most people would consider to be the ultimate spearhead (Brett Lee) for their first few games. They did okay while he was around, winning two and losing two, but right after he left, they went on a royal rampage, winning 8 out of 10 games going into the semifinal. Those victories were all achieved with a bowling attack full of Indians, with two current internationals (Sreesanth and Irfan Pathan) and one destined to be a mainstay in the Indian team for the next couple of decades (Piyush Chawla). So maybe you don’t need foreign internationals, just internationals of any sort.

Well, not quite. The Chennai Super Kings were runners-up in the end, and their two leading wicket-takers were an uncapped player – Manpreet Gony – and a barely-capped one – Albie Morkel – with 17 wickets apiece. Their two bowling imports (Muttiah Muralitharan and Makhaya Ntini) were a lot less numerically productive (11 and 7 wickets, respectively), but at least they kept their economy rate low, which is probably what kept Chennai alive in so many tight contests. It could be that the pressure they created caused opposing teams to consciously target other – more inexperienced – bowlers in the squad, hence producing more chances for wickets.

As is clear, the evidence here is mixed, and as they teach you in undergraduate psychology, the trick to any sort of analysis is simply to say:

There is evidence for hypothesis A.
There is also evidence for hypothesis not-A.
More research is needed.

(Apply that formula liberally, and you’re well on your way to becoming the next B.F. Skinner, believe me. My buddy Lefty J, for one, got an entire bachelor’s degree in psych without once having to reach a meaningful conclusion in 3-and-a-half years of study. Quite impressive, if you ask me.)


Does home-ground advantage exist in the IPL?

Simply looking at the numbers, the answer seems like a pretty resounding “NO”. Out of 55 games in the league that ended in a result, the home team won 29 times (or 53% of the time) while the visitors won 26. A very slight advantage to the home team there, but a statistically insignificant one.

The question, however, is whether this represents a trend within the IPL, the Twenty20 format as a whole, or whether it’s just too early to tell. I’ve done a quick search for stats on home-ground advantage for other Twenty20 competitions, but there isn’t much data available. All I could gather, from a betting site, was that in the first year of the English T20 domestic competition there was a marked advantage to the home teams in the group stages, but eventually those numbers evened out.

When you think about it, though, why shouldn’t playing at home be an advantage? It is in just about every other team sport – to varying degrees of course – and it’s hard to imagine an atmosphere like the one produced at, say, Eden Gardens not having an effect on the course of play. What exactly that effect would be comprised of is a matter of contention. Many scholarly studies regarding the home advantage phenomenon have been conducted, with varying results. One metastudy (via Matt Yglesias) states:

A number of studies provide strong evidence that home advantage increases with crowd size, until the crowd reaches a certain size or consistency (a more balanced number of home and away supporters), after which a peak in home advantage is observed. Two possible mechanisms were proposed to explain these observations: either (i) the crowd is able to raise the performance of the home competitors relative to the away competitors; or (ii) the crowd is able to influence the officials to subconsciously favour the home team. The literature supports the latter to be the most important and dominant explanation.

That latter explanation would definitely make a lot of sense as far as cricket is concerned, where the fate of batsmen is so often decided on tiny instinctive factors within an umpire’s interpretation. Yet again, as the psych major would say, more research is needed.

Who do we blame for a team’s losses?

Much ink has already been spilled over Vijay Mallya’s sacking as CEO of Bangalore, but the question his failed reign poses will continue to linger in the air… who is in charge of these teams? Who do we hail praise at, and who do we hold accountable? Up until now, professional cricket has had a very wide division of power. The captain controls things on the field, the coach helps him off the field, the selectors get to pick the teams, the board gets to pick the selectors, etc.

As Montesquieu has taught us, divided rule is great for controlling abuses of power, but it also stalls progress, promotes the status quo, and makes accountability harder to define. Given that there’s very little chance of the Kolkata Knight Riders devolving into a tyranny and deciding to invade Bangladesh, maybe abuse of power shouldn’t be our biggest concern. Lack of accountability at top, however, should, and something tells me that the huge amounts of money invested in this little shindig will force the issue to be addressed soon enough.

(Whether this leads to the game of Coach Musical Chairs that we often see in European soccer and NBA basketball is hard to say, but it’s about time cricket was forced to confront one of its more puzzling anachronisms.)

Just how good was Brendon McCullum’s 158*?

This is not necessarily something which we haven’t learned so far, but something which some of us maybe haven’t realised yet. After we all saw that innings in the first game of the tournament, we must’ve assumed we would see those kind of breathtaking knocks all the time. (Or perhaps even greater ones… a double-century, perhaps? Yeah, why not? Gilly can do it, right?)

Now that we’re through – and it’s become quite clear that those kinds of knocks will always be more outlier than norm – it might be time to assess McCullum’s effort again. And as we do so, even if we don’t want it to, it might also lead us to seriously ask ourselves: it is possible that was one of the greatest cricket innings we will ever see?

First, we can look at the numbers. 158 unbeaten runs off 73 deliveries. 10 fours and 13 sixes. Strike rate of 216. (That is almost 2.2 runs per ball. Do you know what that means? If you score one single -- just one -- you pretty much have to score a boundary on the next ball just to catch up on the run rate. Another single, and not even a four is enough.)

Since that first game, no one has scored anything even close to 158. In the 58 games since that inaugural fixture, there were only five other centuries (four of those by Australians), with the highest score being Andrew Symonds’s 117*.

Then, there are those 13 sixes. Since that initial date, only two other players (Jayasuriya and Gilchrist) reached double-figures in a innings, and overall, only five other IPL innings included so much as half that amount of sixes as McCullum’s. Hell, in the entire history of ODIs, no one has hit 13 sixes.

But beyond the stats, there is the subjective appreciation. McCullum's was an intense assault, yet it wasn't mindless or brutish (in other words, it wasn't "Afridiesque"). His footwork was sprightly, his approach was exuberant, and his shot selection was innovative. He played regular shots, off the middle of the bat, adorned with a wristy flourish. He targeted the weak and punished the wayward.   

And then, there is that ultimate intangible -- the sense of The Occasion. True winners have a way of separating themselves from the pack by lifting their game when it matters. (Or at least, when the public perception is that “it matters”.) They excel in knockout matches, in grand finals, in derbies -- when everybody is watching, when everybody’s talking, when everybody will remember. This was the inaugural innings in the league that changed the world. The stage could not get any bigger, or the crowd any more anticipatory. This was the time for the champions – for the Jordans, and Federers, and Warnes of this world – to rise to The Occasion and fulfill the destiny of the narratives we create for them.

Brendon McCullum rose. And how.

Someday, we all might realise it.

Comments

[David Barry]

I should have a look at home advantage in domestic cricket competitions to see what comes out. My feeling is that it's not just the crowd but also familiarity with the local conditions. All the teams were created from scratch, with many players' home grounds not being where they've played for years. So it makes sense that there wouldn't be much home advantage this year. And while the season only goes for six to eight weeks, I'd be inclined to think that there won't be a big home advantage for the foreseeable future.

[Q]

Agree with DB on this - Knight Riders home ground was Eden Gardens - out of the XI only Ganguly and Dinda could call that their actual home ground, i.e. where they have played all their life.. so for the rest of the team the ground was as alien as the rest of the teams..

RE: what is a good total?

I would say 160 is a par score but the teams chasing will usually find it easier as over 40 overs the nature of the pitch hardly changes so knowing what u need to get is definitely an advantage..

[D.S. Henry]

It's true, DB, familiarity with the conditions can also be a factor, but as Q says, I doubt it would play much of a role in such an abbreviated format. In a way, I kinda hope it does... could you imagine having one ground that is "the spinner's ground", another one "the swing bowler's ground", etc? That would add another level of depth to the competition that would make it so much more interesting for the fan.