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Batsman statistics in the 2020 Blast Season

Neil Wyman • 8 February 2021

The Hundred – Men’s Player Retention and Draft Order

The cancellation of the Hundred due to Covid has provided some teams the opportunity to keep their best players and dump the players they weren’t sure about. 

There is a new dataset in the Vitality Blast that the teams can pour over and pluck out some of the best performers. I am going to run over some key batting statistics that I feel are important and won’t be found on Cricinfo or basic website to guide recruitment in the upcoming draft.

Batsman Selection

1. Strike rate after 18 balls faced

I think this is a wonderful statistic. All players should be set after facing 18 balls. I like this stat as it’s a good way to compare players whether they come in at the start, middle or at the death. It’s a bit more a true way of calculating strike rate. Here’s a list of the top 20 players from the 2020 Blast. 


Player Runs Balls faced Adjusted Strike Rate Rank
Delray Rawlins * 46 20 230 1
Leus du Plooy 29 13 223.08 2
Luke Hollman 21 10 210 3
Sam Hain 161 80 201.25 4
Lewis Gregory * 22 11 200 5
Ben Raine 71 36 197.22 6
Adam Hose * 114 58 196.55 7
David Wiese 123 63 195.24 8
Joe Clarke * 121 62 195.16 9
Lewis Goldsworthy 19 10 190 10
Paul Walter 49 26 188.46 11
Laurie Evans * 171 91 187.91 12
Will Jacks * 109 59 184.75 13
Jack Leaning 40 22 181.82 14
Ian Cockbain 127 71 178.87 15
Andy Balbirnie 112 63 177.78 16
Harry Brook 30 17 176.47 17
Ben Cox 44 25 176 18
Liam Livingstone * 47 27 174.07 19
Ryan ten Doeschate 92 53 173.58 20

*player already recruited in The Hundred


The players who have faced over 50 balls deeper, domestic and undrafted are Sam Hain and Ian Cockbain. I would definitely look at these players in more detail.


2.      Strike rate 1st ten balls faced


I like this statistic because one of the thing I value most if the ability to hit a six from ball one. It is perhaps the rarest of T20 skills. The next is finding the boundary when you haven’t seen the pitch or the bowler. Finally it is rotating the strike. Dot balls in t20 are death by 120 cuts, so you inmy opinion the best players need to get off to a strong start and continue accelerating until they are set at 18 balls faced.

Here is a list of the top Strike rates based on the first ten balls faced in the innings from last season’s blast. 


Player Runs Balls faced Adjusted Strike Rate Rank
Benny Howell * 67 32 209.4 1
Phil Salt * 140 67 209.0 2
Graham Clark 144 72 200.0 3
James Hildreth 79 40 197.5 4
Ben Mike 74 39 189.7 5
Brydon Carse * 130 71 183.1 6
Alex Hales * 142 78 182.1 7
R. van der Merwe * 98 54 181.5 8
Graeme White 101 56 180.4 9
Dan Douthwaite 72 40 180.0 10
Will Fraine 110 62 177.4 11
Hamish Rutherford 135 79 170.9 12
Adam Lyth * 133 80 166.3 13
Robert Yates 61 37 164.9 14
Joe Clarke * 161 99 162.6 15
Tom Westley 114 71 160.6 16
Joe Root * 83 52 159.6 17
Jamie Overton 54 34 158.8 18
Zak Crawley * 154 97 158.8 19
Paul Stirling 128 81 158.0 20


Top of the pops is Dan Weston’s favourite player Benny Howell. There’s some quality players in here. One’s I would want to investigate more are Graham Clark, veteran Hildreth, Mike and White.


3.      Six %


Sounds obvious but the most important batting skill in t20 is being able to clear the rope. West Indies worked it out before anyone else 6 or 7 years ago and it’s why their players are so valued. Looking at the last data from last year, there’s a few names that haven’t bene picked up yet…


Player Count of Balls Sum of sixes Six % Rank
Benny Howell * 45 8 17.78 1
Dan Douthwaite 44 6 13.64 2
Will Fraine 89 12 13.48 3
Tom Lammonby 69 9 13.04 4
Duanne Olivier 8 1 12.5 5
Gus Atkinson 17 2 11.76 6
Liam Livingstone * 125 14 11.2 7
Ben Green 18 2 11.11 8
Ben Raine 117 13 11.11 9
Jamie Overton 55 6 10.91 10
Graeme White 58 6 10.34 11
Robert Yates 58 6 10.34 12
Joe Clarke * 215 22 10.23 13
Ben Mike 40 4 10 14
Tymal Mills 10 1 10 15
Ed Pollock 53 5 9.43 16
Ian Cockbain * 239 22 9.21 17
Daryl Mitchell 44 4 9.09 18
Hamish Rutherford 222 20 9.01 19
Daniel Christian 124 10 8.06 20


I’d make Dan Christian my first pick as an overseas. He used the surges amazingly in the BBL, was a useful 5th bowler bowling pressure surge overs. He needs to drop the round the wicket tactic bowling. He is firmly in the world class bracket and was crucial in Sixers winning the Big Bash.


Rutherford makes it in the list again, so do Cockbain, Mike and White. Cockbain especially stands out with his 22 sixes. 



4.      Player comparison


So I have ranked all the players from last year’s Blast. If you ranked first in that column you rank 1. Obviously some of these columns are massively related. I am just having fun with these data whilst highlighting players that I find interesting and I am sure the 8 teams will be looking at similar data.


I’ve averaged the ranks out based on the 8 metrics and have restricted it to players who have faced at least 100 balls in last year’s Blast. If a player is below the Blast average I have given them the Blast average as I don’t want to overly penalise someone for being bad in one category over one season and the variance that comes with it, e.g Livingstone and Lyth death strike rate is below the Blast average of 154, therefore they get ranked as 70th (the average) rather than overly punish them.


Player 1st 10 SR 1st 10 Ave Death SR Death Ave SR Ave 19+ SR Six % Ave Balls
Ian Cockbain 29 16 37 69 9 12 15 17 25.5 239
Brydon Carse * 6 23 21 26 27 57 51 25 29.5 114
Hamish Rutherford 12 19 46 69 12 25 37 19 29.9 222
Daniel Bell-Drummond 34 12 5 39 24 14 32 80 30 280
Joe Clarke * 15 32 70 69 7 36 9 13 31.4 215
Laurie Evans * 42 44 13 67 29 11 12 37 31.9 242
Joe Root * 17 10 60 12 46 2 51 86 35.5 199
Stevie Eskinazi 23 1 51 69 34 18 45 48 36.1 283
Liam Livingstone * 21 7 70 69 23 76 19 7 36.5 125
Adam Hose * 35 61 29 53 31 58 7 27 37.6 179
Sam Hain 75 75 7 5 71 7 4 67 38.9 209
Adam Lyth * 13 22 70 69 14 30 46 47 38.9 198
Daniel Christian 39 3 23 69 51 61 51 20 39.6 124
David Wiese 75 75 28 43 47 17 8 39 41.5 202
Luke Hollman 70 17 64 30 42 40 3 86 44 101
Phil Salt * 2 41 70 69 19 68 51 35 44.4 134
Graham Clark 3 55 70 69 10 59 51 41 44.8 156
Arron Lilley 41 28 59 69 50 53 31 34 45.6 203
Ben Raine 75 75 70 69 25 41 6 9 46.3 117
Jack Leaning 61 53 26 22 76 43 14 86 47.6 149
Zak Crawley * 19 51 70 69 21 26 40 86 47.8 225
Babar Azam 75 75 3 23 72 39 22 79 48.5 163
Harry Brook 47 57 19 55 38 84 17 72 48.6 131
Alex Lees 62 4 70 25 88 5 51 86 48.9 293


Cockbain comes out as the star. Across the metrics he ranks superbly on all metrics, especially as he faced over 200 balls. The other players are overseas star Rutherford and Bell-Drummond. I will publishing some pieces starting with Cockabin and some others this week.


Stevie Eskinazi and Sam Hain also deserve recognition and will be looked at. I will also look in more detail at these players over the week and see what we can uncover as well the bowlers in future articles.

Should anyone wish to discuss the recruitment data in more details please DM me or if you have any suggestions please let me know.


Thanks


neil@cricketpunt.com

Was Jack Taylor unlucky to be undrafted?

by Neil Wyman • 25 February 2021
The draft came and went on Monday, but one of the names that wasn’t picked up was Gloucestershire captain, Jack Taylor. Taylor the niche finisher? Taylor operates in an interesting niche in the in the t20 world – the finishers, but more specifically, the seam finisher. This is a highly specialised role, batting at 5 or 6, where players are expected to get their team over the line chasing, or if setting go at at least 10+ runs per over in the last 3-5 overs of the innings. A lot of franchises double this role up with a 5th / 6th choice bowler and fill the team with these in the 5-8 slots. The modern team generally now has 4 specialist bats, a batting keeper, 4 specialist bowlers and 2-3 all rounders who either fill the 5th bowling option or combine as a 6th bowler for specific match ups. Examples of these players include Ben Cutting, Carlos Brathwaite, Keiron Pollard. Therefore, for Taylor to be noticed and stick his head above the parapet as a non bowling finisher you need to be elite to get drafted.
Luke Hollman an exciting prospect and all rounder

Let's talk about All Rounders

by Neil Wyman • 15 February 2021
Using Balls per boundary as a Blast metric for all rounders in t20 cricket
ian cockbain hundred draft

Ian Cockbain - anchor, destroyer or finisher?

by websitebuilder • 8 February 2021
My initial research on the Hundred batsman came up with a few names like Hain, Bell-Drummond and Luke Hollman. One name that kept coming out though was Ian Cockbain, so I am going to take a closer look at his numbers over the last three seasons to see what we can learn about this player.
vitality blast

T20 Blast bowlers - strike rates 1st 10 balls, 19+ and 6 %

by Neil Wyman • 8 February 2021
I was thinking about what makes a great bowler in t20 cricket. Some of the obvious metrics are bowling economy, strike rate, balls per wicket. There’s been work done on True Strike Rates that give each ball an expected outcome and how you perform over time against the average gives you a true performance level. This is fantastic but not everyone has access to an all singing, all dancing models. In the article about batting, I picked out three key metrics than can be used to assess players which I believe are important. So it makes some sense that if bowlers can restrict these then they must be fairly valuable. Here are the three metrics but in reverse for the bowlers, a) the best 1st 10 balls strike rate, b) best strike rate to set batsman who have faced over 18 balls and c) the lowest six percentage. Obviously these figures are not perfect, if someone played all their games at the MCG their six % would be artificially low or if they were at Taunton artificially high but if we inclined we could adjust for that and give each ground a six rating and then apply it to the player. I won’t be doing that today but I could make that data privately available should anyone be particularly interested. Furthermore the data set is small, so analysing one season like this will give rise to a recency bias. You might get taken down by Colin Munro on one day and all of a sudden your statistics look bad. Anyway, let's take a look at the worst offenders in the t20 blast last season 1. Strike rate to batsman facing their 1st 10 balls
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