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

Doesn't really show us that much - the average is 121 Strike Rate. If we filter for minimum 100 balls then three players are above 150, Matt Taylor's 158 Strike rate comes out worst, followed by Ollie Sale and Ryan Higgins.

And the winners Mark Wood and Callum Taylor, have a look at the table below.

Some interesting names in there who have bowled at least 50 balls. Luke Hollman, comes in to the all rounder category.

There is a lot of part timers especially spinners. These bowlers have probably come on when the game is dead and already won bowling at the tail, or when conditions are particularly in their favour. Callum Taylor would probably fall in to this category. To improve these numbers I could filter out only bowling at say the top 6 batsman.

Danny Briggs showed why he potentially won a BBL contract. Tom Smith’s slow left arm also comes out well. Prem Sisodiya the Glamorgan left arm tweaker also comes out very well. At 22 years old will be interesting to see if he comes out well in another metric and continues to improve over the next few seasons with this age curve.

2. Strike rate to batsman who have faced over 18 balls (SR19+)

Here are the worst offenders in the Vitality blast 2020. These are fairly small samples, the average bowler would go at 148 SR to a player this set. 

Bit unfortuante for Ollie Sale who also comes out right near the top at facing set batmsan as well as unset batsman.

And here are the best performers.

I could probably improve these by filtering for number of balls, here I have done minium 10 which is a tiny sample Anyway, I am going to take a look at those with 50+ balls to set men.

Max Waller mostly bowling at Taunton is outstanding. Once again Danny Briggs makes it in there and Joe Root! There are quite a few leg spinners in this bracket. Mason Crane’s numbers are exceptional as well and recently appointed Leicestershire vice captain and slow left armers Parkinson also does quite well.

And finally looking here is the worst offenders for six percentages with at least 40 balls bowled.

Some good players in the list there like Pat Brown and Tim Bresnan.

3. Bowlers six percentage conceded

If we value six hitting as a skill very highly, then it reasons that we should also value bowlers who don't go for sixes. Maybe we could also look at dot ball percentage as well. That might be one for a different day. Anyway here at the worst offenders in the blast last season with a minimum 40 balls bowled.



Some good players in the list there like Pat Brown and Tim Bresnan.

And here are the list of players who average under 2%. The average of all bowlers is 4.1%

No surprise to see Chris Jordan with 0 although from a small data set. Stirling is canny and a good 6^th choice option. He might will get picked up as an overseas player.

Tim Murtagh comes out well in this metric. My favourite player Dan Christian only conceded two sixes in over 200 balls bowled. He didn't go so well in the BBL with his round the wicket surge tactic but he is still a very good operator.

Max Waller, Mason Crane, Joe Root, Tom Smith, Luke Procter, Jake Lintott, Mattie McKiernan and Felix Organ all measure well. These are players that I would look and produce individual reports on with data as well as scouting reports and video analysis and I may produce a comparison on these players before the draft or look at one or two in more detail.

Hope you enjoyed the data. Please retweet if you did or reply with some feedback. There will be a few more articles to come before the Hundred Draft.

Thanks

Neil@cricketpunt.com