Optimising the first over

October 29, 2017 by Guest User in Team strategy

Six games into the 2017 T20 Blast, Kent were the slowest starters in the competition. Even enduring a maiden first over at home to Gloucestershire. In their seventh game, against Somerset, the team switched things up. Joe Denly moved into the opening slot, with his partner, Bell-Drummond replacing him at the other end

Superficially, the switch appeared to work. In the following eight games, Kent were scoring more runs after 3 balls (+0.6), more runs in the first over (+0.5), and more runs in the PowerPlay (+2.6)

Batsman Tendencies

June 04, 2017 by Guest User in Player Profile

In a previous post, I looked at the great bowlers of T20 cricket and found unique tendencies for each one that made them stand out as outliers against their peers (except Harbhajan Singh). It was not possible to do the same thing with the batsmen. Only one player seems to have particularly unique tendencies and he stands out as an outlier on almost every single chart

Glamour from the openers, value from the middle order

May 25, 2017 by Guest User in Indian Premier League, Team strategy

9 of the top 10 scores in T20 cricket have been posted by opening batsman. David Warner has often single handedly dragged Sunrisers Hyderabad to victories in the last two IPL seasons as an opening batsman. The average match will feature an opening batsman spending the most time at the crease and their performances stick most in the minds of fans

In contrast, the middle order batsman are often tasked with the dirty work: maximising their teams chances of winning from the situation they inherit when they come into the game. They must be versatile and their role could be wildly different from game to game