Bowling by position number

Bowling stats by skin position number... unimaginative, perhaps, following last week's blog, but it was requested anyway. It may seem to be a redundant thing to look at... surely people bowl worse in the first pair (where the higher runs are scored) and better in third. Well, maybe - we shall see what we see.

I'll start with an alternate theory to explain last week's stats. We assumed that batting first was some kind of advantage... perhaps it is because, in general, teams bowl their weaker bowlers in the first pair. And their strongest bowlers in the third pair. Could this be true?

For the Popped Collars, let's see who bowls most often in each pair number. For each player, I have listed the pair number that they have bowled most of their overs in.

1 - Brad, Gareth, Jake, Sanjit
2 - Matt
3 - Julian
4 - Andy, Rian, Xavier

With 3 of our 4 best (statistically) bowlers spending most of their time in pair #4, you would think that this should be the lowest scoring one... but it is not. And Jules is near the bottom of our team's bowling averages list, despite bowling most of his overs in the lowest-scoring part of the innings.

I think we can certainly declare the statement "in general, we bowl our better bowlers in pair 3, and weaker in pair 1" to be false. Myth busted. (OK, sure it's not actually a myth - just something I made up three paragraphs ago. But busted anyway.)

Therefore, it must be the batters, or just the batting position, as we looked at last week.

Here's a few more factoids to come out of this weeks study:

Andy is the most consistent bowler across skins - he doesn't care when he bowls. He has only about 1 run per over difference between his worst skin (#4) and his best (#3).

At the other end of the scale, Brad is the most inconsistent - around 4.5 runs per over separate his best (#3), from his worst (#1). Brad, perhaps don't bowl yourself first up too often any more.

Brad, Gareth, Rian and Sanjit all feel the effect of the "opening batters do best" effect. The four of them have their worst bowling figures during the opening partnership.

X, Brad, Gareth, Jake, Andy, Daniel and Sanjit are all contributors to the "pair number 3 does the worst" stat. All seven of them have their best figures when bowling to pair 3.

And now, here's a giant table for you to peruse, and find some stats of your own. This lists all of our bowlers, and their basic stats for each pair number. It lists overs bowled, total runs conceded (in brackets), and then average runs per over. Enjoy....

Bowler	Pair 1	Pair 2	Pair 3	Pair 4
Andy	24 (162) 6.75	80 (533) 6.66	64 (371) 5.80	120 (823) 6.86
Brad	121 (1145) 9.46	54 (394) 7.3	75 (373) 4.97	57 (410) 7.19
Daniel	16 (150) 9.38	21 (204) 9.71	22 (124) 5.64	20 (194) 9.7
Gareth	94 (707) 7.52	38 (188) 4.95	62 (305) 4.92	46 (327) 7.11
Jake	61 (545) 8.93	25 (260) 10.4	45 (269) 5.98	22 (181) 8.23
Julian	43 (384) 8.93	51 (407) 7.98	58 (525) 9.05	21 (213) 10.14
Matt S	26 (256) 9.85	43 (371) 8.63	32 (346) 10.81	26 (340) 13.08
Rian	50 (338) 6.76	56 (297) 5.3	45 (241) 5.36	94 (393) 4.18
Sanjit	82 (721) 8.79	54 (404) 7.48	71 (392) 5.52	33 (191) 5.79
Xavier	36 (228) 6.33	97 (669) 6.9	60 (322) 5.37	109 (704) 6.46

One more thing, just because it was a bit of fun to try to work out. If we were playing an 8-a-side game with a team of Brad, X, G, Sanj, Rian, Andy, Matt and Julian, the bowling order which should, on average, give us the lowest opposition score is:

First skin : Andy and X (26.16)
Second: Julian and Matt (33.22)
Third: Brad and Gareth (19.78)
Fourth: Rian and Sanjit (19.94)

Total opposing team average score: 99.10

I now have a great idea... if we next week look at how well bowlers go at each over within a skin (i.e. first over, second over...) we should be able to find the optimal bowling order for a 16 over game. Maybe. We'll see.