Saturday 27 July 2013

The London Jaguars?



It’s been a slow news week in sport. The third test of this increasingly one-sided Ashes series does not start until next week and the transfer saga outlined here is no closer to resolution, so I have decided to focus today on football from across the pond.

A much under reported story this summer was the new ownership of Fulham Football Club. Mohammed Al Fayed, owner of Harrods and the Paris Ritz, had been the owner, since 1997 when he bought the club outright for £6.25m.[1] Fulham quickly climbed the leagues and became a Premier League side in 2001 under the guidance of Jean Tigana. Since then Fulham has become a solid and occasionally spectacular mid-table club with a great home record, mainly due to the cramped and unusual nature of Craven Cottage, often mercurial players and a dubious away record.

Al Fayed is the one with the comedy moustache. No help?
Khan is the one on the right.
Al Fayed is now 84 and had personally invested, as of 2011, £187m in interest free loans to Fulham. In order to recoup his money, (and by all accounts make a profit) Al Fayed sold his stake to Shahid Khan, an auto-parts billionaire of Pakistani origin, now based in Jacksonville, USA. On the face of it this merely appears to be two foreign billionaires exchanging an expensive plaything, a toy for their egos.[2]

Except this is not Khan’s first foray into sports ownership: In January 2012 Khan acquired the Jacksonville Jaguars, an NFL team, from Wayne Weaver. On the face of it these two facts are unremarkable. The Glazers own the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Manchester United. Randy Lerner owns Aston Villa and used to own the Cleveland Browns. Stan Kroenke, the largest shareholder in Arsenal, owns the St Louis Rams and a myriad of sports franchises in Colorado. It is not the dual ownership that is remarkable; it is the deal that Khan signed with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell immediately after gaining ownership of the Jacksonville Jaguars that is significant. In August 2012, less than six months after taking ownership of the Jaguars, Khan announced they had finalized a deal to play one regular season home game each year between 2013 and 2016 at Wembley Stadium.
Roger Goodell. So unpopular he has a meme.

What’s the big deal about one game some people will ask? Remember the outcry when the Premier league suggested a 39th game to be played abroad every year? This is a whole lot worse. The NFL has a 16 game regular season, eight of which are played at home. Giving up one game a season for the next four seasons is a huge sacrifice for the fan-base. The average fan will now only get to see his team play live 7 times in a year, a reduction of 12.5%. If I was a Jaguars fan I would be angry about this for one season, for four seasons it would like being given a shit sandwich. So why has Khan slapped his own fan-base in the face?

Maurice Jones Drew. Running back and
the Jaguars best player. Rushing
touchdowns last season? 1.
Khan claims that the decision to play in London is to increase the fan-base of the Jaguars. This is not a wholly unreasonable argument as Jacksonville is only the third largest city in the State of Florida (behind Miami and Tampa). Though Jacksonville is a relatively large city of 775,000 people it only has a small area of suburbs, making Jacksonville a small market team in comparison to the larger metropolis’ that dominates US sport. In order to increase their market share the Jaguars do need to get creative. Playing in Toronto, Canada, has helped the Buffalo Bills increase their revenue and fan-base by becoming more of a regional team. The Jaguars could potentially think about playing games in Mexico or Puerto Rico given the number of Hispanic residents of Florida. Instead Khan has volunteered his team to be the resident home team in London, on the face of it a vast untapped market full of potential Jaguar fans.

Except the Jaguar’s fan-base is exceptionally unlikely to increase substantially by playing in the UK for two major reasons. Firstly the Jags currently suck. They tied for the worst record in the NFL last season and have the worst cumulative record in the NFL over the last three seasons. It is highly unlikely that a team is going to gain many new fans in the UK by repeatedly playing terrible football in front of them. Secondly, the fans that go to watch the NFL games in London almost all have a team already. On game day Wembley is littered with people in shirts of teams that aren’t playing, with people mostly attending due to a love of the sport rather than an affiliation with the teams actually playing. Both of these problems are widely documented and this helps to disprove the theory that increasing the fan-base, whatever Khan has said, is the reasoning behind the Jaguars London trips.

In reality it appears that Khan is loading things up for a run at the London Jaguars.[3] The new links to Fulham and London will help Khan to pull in sponsorship for the new team and will help him build contacts to do business in the UK. The Jaguars trips to London have nothing to do with strengthening the Jaguars brand, rather they are to reinforce our familiarity with their players, as they will be the only holdovers from the Jacksonville incarnation of the team. The team will be repackaged and redesigned, with new kit (uniforms), club badges (logos) and nickname. Presumably a PR company will be paid millions to come up with a name that is both forceful and British, something that could be done by a small child, (or me or you, any suggestions?).[4]

Just buy out the ice hockey team and
you are away!
A franchise in London isn’t just the pipedream of Shahid Khan either. The NFL actively wants this to happen. Everything the league has done in the last few years signals that this is no passing fancy– including increasing regular season games to two annually and making the Jaguars annual tenants. Roger Goodell, the League Commissioner (a position created by the 32 owners to run the league in such a way as to make as much money as possible for the said owners) has created an International Committee to provide detailed updates on the NFL in London. Committee member Eric Grubmann is reported to have said that, “We want to have a team in London – Our goal is to get a team there and make this happen.”[5]

Why is the NFL so keen on this idea? The domestic US market is tapped out. The TV deals are signed through 2020 and the only large market without a team is LA.[6] The Buffalo Bills are expanding into Canada and occasionally play Mexico as well. That leaves only London. Last time I looked at how the Premier League teams have used the Far East to expand their fan-base and revenue streams; the NFL is viewing London in the same way.[7] At this point it is important to note that the NFL is a profit sharing League. Any money that the league/individual team makes goes in the pot, which is then divided up equally at the end of the season. A strong London franchise with its potentially massive marketing, merchandizing and television deals is worth a great deal more to the league and its owners than the small market of Jacksonville.[8]

Rather than deprive Jacksonville of its team, why not expand the amount of teams to include London and LA? Again this idea of profit sharing comes in. The owners don’t want their piece of the pie cut up any smaller than it already is. Therefore any way of making the overall pie larger, as a European franchise definitely would, is much more appealing.

There is no denying that there are potential problems with a franchise in London. The most critical of these would be a lack of fan interest. The NFL certainly does not see this as a problem at the moment. Some argue that this is just novelty factor and that London is still not ready for a franchise. If this were the case that novelty should be wearing off by now as this is the seventh season in which regular season games have been played in London. All of the Wembley matches so far have been sellouts and this looks set to continue this year despite the pressure of adding a second game. Commissioner Goodell is so confidant of success that he has recently put forward the idea of a third game being played in London, potentially with the Jaguars playing host again.[9] It does not seem that a lack of interest will stop London from playing host to a franchise.

Another huge potential problem is US players not wanting to live in the UK. Andrew Whitworth, offensive lineman and Players Union rep of the Cincinnati Bengals threatened to retire if he landed on a team that moved to London. As the most connected player in regards to how the team feels due to his position in the players association his words carry weight when he says that, "I don't see that a lot of guys would want to do that," he said. "I don't see any players that would enjoy that. Sure, you may find a handful of guys that say, 'Oh, hey, that'd be cool,' but the rest of them wouldn't."[10]

This is a massive problem that it will be difficult to overcome. Many of the NFL’s signings come from free agency and the draft. If draft picks won’t sign for the team and they are unable to recruit in free agency it will be almost impossible for a London franchise to field a competitive team in the long term. Continuously poor on-field results could easily lead to fans growing disillusioned with the team and the NFL losing its hard gained goodwill. Of all the problems facing a London franchise this is the most insoluble, as there appears to be no obvious solution. Throwing money at the problem (maybe a bonus paid by the NFL to anyone who signs for the team in free agency?) could persuade some players but the foreign nature of the UK could really put off a large proportion of players.

Some people have raised the difficulty of travel but I don’t really see this as much of an issue. The league would make scheduling as friendly on the team and their opponents as easy as possible in order to make this work. In fact to make this work In addition the flight from London to New York is not that much longer than San Francisco to the Big Apple but nobody is complaining about that are they?[11] This is definitely the easiest problem to solve though.

"D..... Fence" clap, clap, clap. Rubbish. Just rubbish.   
A London franchise is a ‘when’ not an ‘if.’ Will it be the Jaguars? I think it is incredibly likely. Will they be supported? A straw poll of friends interested in the NFL (6 people) suggested that half would support a new London team, 33% would look out for them as a second team and one person would love to hate them. Given the love/hate relationship Brits usually have with our sports teams this seems to be a perfect balance! I am all for change and new things, I will use the terminology of the sport I am following even if I wince when they pronounce route (root) as rowt. I will hold big ridiculous signs so inane that remind me of wrestling. I will shout pathetic chants like, “lets go Jaguars!” over and over again with all the wit of a 4 year old.[12] I just won’t call football, Soccer.










[1] Technically a shell company in the tax haven of Bermuda called Mafco owned the club but it was controlled and owned by Al Fayed.

[2] Khan’s fortune is estimated to be $2.5b. By contrast Al Fayed’s is a mere $1.2b...

[3] If they kept the name, which I doubt, think of the sponsorship deal they could get with Jaguar!

[4]No points for the sillynannies... tut tut. It is almost certain they would change the name of the franchise on arrival in London. Off the top of my head, I like the British Blitz or the London Bulldogs. Suggestions in the comments please.

[5] According to NFL insider Jason La Canfora on CBS sports.

[6] It’s always been a basketball and college football town, hence why the city lost its Rams franchise to St. Louis in 1994. In some justification California still has the Oakland Raiders, San Diego Chargers and San Francisco 49ers.

[7] The Premier League teams have also done the same in the US selling out 80,000 seat stadiums at $100 a ticket for glorified run-arounds.

[8] One of the smaller markets, maybe San Diego, Oakland or St. Louis may be on its way to LA for the same reasons.

[9] http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/american-football/22780936

[10] http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/bengals/2013/06/06/andrew-whitworth-cincinnati-nfl-london-team/2397571/

[11] Actually some people are. There is some statistical analysis that early kickoff games played in the west are advantageous to the home team… Maybe a British team would do well at home but struggle with the time difference away.

[12] This is an area we Brits can teach the Yanks a thing or two. American chants are worse than terrible. If we had our own team, British chants would pretty soon be the best in the league, no argument.

Friday 19 July 2013

The Art of the War on a Far Eastern Tour; Sun Tzu’s guide to the English Transfer Window.


It has become customary these days for the top teams in the Premier League to open their seasons with a tour to the Far East. This is remarkable because the Far East is almost entirely unsuitable as place to go to regain fitness and match sharpness. The humidity and heat are stifling and the travel distances are extreme.  Players often complain that they come back in worse condition than they left. The reason that the teams put their reluctant players through this tour, of course, is money.


For a long time Asia, especially the Far East was a vast untapped market in Football. Despite its huge population, burgeoning economies and the predominance of globalization, Asia was the land that Football forgot. There were no great Asian players and there appeared to be very little interest shown by anyone of importance in establishing the game in the region. This all changed when FIFA decided, in Sepp Blatter’s only known good decision, to give the 2002 World Cup to Japan and South Korea. The tournament was wildly successful with every game a sellout and ardent fandom shown towards stars like David Beckham and Ronaldo. Above all it showed the world that the appetite for the game in the Far East was there if only it could be tapped into.

Marketing managers of the Premier League clubs  were the quickest to grasp the size and value of the Far Eastern Market and many clubs made concessions in an attempt to increase their market share in the region. The first method was to buy players from the country you wanted support from. Manchester United signed the inept Dong Fangzhou from Chinese side Dalian Shide in 2004, the workaholic Korean Park Ji Sung in 2005 and the talented Japanese playmaker Shinji Kagawa in 2012. I feel it is no coincidence that these three players just happen to come from the three largest Asian markets.

Arsene Wenger had managed Nagoya Grampus out in Japan before getting his Arsenal job and came to a similar conclusion as United, signing the average Junichi Inamoto in 2002. He barely played and was quickly moved on to Fulham. Yesterday it was notable that Ryo Miyaichi, a player whose last two loan moves have corresponded with that teams relegation (Bolton and Wigan), made a rare appearance in the second half of Arsenal’s pre-season game against Vietnam. Is he good enough to play for Arsenal? No. Is he a good marketing tool for Arsenal? Absolutely.

Arsenal beat an Indonesian XI on the weekend and thrashed Vietnam 7-1 yesterday. Chelsea played a best-of–the-Thai-league team, winning 1-0. Man United are now in Australia having already been to Thailand. With all of these top sides encouraging fans in the East to look west for their inspiration, it seems that they have found some inspiration themselves from some ancient eastern wisdom. Given the way the way that this transfer window has been unfolding I have a sneaky suspicion that many of the participants have been reading Sun Tzu’s ‘The Art of War.’

“Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win”



The key to the transfer strategies being displayed this summer is that it is not just enough to just strengthen your own squad. In strengthening your own squad you must weaken your opponents. This isn’t the first time teams have done this. In recent years Manchester City in particular and Manchester United have ripped the heart out of Arsenal’s challenge by constantly poaching their best players. Samir Nasri, Gael Clichy and Emmanuel Adebayor went as players to City, club legend Patrick Viera went as head of City’s elite development squad. Like a bad school drama, the new kid (City) picked on another kid (Arsenal) to get respect from the other teams (United, Spurs and Chelsea). In turn, last summer, United forced the sale of Robin Van Persie. Arsenal appeared weak and, for the last few years, before the league had even started, Arsenal had lost it.

“When the Enemy is relaxed, make them toil”


The man under the most pressure this summer is David Moyes. Taking over from the legendary Sir Alex Ferguson at Old Trafford would be tough for anyone; it’s even tougher for someone who has never managed a team with title aspirations. Given the pressure, Moyes would have hoped this summer would be uneventful, allowing him to get his feet firmly under the table. Instead the most experienced premiership managers at the top, Jose Mourinho and Wenger have rattled United’s cage by targeting Wayne Rooney. This has put Moyes under serious pressure early on in his United career and it will be vital to his future that he responds in a positive and decisive way so as not to appear weak. If Mourinho, the best at this game, feels that he can get under Moyes’s skin then it could be a difficult debut season for the new United boss.

“Hence that general is skilful in attack whose opponent does not know what to defend; and he is skilful in defense whose opponent does not know what to attack.”


If Jose is having fun the
Premiership had better watch out.
In recent days Mourinho and Chelsea have publically had a bid for Rooney turned down. Mourinho then upped the ante by stating that Rooney is their only target and that it was “Rooney or bust.” Despite the fact that this is obviously a bigger lie than Clinton’s denial of Lewinsky, this creates a massive problem for Moyes. Either he keeps Rooney and has a constant destabilizing influence in the dressing room thus exacerbating the pressure, or Moyes sells Rooney and looks weak because it appears that he has been bullied into it.

A misleading picture.
The genius of Mourinho in this situation is that it is certain that Moyes wants to sell Rooney. By publically declaring his interest for Rooney, Mourinho has backed Moyes into a corner from which he can’t escape. Moyes wants to put his own stamp on the team and needs to show the dressing room he is the boss. An ideal way to do that would be to sell a disgruntled star like Rooney to show that the club cannot be held to ransom by any player. As Sir Alex used to say, “nobody is bigger than the club.” Now Moyes has been forced to come out and say that he doesn’t want to sell Rooney, leaving an “angry and confused” Rooney in United’s dressing room. Either way this pans out, I think Mourinho gets his man eventually, Mourinho has won this early confrontation by sowing seeds of discord at United.

“All warfare is based on deception.”


Arsene Wenger meanwhile has got some money to spend and the mojo is back. Wenger’s main target appears to be Gonzalo Higuain. This deal hasn’t gone through due to the fact that Wenger has been having too much fun destabilizing United with his own suggestions of a bid for Rooney and also disrupting Liverpool by kicking their tires over Luis Suarez. Suarez and Liverpool would prefer a move to Real Madrid but as any viewers of last week’s Top Gear are aware, the Spanish are broke. Both Madrid and Barcelona have been operating under a sell to buy policy for a couple of seasons now and this would help to explain the reasoning behind the sell off to Bayern of Barcelona’s best young talent in Thiago Alcantara. This elaborate smoke screen of name dropping is a deception designed to unsettle his domestic opponents and you can tell that Wenger is enjoying putting the boot in to his rivals for once before signing Higuain.  

“In battle, there are not more than two methods of attack—the direct and the indirect”


On the whole of the internet there is
not a single picture of Moyes
in a hat. Weird.
One way for Moyes to get back at Arsenal would be to strike a psychological blow indirectly. There are no players at Arsenal that Moyes would desperately want so another way must be found. The thing that would really upset Arsenal and Wenger would be if Cesc Fabregas joined Robin Van Persie at United. You would have to imagine their faces looking something like this. Wenger betrayed his fear of this possibility by declaring that it was impossible for United to sign Fabregas because, “he is staying at Barcelona for another year.” Arsenal own the first refusal on Fabregas but if they cannot match United’s bid then they forgo their right to sign him. If Moyes could pull this unlikely rabbit out of his hat he could yet have a chance of winning the war before the games have even started.

“There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare. ”


Manchester City have avoided this undignified ruckus by going on tour South Africa. They have made the astute signing of Jesus Navas, an electric winger who was one the standout players in the Confederations Cup. Fellow Spaniard, Alvaro Negredo, a natural finisher and Montenegrin forward, Stevan Jovetic, will join Navas. All of these players have the natural ability to perform to a championship level next season. Whilst the other teams have damaged each other in the heat of the Far East, Manchester City’s progress under new manager Manuel Pellegrini has been serene. Manchester City have been playing in the Nelson Mandela Football Invitational Tournament. They have not been able to meet Mandela due to his prolonged health problems but if they had, his famously wise and pacifist advice may have gone something like this, “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”



Tuesday 16 July 2013

The Week in Sports II



 A pulsating first test and the flaws in DRS.

As a massive cricket fan this weeks viewing has been dominated by the first Test of the Ashes. It wasn’t always cricket of the highest quality but, in terms of drama, entertainment and tension, it was one of the great test matches of all time, and in the outstanding debut performance of Ashton Agar, it had a story line that would have been thrown out of a Hollywood studio for being less believable than Sharknado. It had everything you could want in a cricket match; from records being broken, to devastating bowling and belligerent batting, from dodgy umpiring and outraged controversy to the arrival of a star in the making. 

Ashton Agar's performance was incredible. To perform that well from number 11 was outrageous, to do it on debut was inconceivable. The audacity and nervelessness displayed were hallmarks of youth. His shot selection and judgement of length an indicator of serious talent. Never before has an English crowd wanted an Aussie to score a century but there were groans of disappointment when he was caught on the boundary for 98. His was the highest score by a No.11 in the history of Test cricket and it was part of the highest ever tenth wicket partnership in Test cricket, ably supported by Phil Hughes. Agar also had the skill to take a couple of wickets including the England captain, Alistair Cook. A great start for a great talent.

The world's best?
His performance was only topped by the brilliance of England's best player, Jimmy Anderson. 10 wickets in the match on a pitch designed to suit the spin of Graeme Swann does not quite tell the full story. The 13 over spell to win England the game on the fifth morning was nothing short of heroic, his abilities highlighted by the ease with which Australia scored off England's other bowlers. Special mention must also go to the high quality performances of Peter Siddle and Ian Bell, both players who have previously been much maligned in the media. Siddle is commonly dismissed as an 'honest trier,' completely overlooking his accuracy and skill. After his 8 wickets in the match, maybe a little more analysis will be applied to his skill and a little less on his effort. By contrast Bell is often criticised for only scoring stylish but easy runs against poor sides. His gritty and determined century in the second innings put England in a position to win the game.  It was without doubt a brilliant match, full of the unexpected, and, when I was watching on TV, it was brought to me by Sky.[1]

It is an accepted wisdom that TV has influenced all sport in thousands of ways since its arrival but in none is that influence so marked as in cricket. Since they took over the summer Test matches from Channel 4 in 2005, Sky has had a TV monopoly on English cricket. As in many sports, fixtures are now timed for maximum TV viewing rather than the enjoyment of fans actually attending the match. Cricket tours are shorter, (why play warm up matches for the benefit of quality Test cricket when you can play another lucrative and pointless T20 match?) and often played at ridiculous times of the year to fulfill the contractually obliged quotas demanded by Sky, (why else would you choose to play Test matches in the rain of April and May?)

Nerdy types, otherwise known as physicists, have long postulated that in quantum mechanics the nature of something changes when it is observed.[2] Cricket has certainly changed since the advent of Sky’s coverage.  Technology such as Hawkeye and Hotspot that were originally introduced by Channel 4 and Sky for viewer enjoyment have now been incorporated by cricket in DRS (decision review system).  Specifically designed to reduce controversy by getting more decisions correct, it would be reasonable to argue that in this Test the DRS has caused the controversy.

The technical issues all started with the dismissal of Joe Root in England’s second innings. Joe Root was strangled down the leg side with ball seeming to lightly brush his bat. After chatting with Alistair Cook, Root decided not to review the decision and walked off. This brought Jonathon Trott to the crease and he was promptly given out LBW first ball to Mitchell Starc. Trott decided to use the DRS and review the decision. All the front-on camera angles appeared to be inconclusive as to whether he had hit the ball. The crucial angle would the side-on hotspot camera. Unfortunately there was no footage from that camera as it was being rewound at the time to show that they couldn’t find any evidence of Joe Root hitting the ball and that if he had reviewed, the decision would have been overturned and he would of stayed in. As the Hotspot camera and machine work in a similar way to an old VHS, it cannot both record live footage and rewind at the same time.[3] Without Hotspot to save him Trott was confirmed out.

This incident shows more than a few flaws within the DRS system. The first problem was when Joe Root walked off. It is widely acknowledged by former players of the game that ‘you know when you have hit it.’ If Joe Root had not hit it he would certainly have reviewed the decision immediately. That suggests that he knew that he had hit the ball thus explaining why he walked. So why didn’t the Hotspot camera show the nick? This should put serious doubt on Hotspot’s ability to detect faint edges, thus rendering it almost useless as a part of the DRS.

A secondary problem is that the laws of cricket give the benefit of the doubt to the batsman. Without the Hotspot camera in his review, Trott was denied that benefit. Instead the 3rd Umpire confirmed up the original decision of the umpire and gave him out. This brought two separate laws into conflict with each other, an obvious problem. Trott was rightly furious that he had not had all of the DRS at his disposal and controversy reigned.

In England’s second innings Ian Bell and Stuart Broad put on a major partnership that would give England a commanding lead. Australia had wasted their reviews on two dubious LBW shouts earlier in the innings and were therefore out of reviews. This turned out to be crucial when Broad blatantly edged Agar to Michael Clarke at slip. How the umpire missed it is beyond my comprehension, but miss it he did. Whether Broad should have walked is another argument but it brought into focus two problems; the reliability of the Hotspot Camera and  whether two reviews is enough or too many. Once again Hotspot had failed to spot an edge behind and if Root’s had been a faint nick, Broad’s was a fat edge. Though the decision couldn’t be reviewed, a riot would have ensued if he had been given out and it had been overturned on DRS due to the evidence of Hotspot.

Originally the system was brought in do away with howlers such as this. Some, including the BBC’s cricket correspondent Jonathan Agnew, argue that by giving teams two reviews, it encouraged teams to gamble with them rather than saving them for overturning obviously bad calls. Others argue that Australia should have had more reviews to use and this would have prevented the controversy from occurring. Both theories have their merit so whilst there is no consensus this flawed system will remain unchanged.

Rev counter is... IN THE RED!
Sky’s newest gizmo, the Rev Counter, which debuted in this match appears to be totally pointless except as a way to elicit thoughtless commentary  from the FECRC (Former England Captain’s Retirement Committee) when it poops up on the screen.[4] Such delights included constant exhortations of “Its in the red!” and Andrew Strauss ridiculously questioning whether Graeme Swann would forget about bowling normally and try to just spin the ball as much as possible in competition with himself. In all, I am pretty sure this adds nothing to the game and Sky may have agreed with me as, by the end of the match, the rev counter graphic was half the size it had started at.

Without any doubt there are definite problems with the DRS system as it stands. Though flawed its defenders correctly argue that more decisions are now being given correctly. Its critics counter by pointing out its deficiencies. In the end it will all come down to viewer entertainment and it is hard to argue that Hotspot and Hawkeye, despite their flaws, do not enhance the viewing experience. The very act of observing cricket through the medium of Sky has changed the game. In itself this is not a worry as sports evolve all the time. The worrying thing is that it’s now changed the game to such an extent that it’s affecting the outcome of the game.





[1] Other, no doubt better commentated, channels are available in other countries… The BBC does great radio coverage on TMS.
[2] The guy who made this theory, Heisenberg, would have been a great fan of the DRS system I feel. He would also probably have loved the complexity of the Duckworth Lewis method as well.
[3] Nerdy readers will note that Heisenberg’s principles of quantum mechanics argues that something can be in 2 places at once due to the uncertainty principle. In this case the DRS was also in two places at once.
[4] I didn’t mean pops. I meant poops.

Wednesday 10 July 2013

'Moneyball' in Cricket?


On the day that the Ashes starts I thought it was about time to do a post on Cricket. I will be writing my weekly round up of the week's sports tomorrow and will be including some thoughts more directly related to the Ashes there. 

Billy Beane. Doesn't look like Brad Pitt.
The rise of advanced statistics in cricket has been a long time in coming. Similar in many ways to cricket, baseball has been at the forefront of statistical analysis in sport since the mid 1990s. Made famous by the film ‘Moneyball’ starring Brad Pitt, baseball had its statistical revolution, known as sabermetrics, under the guidance of Sandy Alderson and Billy Beane, the general managers of the Oakland Athletics. Sabermetric principles focused on analyzing players using objective evidence measured from in-game activity. By recording every action that each player took in each game, Alderson and Beane were able to create either entirely new statistics to rate players or use the existing statistics alongside new qualifiers to give a more accurate picture.[1] In turn this allowed them to build up a far more detailed picture of which players were the most effective to a team’s success then their competitors. The principles of research and analysis allowed Beane and the Athletics to remain relevant for long periods despite having one of the lowest payrolls in baseball.[2] Given the similarities between the two games, why hasn’t cricket followed the same trend until recently and where might we begin to see similar analysis begin to creep into cricket?

For many years Cricket had been dominated by the most simplistic statistical thinking; Averages and strike rate (and additionally for bowlers – economy rate) were the only statistics taken into any sort of consideration. The problem with these statistics is that they take no account of game situation, pitch conditions, overhead conditions, quality of opposition and type of opposition (i.e., left arm spin, right arm seam etc). For example, whilst Kevin Pietersen averages a quality 49 in test cricket, his average against left arm spin is a modest 38. Stuart Broad has an overall bowling average of 31.93, which improves to 27.51 in England but balloons to 43 in Asia (including two tests against enthusiastic minnows Bangladesh). Would it not be sensible to consider picking other another batsman who doesn’t exhibit this weakness when facing quality left arm spin bowling.[3] Broad’s has struggled in the sub continent for a while now and a large enough sample size in evidence to suggest that an alternative should be found by England. Even these simple manipulations of the statistics seem to be beyond England’s selectors who seem to prefer a rigid team selection to a more squad-based system where players are picked according to their various strengths.

Alan Wells is dismissed by Curtley Ambrose.
Is it better to be picked once and dropped than
never to be picked at all?
Until recently even these basics statistics were often ignored if an international selector managed to watch a player put in a stellar performance.[4] Small sample sizes were ignored and any player on a decent run of early season form was considered for the England team with no thought given to temperament, conditions and quality of opposition. Despite players like Vaughan and Trescothick being successful additions to the England squad, a policy of picking players purely on the basis of recent good individual performances, rather than long-term weight of achievement, largely led to the shambles that was English Cricket circa 1990-2000. One cap wonders like Mike Smith, Gavin Hamilton, Simon Brown, Joey Benjamin, Neil Williams and Alan Wells were all unlucky to only be given one chance, (or maybe they were just lucky to get a chance at all), though none endured the humiliation that Ian Blackwell suffered in being dropped after his only test match for the truly inept… Liam Plunkett.[5] All were unfortunate victims of the horrific lack of consistency endemic in England’s selection; a policy that closely resembled teaching kids to swim by just chucking them into a pool and allowing those not naturally gifted to drown.

Only the arrival of Nasser Hussain, Duncan Fletcher and the new standard of professionalism that they brought with them saved English cricket from the inconsistent selection that had plagued it for so long. Alongside the consistency required to build a strong team, Fletcher, Hussain and, later, Vaughan used technology to help England improve and analyze their game. The rise in professionalism and analysis has coincided with a rise in the England team’s fortunes. England has sports analysts, Nathan Leamon for tests and Gemma Broad for ODIs, whose sole role is analyze data and come up with plans to combat opposition players.

Jimmy Anderson and Steve Harmison recently spoke on the Tuffers and Vaughan radio show and highlighted the advanced use of specific plans to individual batsmen that they faced. When specifically questioned by Mark Chapman as to how he would get out Ramnaresh Sarwan, for example, Anderson responded that Sarwan is LBW candidate early on and that he would try to “run on back into him.” To AB De Villiers the plan would be to “make him play with a straight bat” as he scores heavily with cross bat shots. 

His answers show that plans to get out different batsmen are created in two ways, firstly through analyzing any technical deficiency, (in Sarwan’s case above that he gets his front foot too far across early on and ends up playing round his pad) and secondly through Hawkeye pitch data and a batsman’s average when facing balls pitched in certain areas. De Villiers scores heavily when facing anything short pitched and so the plan is always to keep it up to the bat to force him to play straight. It must be noted that De Villiers is such a quality batsman that Anderson’s method of bowling to him is more of a way of restricting his scoring rather than targeting a weakness.

An example of the Hawkeye pitch map. This one appears to to show
Zaheer Khan's left arm seam bowling in a particular match to right
handed batsmen from both over and around the wicket. Whilst
conceding fewer runs going over the wicket, Khan has been more
successful going around the wicket as he has taken two wickets
shown by the 2 white dots.
The use of Hawkeye and similar ball tracking technologies is at the heart of the new advance in analytics in cricket. By being able to track the flight and pitch of every ball bowled in world cricket, statisticians are able to record the strike rate and average of each batsman in different pitching areas and finishing points.[6] For example analysis of the finishing points of a certain bowler could help Eoin Morgan’s shot selection outside off stump, the pitch map could allow Mitchell Johnson to locate the pitch (just a tad) more regularly and Jimmy Anderson can even end up seeing where his deliveries pitch.

Analysis and research into the game is continuing apace and its only going to accelerate in the future, so where is it headed? I feel that a squad system is more likely to become commonplace. Players will be used in a rotation policy slightly reminiscent of football. This will allow for squad depth in bowling and batting departments to cover for injuries and allow management to pick teams in a slightly more horses-for-courses way. These ideas are commonly used in county cricket with young players picked in short formats of the game to gain experience and experienced players picked in the more important county championship matches.[7] Bowlers will be on limited over counts similar to pitch counts in baseball in order to manage workloads. Other statistical elements will slowly work themselves into the game as captains and coach’s search for even more sophisticated ways of gaining an advantage.

Traditionalists fearful of the total dominance of cricket by analytics should not worry too much though. Cricket is a far more cerebral game than baseball and often a captain’s feel for the game will capture a wicket far more quickly than stubbornly sticking to a statistical plan that may not be working. Making use of the statistics in sensible ways is far harder than their creation, so whilst cricket may be appropriating statistical ideas from baseball the complexity of cricket will make it harder to totally analyze the value of each decision made.  Cricket is so complex that it will never be as comprehensively analyzed as baseball but their is definitely some work that can be done. Digital decision-making may be useful but sometimes a little analogue thinking can get you a wicket much more cheaply. Or, if you are an Australian, you can just punch someone in a bar and hope that will put him off his game.



[1] OPS –on-base plus slugging - is an example of using two old statistics combined together to form a newer, more accurate measure of a batters value to the team.
[2] For example in 2006, the Athletics finished with the 5th best record in Major League Baseball despite having the 24th lowest payroll of the 30 teams.
[3] For the record, in this case, I think they should consider it, then forget about it. KP is too good to get dropped. But they should definitely be considering things.
[4] Two famous examples where this strategy paid dividends were Marcus Trescothick and Michael Vaughan. Trescothick was famously picked for England after scoring 167 in a low-scoring match at Taunton in front of Duncan Fletcher, soon to be England coach, despite averaging in the low 30s in his career until this point. Trescothick went on to average 43.79 in tests and 37.37 in ODIs as a destructive opening batsman for England. Similarly Michael Vaughan also performed much better for England than Yorkshire with his test average standing at nearly 5 runs better than his first class average (41.44 – 36.95).
[5] Unbelievably JJ Ferris took 13/91 in the match and never played again!
[6] Only 3 of the international teams have statisticians at the moment – India, England and Australia.
[7] England are also following this route with their own T20 side. The large majority of the side is very young with only KP a regular in the test side.