Finding New Faces — Realising Pakistan’s Quest for Good T20 Batsmen

Waqas Ahmed
Nov 7 · 4 min read
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Contrary to how the title might have sounded, this piece would essentially try to solve or at least point into the direction of how we might be able to weed out the TTF (tried & tested failure) repacking problem in T20s. Given the last 4 weeks have been nothing short of a horrid dream, I was genuinely inquisitive to find out who might be a reliable pick from amongst the players that do not have the baggage of a prior international debut. To my surprise none of our ‘Analysts’ have even tried to produce a metricized model to answer this simple question and there seems to be a very large research gap when it comes to quantifying where exactly do our domestic T20s stand in preparing a batsmen for international cricket — To resolve all these fundamental queries surrounding the T20 game I decided to generate valid RPI and SR benchmarks that would not only yield the list of players closest to the required international standard but also give us the percentage decline a player can expect when he moves from a domestic-only competition to international cricket.

To being explaining the preceding model we must first revisit an extremely critical aspect of international T20s. Based on all the scorecards in the last 3 years (1st Nov 2016–1st Nov 2019) for the current Top T20 teams, we established that a winning score in T20s generally has 3 batsmen who make 20 runs or above, each at a mean strike rate of 160+. The difference between winning teams & losing teams almost always comes down the third batsmen scoring a minimum of 20 runs at a 161.17 SR to be exact. I have discussed this hypothesis in detail in a twitter thread so if you’re not sure please check (here).

From the above RPI and SR numbers, we can reverse engineer these metrics to produce our domestic benchmarks for non-debuted players. To generate these benchmarks we need the average percentage variance a player experiences between his domestic seasons that occur prior to and after his international T20 debut. Our data frames included 10 distinct players who all made their debuts post 2013 and hence had a good enough sample size for their pre and post domestic seasons as well. All these results enabled us to establish that for Runs per innings (RPI) a Pakistan domestic player scores 63.15% more in domestics than internationals (pre-debut) while the percentage for SR is only 5.19% more (pre-debut) when compared to international SRs. Since we’ve already established that the minimum threshold in international T20s is an RPI of 20 with an SR of 161.17, the numbers when plugged into these latter values generate a domestic only benchmark of RPI 32.63 with an SR of 169.54

A complete rundown of the above hypothesis is done separately in this piece here, go check it out if you’re unclear on the how I arrived at the RPI & SR of 32.63 & 169.54 respectively but as a simple refresher I’d say that these two values were procured by determining the X(RPI) & Y(SR) intersection of the pre and post debut Scatter plots for 9 distinct players. The XY intersection was then used to calculate the percentage change the players experienced from their international numbers. When all nine values were determined, a mean value for X & Y was generated which came about to (-38.71) & (-4.94) respectively. This value was put into a simple percentage formula to get the benchmark RPI of 32.63 and SR of 169.54. I would highly recommend that you read through the explanation but as we’re severely pressed for time let’s move on to the Model Significant Table which was determined via the stated benchmarks.

Model Significant Table

As per the Model Significant tabulation & under current circumstances, Rizwan Hussain is the most suited candidate for a T20 international debut followed by Saad Ali. Both players have a career RPI nearest to the 32.63 run benchmark we have set earlier and have encouraging SRs as well. BM Delta R or S basically is the difference between career RPI/SR and the 32.63/169.54 benchmark that we have set for every player — the smaller the number the more ready an individual is to an International debut. The sourcing of all the above names came by going through top 50 T20 batsmen for the last 4 National T20 competitions which is why it is critical that PCB directs a great amount of focus & attention in developing these 23 batsmen, especially in LOIs and T20s.

The tabulation also paints a relatively dire picture where none of the batsmen in our domestics that might not have debuted in International T20s fulfill the benchmarks that we established. These inadequacies lead to the recycling of TTFs every year and the fact that emerging players hardly fulfill a large enough T20 sample also adds to the headache. With the identification of a rudimentary model such as the above, we can start investing our national resources towards players that statistically have a higher chance succeeding than bringing back players who have failed sample sets in International cricket already.

I spew nonsense relating to cricket (the sport)

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