The 'Semi-Final' experience!

Or should I call it the semi-'Final' Experience?!

I dont wanna talk about the excitement the India-Pakistan world cup clashes bring about. Neither do I want to talk about the nail-biting moments or the favorite seats we all held on to. Nor shall I talk about the 1000s of FB updates!

I want to talk about the celebrations... the after match 'feel' so to say. It was a delectable win no doubt. My spirits were already soaring... and what met my eyes after, at mid-night, took them to the stars!

I went for a drive after the match. But was stopped at my apartment gate by our own watch-men. I was wondering why. I was asked to roll down the windows. And in came a warm hand - congratulating me for the Indian victory. I was surprised, but recovered in time. I shared the joy and said lets hope we repeat it on Saturday. The reply was "I dont care about Saturday. To me, today was the finals". I smiled. I drove on.

Half a mile down, traffic stopped. 50 odd people were in the middle of the road. Dancing to a live band. The Indian flags fluttering proud. The glee in people's faces made wonder if we had already brought the cup home. All this in the middle of the night, mind you...

Fireworks were still on. I could see them lighting up the sky through my rear-view mirror. I could hear the shots all around me. Groups of people were standing and celebrating at every corner. People had their faces painted in Indian tri-colours. I almost joined them in the dancing, but stopped short. "Maybe, after the finals..." I said to myself.

It then occured to me. My ultimate cricketing joy would be to see Sachin holding the cup. Smiling. I could picture it in my head. He cant get any closer anymore. This is the chance... This is it. So I say... come on Sachin... come on Team India... Bring home the cup! Bring home the Joy!!

Eco-Variance and Strike-Efficiency - the number crunching...

A little recap first:

Eco-Variance shows us how economic a bowler has been, relative to the rest of the bowlers in the match.

Strike-Efficiency shows us how effective a bowler has been in taking wickets, relative to the rest of the bowlers in the match.

I have picked up a set of bowlers who have been around in the Indian ODI arena in the past decade or so. From veteran (retired) Anil Kumble to green-horn (WC debutant) Ashwin Ravichandran. I took the numbers from every single match they have all played up till this world cup. I calculated the variance between the economy and the innings run-rate for each bowler in each match they have played. Then I averaged the variance to get the average variance. I also calculated the % of matches where the variance is positive to get a consistency factor.

I ran a similar exercise for the Strike-efficiency as well.

Here are the results:

Pragyan Ojha, a noted omission from our WC team sits right on atop the list when it comes to economy. Given that in ODIs on Indian pitches we need to save some runs, he should have been an obvious choice.

Bhajji is the next best when it comes to spinners. Then comes Jumbo. If you noticed, the ranking as per eco-variance and economy does look the same for the top 3. But we start seeing differences beyond that point. The same can be said about the bottom 3 bowlers - RP, Ishant and Sreesanth being the worst of the lot.

Its the world in-between that causes us selection dilemnas. Here is where Eco-Variance can come into play to pick the one who typically does better than the rest!

Going by this, Chawla's selection ahead of Ojha can never be justified. Unless our think tank believes we need his batting exploits, in spite of boasting the best of line-ups! But even then, Ashwin would have fit the bill. Its just pure simple bemusement I am led to!

Talking about being effective in taking wickets... The stike efficiency gives a completely different picture as against the bowling average. Ashwin would be our go-to bowler for the wickets. And he is at the 4th spot when it comes to eco-variance.

I think our selectors got it right for the most part when it comes to picking the ones who would be able to take wickets. Munaf is in, if you purely go by the average. But if I were to pick a better performer comaritively, I would go with Nehra - purely for wicket taking. Both are in the squad and have been in playing 11s.

I was a little surprised to see Zaheer in the middle of the pack for both eco-variance and strike-efficiency. So maybe he is not too great a bowler as he is made out to be, although he is among the top 3 seamers when it comes to eco-variance.

Its up to the interpretation of the individuals to see what weight-age they want to give to economy and the wicket taking abilities. I would want a mix of both.

So perhaps the ideal bowling team to me would look like this:

Spinners: Ohja, Bhajji, Ashwin

Seamers: Munaf, Nehra, Zaheer (Praveen being unavailable)

What do you think? Do these numbers make sense? Should I even take this further? Please be frank in your opinion :)

Introducing new bowling statistics - Eco-variance and Strike-Efficiency

Let me jump straight to the point - The bowling statistics available today talk about a given bowler's individual performance. It does not provide a scale to compare them against other bowlers. (I say this because an economy of 5.25 for example is an absolute number and does not give us any idea on whether the bowler performed better or worse than another bowler in the same set of matches. The same argument can be extended to other stats used today.)

What I have attempted here is to come with statistics that provide us an idea of one's performance relative to the others in a given match or over his career.

So how do you judge a bowler today? Anyone who follows a good amount of cricket would put up his or her hand and say "Economy and Wickets". Some might actually say "Economy and Average". 'Average' being the average (duh!) number of runs a bowler gives away per wicket. A few might venture out to say "Economy, Average and Strike Rate". 'Strike rate' being the number of deliveries per wicket. But all these numbers are absolute numbers, specific only to that bowler and in no way provide a relative scale for ranking one bowler over the other.

What I am introducing here are two numbers, that I would like to call the Eco-variance and Strike-efficiency.

Eco-variance is the percentage delta between the bowler's economy and the innings run-rate, averaged over the career or the selected number of matches. If the bowlers economy is better than the innings run rate of the opposition in the matches under consideration, then the eco-variance would be a positive number, else negative. Obviously, positive numbers means he has bowled better than the other bowlers, in terms of the runs given away.

Strike-efficiency is the percentage delta between the number of wickets the bowler has taken per run given away by him in the match, and the total number of wickets taken per run given away by all bowlers together. Again this number is averaged over the career or the selected number of matches. If the bowler had taken more wickets-per-run, than the wickets-per-run for the entire innings, then the strike-efficiency would be a positive number, else negative. Again, positive numbers mean he has bowled better than the others, in terms of the wickets taken.

Having said this, I will pause, before I produce the numbers I got from the extensive number crunching I had been doing over the last few weeks. I have kept it down to the Indian bowlers, in ODIs for now. The idea was to release this in time before the WC, so I could analyse and criticize the team selection ;) But then, I said, lets do it atleast before the quarter finals :)

Note: I am also working on similar numbers for batsmen. These details are not to be used in other forms without my prior permission ;-)

I heard her and then, I saw her :)

I heard her voice as soon as I parked outside the office. I thought it was sounding in my head. I waited. I listened. I heard her again. A sweet, melodious whistle. I looked up into the blue sky and the green canopy beneath. Nothing. But the voice sounded again. I walked up beneath the green, kept looking up, called in some help (Another friend who would know what I am talking about). We both walked out of the office. We looked all around. We searched for the voice. We searched for the singer. Then I saw her. A Black-naped Oriole. And yes, the call was so so different from her usually not-so-nice tone. We were surprised.

But I heard her and then, I saw her :)

BBMP invites tenders for super-sized diapers

Bangalore,

March 09, 2011

The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike has invited tenders from diaper manufactures across the country to supply 3.65 million super sized diapers, as an immediate measure to contain the growing sanitation problem in the third most populous metro in India.

Earlier in the day, residents from several areas of the city decided not to make much of a fuss to wade through streets filled with sewage leaking from every other manhole in the vicinity. Some drivers chose to splash the water on the pedestrians, much to their glee. But this was not to be taken lightly by the city's governors who saw an opportunity to make a quick buck or two, having lost out on the 2G deals.

An independent commission set up to study the health of the sanitation facilities in the city had come up with a novel recommendation, at an astonishing speed of 4 milli-seconds, that the city could use diapers to contain the leaks encountered everyday from thousands of sewage-holes. It has been estimated that about 10000 diapers would be needed everyday across Bengaluru, with stand-by diapers kept ready in mobile diaper dispensing vehicles.

However, this recommendation was over-ruled by the city officials unanimously. They instead proposed a GIANT diaper, 18Kms long and 15Kms wide (approximate city limits), that could cover up the entire city to soak in all the leaking sewage, in one single shot. They have also proposed to build a tertiary outer-ring road along the diaper boundary as indicated in this new map of Bengaluru.

Leading diaper manufacturers, both local and international, are expected to send in their quotations to what would go down in history as the most novel solution to a city's sanitation problems.

Reporting from Bengaluru, Your special correspondent, That Inner Voice.