With just a solitary win under their belt, the Rising Pune Supergiants will no doubt be feeling the pressure as they move into the second third of 2016IPL. It will be of no consolation to them that their latest loss against KKR was by the narrowest of margins. They might as well have lost by 100 runs. Steven Flemming and MS Dhoni have been fielding the inevitable avalanche of questions with typical openness and honesty as a variety of theories abound as to why the Supergiants have not risen as much as they would of hoped (optimists please note that they are still Rising).
So is there room for one more theory? At least in the context of their narrow loss to KKR? There is? Great…so here it goes…
We recently published an article explaining the importance of matching specific bowlers against specific batsmen – taking into account the strengths and weaknesses of each – both in team selection and in game day strategy to maximize the team’s opportunity of winning. In light of the Supergiants narrow loss to KKR, we wondered whether closer attention to match ups on the part of Pune could have yielded a different result?
The table below shows:
1. The KKR batting pair at the crease at the start of each over of their innings (Batsman 1 and Batsman 2)
2. The ranking of bowling options avaialable in the Supergiants squad, using Contribution Score based match up analysis, given the batting pair at the crease. Rank 1 was the Supergiants best bowling option, rank 10 was the Supergiants 10th best bowling option. For example, the Supergiant’s bowler most likely to be successful against the KKR opening pair of Uthappas and Ganbhir was M Ashwin while Albie Morkel was the 9th best option avaialble to the Supergiants
The table below shows:
1. The actual bowler used for each over in the innings and their ranking
2. An alternative bowler that could have been used, if selected, given the batting pair at the crease and their ranking
The bowling lineup and game day strategy employed by the Supergiants resulted in just 23% of deliveries being bowled in a positive match up situation from their perspective. A further 29% of deliveries were bowled in neutral matchups while 48% of deliveries (almost 10 overs) were bowled in negative match up situations.
The proposed bowling line up would have resulted in 54% of deliveries being bowled in positive match up situations, 20% in neutral match ups and only 26% in negative match up situations.
The table below summarizes the impact.
It can be shown analytically that over the long run, each ball bowled to a positive match up earns 0.1 more runs per ball to the team compared to a neutral match up. Similarly each ball bowled to a positive match up earns 0.3 more runs per ball to the team compared to a neutral match up. Therefore the proposed bowling line up would have on average saved the bowling team 9 runs. Would KKR have been able to score these 9 runs off the last 3 balls in the innings? Possibly, but I bet MS would have loved the opportunity to try stopping them!
Of course if the Supergiants had adopted the proposed team selection, they would have had only one non-spinner in their bowling line up. Surely that can’t be done, can it? Actually I can’t think of a reason why not. If the best bowlers to match the opposition team only call for one fast medium bowler, then so be it.