Well that’s it for the Big Bash 6, and how appropriate was it that the Scorchers handed the Sixers as big a bashing you’ll see in a T20 tournament final!
Cricmetric has prepared an alternative, data driven game summary for last night’s final. Unfortunately many of the observations we will share are trivial given the one-sided nature of the game, but hopefully our review will still provide some food for thought!
Turning Point Analysis
Turning Point Analysis overlays Cricmetric’s inter-match win prediction model with an over by over summary of the impact each player had on the match outcome. The analysis is provided in four charts, one chart for each 10 overs of the match. The top section of each chart shows the probability of the team batting winning the match, updated at the end of teach over. The bottom half of the chart shows the batsmen who participated in each given over, their Contribution Scores for that over, and the bowler of the over.
There are 6 key points from yesterday’s match worth highlighting.
Chart 1: Sydney Sixers Innings, Overs 1-10
1. Over 3 bowled by Mitchell Johnson saw the Sixers lose 2 for 8, slipping to 3 for 17 by the end of the over. The win probability for the Sixers fell from just under 50% at the start of the over to 34% at the end
2. Over 5, the penultimate over of the power play, bowled by Mitchell Johnson conceded just 1 run and pushed the Sixers win probability to just 31%, the lowest point of their innings
3. Over 7 bowled by Tim Bresnan saw some momentum shift back to the Sixers. 13 runs were scored off the over but two sixes off the last two balls gave some hope of Haddin leading a hard-hitting revival. At the end of the 7th over the Sixers win probability had recovered to 46%
4. Over 10 of the innings was Richardson’s second, but it saw him remove the dangerous Haddin and concede just 5 runs which shifted the upward momentum the Sixers had enjoyed over the previous 4 overs
5. Over 12, also bowled by Richardson, saw him claim 2 for 7 reducing the Sixers to 6 for 86. This was the over that pushed the Sixers win probability to below 50% permanently.
6. The second over of the Scorchers innings bowled by Bird conceded 19 runs, 18 of which were slammed by Whiteman from 4 successive deliveries. From this point onwards the Scorchers win probability never dipped below 95%
Forecast Score
The forecast first innings score by the Sydney Sixers is shown in the chart below, updated at the end of each over. Save for the Haddin-inspired spurt across overs 7-9, the Sixers were always heading for a score around the 140 mark.
Player Performance – Sydney Sixers
Batting
As would be expected in a score of 141/9, not too many of the Sixers’ batsmen had positive contribution scores for the match. Only Haddin (CS of 16.6 runs above average) and Botha (CS of 7.6 runs above average) gave the Sixers positive momentum during their innings.
Bowling
Lyon was the pick of the Sixers bowlers. His 4 overs yielded 1 for 28, and a positive CS of 1.9 runs above average. Henriques gave Sixers fans a glimpse of what he would have been capable of had a side injury not prevented him from bowling for much of the tournament. His one over resulted in just 5 runs for the Scorchers and a positive CS of 1.4 runs. Bird was clearly targeted by the Scorchers batsman conceding 28 runs off his two overs equating to a negative CS of 18.4 runs.
Overall Player Performance
Sean Abbott did not have a great match for the Sixers with ball (5 off 10 balls) or ball (3 overs, 33/0). As a result his overall player level CS was 15.7 runs below average.
Player Performance – Perth Scorchers
Batting
No prizes for guessing that Whiteman and Klinger were the top performers for the Scorchers. Although Klinger top scored, Whiteman’s blazing innings of 41 off just 21 balls launched the Scorchers chase and equated to a CS of 20.8 runs above average, marginally higher than Klinger’s CS +15.4 runs.
Bowling
Top bowling honours for the Scorchers went to Mitchell Johnson for his superb return of 1 for 13 off his 4 overs, earning him a CS of +22.7 runs above average. Johnson’s economy rate gave him the edge over Richardson, despite the latter’s 2 extra wickets. Richardson’s CS of +9.9 runs was still a critical factor in restricting the Sixers batsmen.
Overall Player Performance
Fittingly Johnson’s CS of +22.7 runs was the major contribution to the Scorchers performance on the night. By the time he had finished his first 3 over spell the Sixers probability of winning was just 31%, which set the platform for Richardson to further squeeze the life out of the Sixers batsmen in the middle overs. It was the Scorchers bowling performance that freed their batsmen to canter to the winning total with 4 overs to spare.
Player Match Ups
As mentioned, Johnson’s CS of +22.7 was the Scorchers best result for the match. Player match up analysis allows us to break down that performance against the batsmen he bowled to. The table below shows a breakdown of the Sixers batting performance by bowler faced. A negative CS from the batsman’s point of view translates to an equal and opposite CS from the bowler’s perspective.
As can be seen, no Sixers batsman had a positive CS against Johnson, with Henriques neutral CS of 0 (based on the one delivery he faced from him) indicating he played this ball in line with average. Johnson’s dominance was spread over the seven different Sixers batsman he bowled to over the innings.
The table also highlights Haddin’s batting performance. His CS was +17 runs was the best of the Sixers batsmen. He dominated against Agar and Bresnan, but struggled against Johnson and to a lesser degree Richardson.
Player Match Ups “Deep Dive”
Bowling match ups can also be expressed in terms of positive, negative and neutral match ups. Take the following example.
Martin Guptill’s CS per ball as a batsman against left arm orthodox bowling is -0.2. I.e. Guptill historically performs below average against left arm orthodox bowling in T20s. RA Jadeja is a left arm orthodox bowler whose CS per ball as a bowler against RHB (Guptill is a RHB) is 0.1. I.e. Jadeja historically performs above average against RHB. Intuitively it would be a positive match up for the bowling team to have Jadeja bowl to Guptill. How positive would the match up be? It can be quantified by taking Guptill’s batting CS against left arm orthodox bowling (-0.2) and subtracting from it Jadeja’s bowling to right hand batsmen (0.1) which equals -0.3.
A positive CS based match up from the bowling team’s perspective is defined as a match up where the batsman’s historical CS per ball against that type of bowler, less the bowler’s historical CS per ball against that type of batsman, is less than -0.1. A negative CS based match up from the bowling team’s perspective is defined as a match up where the batsman’s historical CS per ball against that type of bowler less the bowler’s historical CS per ball against that type of batsman is more than +0.1, and a neutral match up if the difference between the batsman’s and bowler’s CS is between -0.1 and +0.1.
Using this definition, how did the match ups play out during the BBL06 final?
First let’s look at the Scorchers bowling.
1. 26% of the Scorchers deliveries were bowled to positive match ups from their perspective, another 26% in neutral match ups and 48% in negative match ups
2. For the positive match ups, the Scorchers bowlers had a CS of 0.5 runs per ball better than average, indicating that they took advantage of their positive match ups.
3. The key point is that the Scorchers bowlers also generated a positive CS of 0.1 runs per ball even for their negative match ups. i.e. In match ups they were expected to lose, they actually won!
4. Put in this perspective, Richardson’s performance stands out as being exceptional. He did not bowl one ball in a positive match up from his perspective, yet he still managed to have a positive CS/ball for the neutral and negative match ups he was in
5. Bresnan had good results from the positive match ups he was in (+1.1 runs per ball from 28% of his deliveries) but he was heavily punished in his neutral and negative match ups. Overall Bresnan had the worst CS per ball of the Scorchers bowlers
The Sixers bowling match up analysis is even more telling.
1. 64% of the Sixers deliveries were bowled in negative match ups. From the Sixers perspective, the overall CS per ball from these negative match-ups was 0.7 runs per ball below average
2. Apart from Lyon, and to a lesser extent Henriques, all Sixers bowlers were punished heavily by the Scorchers batsmen in the negative match ups
3. As a team the Sixers performed above average in the positive match ups they made, with CS of +0.1 runs per ball better than average. However as mentioned above, the damage was done by the Scorchers batsmen taking advantage of the match ups that were in their favour. Chasing a small target of 142, they could afford to do just that!
