{"id":859,"date":"2013-09-17T03:04:39","date_gmt":"2013-09-17T07:04:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cricmetric.com\/blog\/?p=859"},"modified":"2013-09-17T03:04:39","modified_gmt":"2013-09-17T07:04:39","slug":"the-worst-cricket-players-in-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cricmetric.com\/blog\/2013\/09\/the-worst-cricket-players-in-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"The worst Cricket players in 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you have gone through the articles posted on this website, you will see there are many of them on ranking Cricket players and quantifying which are the “best” players. In this article, we do the opposite: we will find the worst players in the One-day and Test format of Cricket.<\/p>\n

Answering the question of who is the “worst” player is as important as knowing who the best player is. As much as a team would like to have the best players on board, it is also important for them to not give a long rope to the really bad players. Usually such players will be left off the team after a couple of bad performances, but some of them stay long enough on the team to become the baddest of the bad players. After all, to be a bad player also requires a surprising level of consistency, and it is these kind of players that we are looking for.<\/p>\n

Some players are really bad at bowling. Some are really bad at batting. The “worst” player is a rare breed in Cricket that is bad at both. To be more specific, for both the ODI and the Test format, we are looking for players who have:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Faced at least 240 balls as a batsman,<\/li>\n
  2. Bowled at least 240 deliveries as a bowler, and<\/li>\n
  3. Possession of a low batting average and a high bowling average.\n<\/ol>\n

    The first two conditions ensure that the player has been really consistent at being bad. We already have a tool that can be used to find such players – the player matrix tool<\/a>. To be more specific, we look at the bowling average versus batting average matrix for players in both Test<\/a> and ODI<\/a>. A simple visual inspection will tell us the winners in both the categories.<\/p>\n

    Test<\/strong><\/p>\n

    A snapshot of the Bowling Average versus Batting Average matrix for Test players in year 2013, who have faced\/bowled a minimum of 240 balls, is shown in Figure 1. The red lines represent the overall batting average\/bowling average, just so that we have know how far off each player is from the mean.<\/p>\n

    \"Figure<\/a>
    Figure 1. Test players in 2013 (min 240 balls faced\/240 balls bowled)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    We are looking for players in the top left quadrant – players with low batting average, high bowling average. Immediately, you can see that Nathan Lyon<\/a> sticks out as a sore thumb in the leftmost corner. Lyon has a fairly pedestrian 38.4 bowling average in Test matches this year. Lyon has also batted in 9 innings this year, and has a measly batting average of 11.7. Lyon hasn’t been good with either bat or ball this year, and he has performed badly in enough matches this year that he takes the crown for the “worst” player in Test Cricket in 2013.<\/p>\n

    Winner: Nathan Lyon<\/em><\/p>\n

    ODI<\/strong><\/p>\n

    The bowling average vs batting average matrix for ODI players in 2013, with a minimum of 240 balls bowled\/faced, is shown in Figure 2.<\/p>\n

    \"Figure<\/a>
    Figure 2. ODI players in 2013 (min 240 balls faced\/bowled)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    The two clear outliers in this case are Prosper Utseya<\/a> and Joe Root<\/a>. Joe Root has an astronomically high bowling average of more than 100 per wicket, but at least he has been an above average player with the bat. But Utseya has been bad with both the bat and the ball, and just like Lyon in Test Cricket, he has been bad in both the respects in enough matches that he takes the award for the “worst” player in ODIs in 2013.<\/p>\n

    Winner: Prosper Utseya<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    If you have gone through the articles posted on this website, you will see there are many of them on ranking Cricket players and quantifying which are the “best” players. In this article, we do the opposite: we will find the worst players in the One-day and Test format of Cricket. Answering the question of… Read More »The worst Cricket players in 2013<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cricmetric.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cricmetric.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cricmetric.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cricmetric.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cricmetric.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=859"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.cricmetric.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":870,"href":"https:\/\/www.cricmetric.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859\/revisions\/870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cricmetric.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cricmetric.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cricmetric.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}