Mumbai Indians the defending champions playing a new franchise lead by a familiar MI foe. It was a derby game, it was the opening game of the season. It was going to be big. Alas, it was anything but that. 

The champions Mumbai Indians won the toss and decided to bat first on a pitch which was doing something early in the innings, it was a case of the pitch being misread by Rohit Sharma. 

Anyway MI start with their new opening pair of Rohit Sharma & Lendl Simmons, both got out cheaply with Rohit the first to go, what followed after that was a procession which saw Mumbai lose half of their side even before 10 overs were bowled. 

Ishant Sharma & Mitch Marsh did the early damage with ball picking up 2 wickets each with Marsh picking Pandya & new MI player Buttler. Rajat Bhatia bowled his full quota of overs and gave away only 10 runs, newcomer M Ashwin supported Rajat Bhatia well by going for 16 runs in his quota. Ravi Ashwin was called upon for only one over in the innings and went for 7 runs, a pattern of not bowling Ravi Ashwin out has been emerging here. 

Rayudu and Harbhajan were the ones who gave MI a chance to post a respectable total, with Rayudu contributing 22 and Bhajji getting 45 runs. MI managed to finish their allotted 20 overs with 121 on the board. Clearly, not a good enough target for a batting line up like RPSG.

RPSG got off to a good start with Faf DuPlessis and Rahane opening the innings, Rahane batted 42 balls to score his 66 runs and in doing so faced only 16 dot balls in his innings which meant he scored 4.125 runs for every dot ball faced which is a healthy thing to do in a T20 innings and more so in a game in which the target is not that high. 

Faf DuPlessis scored 34 at just over a run a ball, his innings could be described as slow but in the context of the game one which was needed after seeing the ball moving a lot in the first innings. 

Kevin Pietersen who has been doing well in all the T20 leagues he has played in came in and scored a quickfire 21 in 14 and showing glimpses what he can provide to the side with the bat. 

All in all, it was a poor game for Mumbai Indians from the decision to bat, to their batting and the theme continued with their bowling. MI did not play like the champions of last season and they rightly deserved to lose. 

Mumbai Indians next play KKR in Kolkata and will have to pick their game up before playing KKR as they are a side which is very strong at home. 

West Indies are now the WT20 champions for the 2nd time. They are the only side to win the tournament a second time, something which has not been achieved in the first 5 edition of the tournament. West Indies have done it.

T20 Cricket is a game in which every ball matters, a side has to be on their toes for all 240 balls. Each crucial run here and there can matter in the big picture made more evident by the India vs Bangladesh game in Bangalore in which India were the victors by one run. 

But Let’s look at the numbers deeper and see where each side stood. 

Balls Per Boundary

Balls per boundary is the number of balls a side takes to score/concede a 4 or a 6. A side which is able to do this in fewer balls while they are batting are able to have more boundary balls in their 20 overs and hence will score more runs in boundaries, while a bowling side will aim to increase the number of balls of which they concede a boundary so as to have lower boundary balls in their 20 overs while they bowl. 

The above picture shows the number of balls each side took to score a boundary, as it is pretty evident South Africa took the least number of balls to score a 4 or 6 when they batted. Surprising given that most of us look at West Indies as the power hitting side. Sri Lanka & Bangladesh both sides who didn’t perform up to their expectations were one of the poorest boundary hitters in the entire tournament. India the semi-finalists come 3rd from bottom on this list, their lack of boundary hitting was one of the reasons attributed to their loss to West Indies in the SF.

This above picture shows the number of balls each side bowled before they conceded a boundary, NZ one of the best bowling units in this tournament conceded a 4 or 6 after almost every 9 balls which are 7.5% of an entire innings. West Indies is second on this list, which gives some light about how their image as a power hitter, the West Indies just out-hit their opposition in every game.

England conceded boundaries every over, but that would mainly attribute to them playing their games on flat tracks such as Mumbai and Delhi in which run scoring is as easy as it could get in this tournament. 

As it can be seen, West Indies score boundaries quicker than they conceded boundaries. Their boundary hitting is a testament to the fact about how they outscored their oppositions with the boundaries in their games against England, India and the big final. New Zealand another side who managed to score boundaries faster than their oppositions were one of the best sides in the tournament until they faced England. 

Dot Ball Percentage

Dot balls are crucial for a bowling side as it helps build pressure, but more importantly, it is another ball of which the batsman has not scored any runs off. 

For a batting side, their main aim is to keep the number of dot balls they face to a minimum, as low as possible which mans they are scoring off more balls than their opposition.  

South Africa was one of the teams who were best able to keep the number of dot balls they face to a minimum, Pakistan which has been ridiculed for not rotating the strike often is another side who has been able to lower their dot ball output. Interestingly, 3 of the top 5 sides to have the least dot balls got knocked out in the first round of the tournament. 

Rotation Percentage

India was the best side in the tournament in terms of rotating the strike, they had the highest percentage of 1s,2s & 3s when they batted which is evident in their chase against Australia during which Virat Kohli was rotating the strike a lot and keeping India in check with the asking rate. India was the only side to have more than 50% of their scoring shots in 1s,2s & 3s while the rest of the sides were in between the range of 40% to 49%. Surprisingly West Indies the champions had the lowest strike rotation percentage of 39.74% which could be mainly cause of their ability to score better than their opposition with the boundaries. 

Afghanistan tops the tables in their ability to reduce strike rotation among their opposition after they, comes India who was the best in doing it.

Power

Power is the number of runs scored off every dot ball faced. It can be calculated for both the bowling and the batting side. Power is an indicator of how well a batsman is able to score off the dot balls he faces and this is also a better indicator than the strike rate of how well a batsman scores. For instance, batsman A has faced 6 balls and scored 6 runs with 4 singles and 1 double, while batsman B has scored 6 runs in his 6 balls with 5 dot balls and one Six, the strike rate for both these batsman would be a 100.00, but the power would show which batsman has scored more the dot balls he has faced for batsman A the power would be 6 runs for every dot ball while for batsman B it would be 1.2 runs for every dot ball.

South Africa was the side which had the highest power while batting scoring, England is behind them followed by Pakistan. 

India was the side to have conceded the least runs for every dot ball they faced, which shows how good a unit the Indian side was while they bowled. 

55/1 after 5 overs. Fuck. Not that start we needed I thought. Maxwell, Steve Smith, Watson, Warner & Faulkner can hit the ball big, How much would Australia end up with after this start? 

5 overs later 81/3, with Khwaja, Warner & Smith back in the pavilion. We have pulled things back pretty well here. Maybe Australia ends up with 190 in the worst case scenario. Need to bowl well in the death overs, Also 190 would be tricky to chase given how this pitch usually slows down. 

114/4 after 15 overs. Hmm, better than I expected but then Maxwell & Watson batting right now, things could still go horribly wrong here. But right now happy with the way we have recovered. 

The first innings was done, Australia 160/6 after their 20 overs. Fuck, what a comeback after that horrible start. The bowlers did a really good job to recover. 

Now to think about our batting, our openers have been struggling for a while. Hope they click today, need it more than ever today. 

5 overs down in the chase, 34/1, not a horrible start but not a great start either. Openers failed yet again. I seriously am doubting why Dhawan is in the side. He doesn’t contribute much with the bat, he doesn’t bowl and he is an inferior fielder compared to Rahane. Anyway, we need 127 more in 15 overs. 

What an eventful 5 overs, Rohit Sharma outfoxed by Watson with a slower ball, Raina gets bounced out for the 22561528017th time and Yuvraj Singh has gotten injured. Is his injury serious? Don’t want to risk him playing on if he is injured, could cost us crucial runs. He decides to play but is clearly not 100%. Meanwhile, India need 96 more in the last 10 overs.

Dhoni & Kohli batting now, Yuvraj seemed to be struggling but did his job I guess. Kohli meanwhile has been playing a really good knock, keeping those runs coming. Fuck, he is a busy guy while batting. India need 59 in the last 30 balls. 

BOOM, what a win man. Virat Kohli you beautiful man, what an innings dude, what a high-quality innings under pressure. That assault on Faulkner was breathtaking and those shots man pure class, no slog nothing. Oh man, what an innings and what a chase. 

WE ARE IN THE SEMIS BABY!!

T20 is a format in which fortune changes more often than needed. A team could be good for 90% of the game and still could end up on the losing side just cause the opposition won the crucial 10% of the game.

Something similar happened when India took on Bangladesh at the WT20 in Bangalore, Bangladesh were the better side for 237 out of 240 balls, that’s 98.75% of the entire game. Not only did Bangladesh bowl well and made sure the Indian batting took the game away from them, they also batted well to keep their side in the chase for almost the entire chase.

But then the last 3 balls happened, the last 1.25% of the game. Bangladesh just needed 2 runs to win in 3 balls. Usually, it would be Bangladesh’s game but then something happened. Bangladesh had an adrenaline rush, the need to be a hero took over the need to win a game. The need for a glory shot was somehow seen more necessary as a dab for a single to win the game.

India had only those 3 balls, they just needed to play well those 3 balls. The game for them came down to those 3 balls. If India manages to win those 3 balls they win the game, all they need to do is win 1.25% of the game, the crucial 1.25% of the game.

Bangladesh may have outplayed India the entire game. Sorry Bangladesh did outplay India the entire game. But what they forgot to do was they needed to outplay India in the last 3 balls of the game as well.

How does one identify a good batsman? The runs, the strike rate, his batting average? These traditional stats paint a basic picture of how good a batsman is not the big picture. A good batsman is one who is better than the average batsman, one who is able to contribute to the team more than an average batsman.
An average batsman is a statistical fiction of all the players who have played the game during a certain period, it is the combined runs, strike rate and an average of the sum of players who have played. This gives birth to the average batsman. 

So here is a sum of all the runs scored by the batsmen in T20I between the period of 7th March 2015 to 7th March 2016. These numbers show that on average a batsman scored 1.19 runs per ball, has 0.058 outs per ball and averages 20.44  runs per out. So what do these numbers tell us, it basically tells us what to expect from an average batsman who has batted within this period i.e. An average batsman should be scoring a 17 ball 20 for every time he gets out.
So here is the average batsman, now to find out the batsman who has done better than the average batsman, so for a batsman to be better than an average batsman he has to 1) Score runs at a rate quicker than the average batsman & 2) Get out lesser than an average batsman.
So there is a formula for those aspects which has been devised by the good folks at cricmetric.com which are given below:-
RAA = (Batsman runs – Average batting strike rate * Balls faced by batsman ) + Overall batting average * Balls faced by batsman * (Average out rate – Batsman out rate)

By plugging in those numbers we are able to identify the batsman who scored more runs than the average batsman in T20I in the one year period before the WT20.
As it can be seen Virat Kohli leads the chart by scoring 292 runs more than the average player, not only did Kohli score runs quicker than an average batsman and has 0.017 outs per ball which signify he gets out lesser than an average batsman.
You might be asking what’s the need for Runs above average, why do we need something to find out who is a better batsman, traditional stats can show that. Yes traditional stats can show how many runs a batsman has scored but the beauty about RAA is that how it combines all the traditional stats to give one number this one number takes into account all the runs the batsman has scored, the rate at which he has scored those runs and the number of time he has remained not out.
A batsman who is better than average can now be ranked, a better batsman will score more runs than an average and the best batsman will score a lot more runs than the average batsman something which can be seen here. Kohli has had one of the best years as a T20I batsman and the numbers have been able to show this.
Traditional stats are there for a reason but those numbers are devoid of any context, Cricket like many sports is a sport in which context matters RAA does that to an extent.