This summer’s cricket season is in full swing. Australia and India are engaged in a four game home test series. India is one up, and the final result rests on the outcome of the remaining two matches.
And where cricket is being played, you can be certain that cricket statisticians won’t be far away. Cricket is a game of strategy and numbers. All sorts of numbers. The game is a statistician’s paradise.
As usual they have been working overtime, scouring match data collected since the game’s inception, in search of some unique, pivotal, even slightly obscure, statistic. Something that will evoke a sense of drama, urgency, and bring definition to the present… struggle.
This is the first time since 1993-94, when they lost by five runs to South Africa in Sydney, that Australia are chasing in a home series.
Soumya Bhattacharya, Sydney Morning Herald, 26 December 2003.
There you have it. Currently India are leading the test series, and it looks like Australia is in trouble. Again.
While Australia may be the world champions of virtually every form of sport they choose to play, they nevertheless love to be seen as underdogs. Or at least that is the impression created. (Is this the work of the media by any chance?)
Why though?
Do these negative expectations then make the subsequent (and usually inevitable) Australian victory seem more of a triumph over adversity? An overcoming of apparently insurmountable odds? An impossible victory snatched from the jaws of defeat?
Give me a break.
Rather than playing upmanship, the Australian’s prefer to engage in a little downmanship. On themselves. Is this a subtle method of preparing their supporters for a possible loss? A clandestine way of placing a dollar either way on the result? “Well gosh, we thought we were going to lose, but look, we won!”
I guess it’s tough at the top. Especially if you are expected to win every game you play. Surely therefore it doesn’t hurt to slightly dampen spectators hopes? Just in case…
Really though, haven’t these guys learnt that participating is more important than winning? So what if India takes the series? Everyone still gets paid. Besides, isn’t there an Ashes series against England approaching? That will surely provide an opportunity to even up the score, won’t it?
Yet regardless of the final result, it is the statisticians who are the ultimate victors. How do they do it? Yet again suceeding in extracting some unheard of statistical trinket from the vast archives of cricketing data. That it is also somehow relevant to the current series is nothing short of amazing.
What a fine game they play.
