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Neil Dewart

A Regression-Based Interrogation of Australia's Batting

Having produced an analysis for each of England, India and New Zealand, it's time to focus on the remaining team in the current ICC Test top 4, Australia. Whilst they are currently ranked third, we noted in our piece on the World Test Championship that they were perhaps a little unlucky not to make the final of that competition. They kept pace with New Zealand despite a tougher set of fixtures, and even beat the Kiwis 3-0 in a series in 2019/20. Ultimately, though, it was their own undoing which cost them, having received a points deduction for a slow over rate in a test against India, so sympathy is limited.


Regardless of the outcome of that competition, the evidence still points to a high quality Australian test team at present. This is reflected in the ICC player rankings, where they have three bowlers in the top 12 in the world, and a further three batsmen in the top 10. It's the batsmen who will we focus our initial analysis on.


For our analysis we use ball by ball data from each of Australia's test matches starting with their tour of Sri Lanka in 2016 up to the thrilling test series against India, which concluded earlier this year. The data is then run through our regression based player ratings system which aims to give an indication of a player's quality whilst also controlling for the strength of the opposition - for batsmen this effectively means that batting well against someone like James Anderson is worth more than it would be for, say, a part-time bowler such as Joe Root.


This then gives us a summary of Australia's batting over the last 5 years, which we'll discuss in more detail below. For now there a few things to note. Firstly, our model has an adjustable weight that allows us to place more emphasis on either scoring runs or wicket preservation - we have chosen to order the players using a weight that puts a little more emphasis on wicket preservation to reflect the importance of retaining your wicket in test cricket, especially when compared to the shorter formats of the game. In the final column, however, we have included the rankings for when we weight towards run scoring. This adds some important context around some batsmen - often in the lower order - who are valued for the ability to score their runs quickly.


We have also included a 'Rating' column - which is a normalised version of the raw output we get from the model. Whilst the numbers themselves are arbitrary, they function well as a means to understand the relative strengths of the respective batsmen.


Lastly, we have imposed a minimum qualification criteria of 10 innings in the timeframe we are looking at. Here are the results:


Now, those of you who have read some of the other pieces we have posted in this series will know that typically we go through the list from top to bottom and pull out any interesting points along the way. This time, however, it probably makes sense to start by addressing the elephant in the room - that being David Warner sitting all the way down in 9th spot.


Particularly jarring is to see him two spots below Cameron Bancroft. As another opener, and probably the most surprising name to be ranked above Warner, it makes sense to use Bancroft as a point of reference to understand what is going on here.


Generally when we see something unexpected like this, there are two facets of the model worth keeping in mind - 1) the fact that it controls for quality of opponent and 2) the weighting coefficient that allows us to adjust the output to place more emphasis on wicket-preservation or run-scoring respectively.


Given that we are weighting slightly towards wicket-preservation, it makes sense to dig into the raw figures we'd usually use to assess this for the respective batsmen. Specifically, we can look at average balls faced per dismissal which, when we exclude run outs, stands at 70 for Warner and 69 for Bancroft.


Already we can see why the two might be closer than one might initially expect when we just look at batting averages, but this still suggests that Warner should just have the edge over his former opening partner. To understand why Bancroft sits above Warner we have to dig further and look at the respective quality of opposition faced.


The average ball to David Warner during the qualifying period was delivered by a bowler averaging 34, but that figure drops to a little under 28 for balls delivered to Bancroft. This feels intuitive when we take a quick look at their respective test careers - Bancroft has spend most of his tests playing against a high quality England bowling attack spear-headed by James Anderson and co., whereas Warner has spent a lot of that time batting against the comparatively weak attacks of Pakistan and Bangladesh.


Specifically, however, it's more helpful in this context to examine the average strike rates of the bowling that the respective batsmen have faced. This figure is 58 for Bancroft, and 67 for Warner. When we compare these values to the average balls faced per innings presented above, it tells us that Bancroft has survived 21% more balls than you would expect the average player to, given the quality of the bowling faced. This figure stands at just 4% for Warner - indicating that he is only slightly better at preserving his wicket than the average player.


So that explains why, when we weight our model towards wicket-preservation, David Warner ranks so far down the list. It's worth noting at this point that we are only slightly weighting towards wicket-prevention, so it is interesting that David Warner's superior run-scoring capabilities aren't enough to keep him higher up in the list.


This is not to say that Warner is in any way overrated or that Bancroft necessarily deserves another chance in the team. The aim of these analyses are to provide a general overview of a team's batting options and call out the more unexpected outputs of the model to shed some light on the performances of certain players. Presenting the rankings for different weightings in our model ensures that we gain a clearer understanding of the respective players' value to the team. Generally speaking, most good batting line-ups will contain a combination of players who rank towards the top of each list respectively to ensure they are well-equipped for the multitude of scenarios that may occur over the course of a test match.


So, in this case, whilst it is interesting to see Warner quite so far down the rankings with our 'default' weighting, we know that his true value lies in his ability to score quick runs at the top of the order, and this is reflected by his jump to third spot when we place more emphasis on run-scoring.


Turning our attention now to the rest of the list, and it's obviously no surprise to see Steve Smith and Marnus Labuschagne, who both average over 60 over the past 5 years, occupy the top two spots. In third, we have Peter Handscomb, who was a solid option for Australia's middle order from 2016 to 2019. Whilst he shares a similar batting average to Travis Head - who sits in 6th - he generally had to face higher quality bowling during his time in the side, hence his position further up the table.


Speaking of Travis Head, there is not a lot to separate him from Marsh or Renshaw, who sit just above him. Whilst he has a superior batting average, he has faced weaker bowling than either of those two in the qualifying period. His greater strike rate, however, does mean that he moves ahead of this pair when we weight towards run-scoring.


Between the two openers we discussed above we have Usman Khawaja, whose position may be a little surprising given his relatively solid batting average. Like Warner, however, he has had the benefit of facing relatively weaker bowling over the period we are looking at, but when we place more emphasis on run-scoring he does at least move up a couple of spots.


There is little to add about the remainder of the list. Captain Tim Paine is about where you'd expect him to be given his average, as are the six names below him. All average under 30, and unlike Cameron Bancroft, cannot claim the mitigation of having faced tougher bowling for the majority of their test careers.


Thanks for reading! This article is part of a series in which we apply our player ratings system to each major test playing nation in turn in order to gain more of an understanding of their batting and bowling options respectively - please check out the other articles if you haven't already:


England - Batting | Bowling

India - Batting | Bowling

New Zealand - Batting | Bowling

Australia - Batting | Bowling


If you liked this please check out some of the other articles on the site, follow the Twitter, and keep an eye out for more upcoming posts!


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