Saturday, February 27, 2016

Some interesting statistical facts about India v/s Pakistan match, Asia Cup on 27th Feb, 2016

On 27th Feb, 2016, India met Pakistan for Asia Cup T20 match at Dhaka. India beat Pakistan by 5 wickets with 

We found some interesting statistical facts about the match.
Most of these numbers suggest something extraordinary. Let us discuss these facts:

  1. India scored 85/5 against Pak's 83 all out, but 3 Indian batsmen got out for a duck; none for Pak.
    • Seems like Virat Kohli was the only difference between the two teams. Or was it Yuvi's luck? Whatever it is, with Virat Kohli steering the Indian innings with such finesses, it seems quite natural to believe that he could (and probably only he could) do it. There are no doubts about Kohli's abilities, but it could have been some other batsman, too. Once Amir completed his spell, no other bowler looked threatening. 
  2. In a low scoring match, India's best bowler Ashwin was the worst of all Indian bowlers 3-0-21-0. Only Wahab Riaz was worse than him in the match. Easy (but completely unfair) to conclude from a single match that Ashwin was the worst bowler 
    • Easy to conclude based on one match. Unfair and incorrect - the only words that I can think of for such a conclusion. And the analysts and pundits would agree.
  3. The second highest score in both teams was "extras". If we total up the runs in both innings, "extras" was second highest score after Virat. "Extras" accounted for more than 17% of total runs scored n the match. 
    • It talks only about the pitch and weather conditions. 19 wides is the proof that the bowl swung so much that neither the batsman nor the wicketkeeper could touch the ball.
  4. Only 18 boundaries were scored in the entire match. Virat hit 7 of those, just one less than the entire Pakistan team's 8. Not a single six in the whole match.
    • Once again, the swinging ball was not coming onto the bat and the batsman were busy saving their wickets than scoring boundaries.
Points 3 and 4 do not suggest anything about the quality of batting. It was high quality bowling assisted by the pitch and the weather.