I'm not one into meaningless cricket stats, especially those types "highest 7th wicket partnership on this ground versus this opposition on a tuesday" rubbish. But i do like those straightforward quite perceptive ones, like how a bowler goes at home vs away.
Which leads me to my frustration of a couple of stats that don't even exist in 2016, stats that would change how i might view certain individual incidents in a game. These being:
- Percentage of catches held (both overall, by fielding position and by individual player)
- Percentage of stumping chances converted
- Percentage success of throws at stumps (run out attempts)
At present we have no idea how good/bad certain wicketkeepers and fielders are, compared to an overall baseline and say compared to some of the alleged greats.
I was reading a cricket website that said when chatting to an ex Eng test analyst (part of backroom staff) in Test cricket 70% of slip catches are held. Yet when watching live coverage 95%+ of chances are counted as a miss and the fielders named constantly if the batsman goes on to make a score. Yet in effect its impossible for humans to catch the lot
And regard stumpings i'd be surprised if the success rate is any higher than slip fielders. Adam Gilchrist took 20 stumpings off Warne, and 37 in total for his whole Test career. He played from 1999-2008, of which Warne (when not banned or injured) played 1993-2007, so there must be a fair few stumpings missed in that 8 year (70+ tests?) overlap. Yet Gilchrist seemed a competent keeper to me. So who knows how much stick we should be giving an inexperienced test wicketkeeper when he misses a stumping chance?