Cricket: Average experience comparision

I was discussing with one of the friends today about the average age of the teams (India and Australia) as I had noted earlier in my blog. His point was, lets see what the average experience of the players is. The thought was - Indian players are 'older' not necessarily by the age, but by the # of years of cricket they've played. With so many years of cricket behind them, the fire may not be there to do what it takes to win in crunch games.

This was an interesting excercise to do. Gosh - doesn't it feel that Sachin, Saurav, Rahul and Kumble have been playing forever. I decided to do the comparision - same teams, same format but this time the numbers represent the # of years since the ODI debut.

Rahul Dravid 10
Sachin Tendulkar 18
Ajit Agarkar 8
MS Dhoni 2
Saurav Ganguly 15
Harbhajan Singh 8
Dinesh Karthik 2
Zaheer Khan 6
Anil Kumble 16
Munaf Patel 1
Irfan Pathan 2
Virender Sehwag 7
Sreesanth 1
Robin Uthappa 1
Yuvraj Singh 7
Average Experience 6.9

Adam Gilchrist 10
Mathew Hayden 14
Ricky Ponting 12
Michael Clarke 4
Andrew Symonds 8
Michael Hussey 3
Shane Watson 5
Brad Hogg 11
NW Bracken 6
SW Tait 1
Glenn McGrath 13
Stuart Clark 2
Brad Haddin 6
Brad Hodge 2
Mitchell Johnson 2
Average Experience 6.6

This is very interesting! I wouldn't have thought that the Australian team and the players in the team have been on an average as many years as the Indian players have been.

I think the real statistic here is the # of matches played, and I'm pretty sure that that statistic is not going to be very different for a Dravid/Tendulkar/Ganguly when compared to Ponting/McGrath/Gilchrist.

Bottomline - I think there was nothing wrong in the team selection. Adam Gilchrist had once said - "A cricket matures at the age of 33/34".. All of our "old horses" are in that age bracket. Give them a break. They are fine cricketers. (To the media) Don't create a fuss when one of them is dropped for not performing upto the mark. Let new guys come in. Let the "old horses" keep their place in the team based on performance. Tendulkar's average in the last 10 matches is 39.. That qualifies him in the Indian team compared to anyone else. Don't expect him to save our behinds all the time. Let a youngster come in place of a ill performing Sehwag or Ganguly or Harbhajan or Agarkar. Rotate the players. And most importantly, if you're following Indian cricket. follow some domestic matches as well. There's loads of cricket talent in the country!

Week in pictures - last few weeks

Continuing on my earlier posts - here are some amazing pictures found on my fav 'pictures of the week' websites (MSNBC, Time, BBC)

The Tungurahua volcano in Ecuador (Mar 5 TIME)

The Wallace moument in Scotland (Mar 22 TIME)
Cloud effect on the Kilimanjaro, Tanzania (TIME)

Dust from the stardust hotel implosion in Vegas (Mar 13, MSNBC)
Known as the French Spiderman this woman climbs tall buildings w/o strings or support (Mar, BBC)

Another french dude - Alain Robert does similar things.. Do these people have anything else to do? He's training here to scale a sky-scraper in Dubai (Feb 26, TIME)

Aerial view of flooded land in Bolivia - natural disasters are disturbing, but the awesome scale of this picture is simply amazing! (Feb 26, TIME)


My pick for this week - Bill Clinton in the audience as Hillary speaks! A very simple yet powerful picture (Mar 20 MSNBC)

Did I hear that right? - Media myth: Indian cricket team does not have bench strength

First of all - what does bench strength really mean, and which of the teams should we say has a decent bench strength? Is it -
Australia - who lost 5/5 matches when their top players (Gilchrist, Ponting, Hayden, McGrath) were not playing?? or
South Africa - who took almost 4 years (2000 - 2004) to rebuild after they lost their key players (Cronje, Symcox, Cullinan, Donald)? or
New Zeland - whose 11 players I bet many of us can't name without a little help? or
Sri Lanka - who went into a deep crisis for almost 2 years (2004 - 2006), they were # 7 in the ODI rankings? or
West Indies - who everyone knows never came close to the 1975/1979 team? or
Pakistan - who lose all the key players after a WC loss, goes into oblivion for a few years, flatters only to deceive later? or
England - with question marks in the playing 11 - leave alone the bench?
That leaves Bangladesh, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Ireland, Netherlands, Scotland, Canada - off all teams playing in the WC. We're not comparing our bench strenght against these teams, are we?

Here's something to chew on for all "India does not have bench strength" skeptics. How many times have you followed a Ranji, Duleep or Deodhar trophy match to see our "bench strength"?
Well, to make you less embarassed about yourself - here are a few names.

Other than the ones we know;
Raina, Kaif, Dinesh Mongia, Venugopal Rao (all bastmen)
Dinesh Karthik (wkt batsman)
RP Singh, Piyush Chawla and Joginder Singh (all bowlers),
there are some other exceptional talents that you might not have heard of. These players have had a sensational run over the past few months. They've performed exceptionally well in the domestic as well as international circuits (A and under-19 teams); many a times solely responsible for their team's success.

1. Manoj Tiwari
Age	Matches	Runs	HS	Ave
21	15	1150	210*	57.5
2. Shikhar Dhawan
Age	Matches	Runs	HS	Ave
21	36	1388	131*	44.77
3. Gaurav Dhiman
Age	Matches	Runs	HS	Ave
20	7	119	94*	19.83
Star of the under 19 - used to open batting and bowling
4. Cheteshwar-Pujara
Age	Matches	Runs	HS	Ave
19	12	789	177	43.83
5. YK Pathan
Age	Matches	Runs	HS	Ave	Wickets	Best	Ave
24	21	828	92*	31.84	53	6 for 47	32.22
6. Ambati Rayudu
Age	Matches	Runs	HS	Ave
21	47	2715	210	39.92
7. S Badrinath
Age	Matches	Runs	HS	Ave
26	47	3128	206*	48.12
8. Mithun Manhas
Age	Matches	Runs	HS	Ave
27	83	4722	193	42.16
9. Murali Vijay
Age	Matches	Runs	HS	Ave
22	7	628	179	52.33

Plus - here are some stars of the current under-19 team that the coaches are raving about:

Batsmen
10. Virat Kohli - 18
11. Tanmay Srivastava - 17
12. Ajinkya Rahane - 18
13. Parvez Aziz - 19
14. Bodapati Sumanth - 18
Bowlers
15. Vijaykumar Yo Mahesh - 19
16. Ishant Sharma - 18
17. Abu Nechim - 18 18. Shahbaz Nadeem - 17

Hence, with these 27 names (18 above and the 9 others that I'm assuming many of us already know of) - lets stop kidding ourselves when we say "India does not have bench strength".

These players need to be given a bigger opportunity - atleast a recognition, and that won't happen as long as we keep worshipping the current players. The entire country mourned for over a year when Ganguly was ousted from the team. There will be similar uproar over some other player being ousted 2 years later, the player will hence be forcefully selected in key matches, won't perform and will become a subject of effigy burning, chappal beating and other crazy acts - and then we'll say "India does not have a good bench strength". This is a vicious cycle - that will never allow a "bench strength" to be recognized, let alone be developed. And adding fuel to the fire is the tabloid Indian media.

Media - please stop being a tabloid, you're not doing the country any good by being so.

Did I hear that right? - Media myth: Indian cricket team selection was flawed as many players were 'past prime'

India is out (okay - almost out) of the WC 2007. Worst performance since the 1979 WC. The "commercial favorites" have disappointed a billion hopes (as not all Indians have TV - many won't even know what cricket is, we're counting each TV watching, internet surfing, cricket knowing Indian's hope atleast twice).

I'm sad, mad and very pissed off - as any loyal fan would be. But, the tabloid type myths that the Indian media is spreading is pissing me off even more. I'll try to address some of these baseless, ignorant and extremely inflammatory comments passed around in the media (both print and visual) in the next few blogs.

Here is a table of the ages of the Indian squad for the WC.

Rahul Dravid	34
Sachin Tendulkar	33
Ajit Agarkar	29
MS Dhoni	25
Saurav Ganguly	34
Harbhajan Singh	26
Dinesh Karthik	21
Zaheer Khan	28
Anil Kumble	36
Munaf Patel	23
Irfan Pathan	22
Virender Sehwag	28
Sreesanth	24
Robin Uthappa	21
Yuvraj Singh	25

Average Age 27

Are you telling me that 27 is old??!!

To compare, here's the average age of one of the favorites of the WC - the Australian team.

Adam Gilchrist	35
Mathew Hayden	35
Ricky Ponting	32
Michael Clarke	25
Andrew Symonds	31
Michael Hussey	31
Shane Watson	25
Brad Hogg	36
NW Bracken	29
SW Tait	24
Glenn McGrath	37
Stuart Clark	31
Brad Haddin	29
Brad Hodge	32
Mitchell Johnson	24

Average Age 30

Average age - 3 years older!!! Lets put this in perspective. Its almost a difference of playing/seeing/being aware of one additional world cup. While most of the Indians were not even born at the 1979 world cup, many of the Australian team members were getting their first dose of cricket.

Point proven. Media - please stop saying that 27 is old!