T20 World Cup: Cricket loves a rivalry, and a debate

The T20 Cricket World Cup is underway and was marked on Sunday by a sensational game between unyielding rivals India and Pakistan. Played with refreshing intensity and authenticity not often associated with the shortest format, an epic finish left everyone speechless.

And more than a few, probably mostly of Pakistani origin, reaching for the rule book. Well, Twitter mostly, to be honest.

Note: There’s a great summer of cricket ahead, love it or hate it we welcome you on board with our posts!

In a sport whose laws leave much to interpretation, you have to expect some disagreement, and there are many who disagreed furiously with the umpire’s call of a no ball for ‘unfair play’ in the final over.

Seems like some analysis might be in order….

The fact that Virat Kohli was able to spank the ball over a rope some 90 metres away, suggests there wasn’t much inherently unfair about the delivery. In fact, if you offered Kohli a menu of possible deliveries prior to facing up, the spinner-bowling-a-straight-waist-high-full-toss option would have had him licking his lips and saying ‘yes please’.

As analysts however, we don’t fall for the allure of the subjective, at least not in isolation. The laws of cricket in this instance, are likewise restrained. They define as unfair any delivery that meets a set of physical criteria, described in the following sub-clause:

41.7.1    Any delivery, which passes or would have passed, without pitching, above waist height of the striker standing upright at the popping crease, is unfair. Whenever such a delivery is bowled, the umpire shall call and signal No ball.

Let’s break it down:

·       ✅ without pitching – no argument

·       ✅ above waist height of the striker – maybe an inch

·       ✅ standing upright – more or less

·       ❌ at the popping crease – we have a problem

Between Kohli’s confident stride and bat swing, contact with the ball is made some two metres from the white line. By the time gravity has its say, it’s a fair delivery.

The inaction of square leg umpire Marais Erasmus is telling in the situation as well. The above waist-high call logically comes from the square positioned umpire, and would be a largely instinctive call on a blatantly unfair delivery – that he didn’t call it, whilst a subjective element, lends weight to the objectively observed criteria.

What about the impact on the match?

For Pakistan fans it must have been heartbreaking (our own resident Pakistan fan Rohail, attendee at the game, can confirm this).

The visual below charts the chaotic finale over the course of key moments in what amounted to just three legal deliveries. The dark blue columns represent runs required to win, the lighter blue columns the balls remaining, and the black line the ratio of runs per ball. The chart begins at a challenging 13 runs off 3 balls, or 4.3 runs per ball. Every ball needs to go to or over the boundary, and Virat Kohli did the best possible thing, launching a six over deep square leg.

Or was it? That left India still needing a tricky 7 off 2, but what he did next turned out to be the real master stroke.

Appealing for a no ball (in a way that batters aren’t particularly entitled to but do anyway) the umpires had a brief chat and the no ball that wasn’t was duly called. 7 off 2 became 6 off 3 in an astounding turn of fortune that greatly simplified India’s task.

The mayhem that followed can only be put down to the pressure of the MCG cauldron it was played in, as wides, wickets, and wild free hits eventually saw India to victory. The story of the night will be very different in the respective fans’ memories, perhaps something like these visuals side by side.

Interestingly, in the Pakistan fan story, the impact of the no ball registers more highly than the six hit by the batter. The astute amongst you can sort through the computational skullduggery going on there, but it highlights that our perspective matters to the outcomes we present. As a business, care is needed to ensure that the outputs you’re making your decisions on are based on the right ones.

Are you looking at your business with a narrow, possibly biased, perspective? Let White Box be the fresh set of eyes you need, and ask you the questions that will expose insights and foster new thinking.

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