Law 23 and Steven Finn

Here is a snippet from Law 23, Part 4:

"vi) the striker is distracted by any noise or movement or in any other way while he is preparing to receive, or receiving a delivery. This shall apply whether the source of the distraction is within the game or outside it."

The conditions for a dead ball are quite clear. The batsman has to be distracted. If the batsman is not distracted, then the ball should not be declared dead.

The test is not "does the umpire think that the batsman should have been distracted." The test is "was the batsman distracted."

The timing is also interesting. When is the ball dead? A possible argument is that the ball should be declared dead immediately once an umpire feels that the batsman is likely to be distracted. However that's not the test. The test is if the batsman was distracted. The ball also does not have to be declared dead immediately once an incident has happened. See for example Tom Smith's description of how to rule on an injury:

"Example 4
The ball has been hit into the outfield and the fielder, in attempting to stop it, falls and is in obvious pain through a serious injury.
Before calling Dead ball, the umpire should look to see if the ball is continuing towards the boundary. If it is and it will reach the boundary almost immediately, he would not call Dead ball as once the ball crosses the boundary it is going to be dead anyway. By delaying the call he will neither be depriving the batting side of a boundary nor unnecessarily delaying getting attention to the stricken fielder"
(Smith, 2003, p.167)

It is completely within the consistent ruling of Law 23 to see what happens, and then call the ball as dead if necessary.

Which brings us to the Steven Finn breaking the wickets with his leg. The correct ruling here is that the umpire should see if the batsman was distracted or not before calling the ball dead.

If the batsman hits the ball for 4, or 2, then it should not be a dead ball, as the batsman was clearly not distracted. If the ball goes down the leg side for what would have normally been called a wide, then it should be called wide, not dead ball, as even if the batsman was distracted there was no opportunity for him to play a shot to it.

In the South Africa test where the precedent was set the first three were not called. It was only once Graeme Smith approached the umpire saying that he found it distracting that the umpire started to call it dead.

In the Super 8 match James Franklin did not make any such complaint, as as a result the law was applied incorrectly.

Incorrect interpretation of this rule cost New Zealand significantly in the last game. It would be crazy if it continued to be ruled incorrectly throughout the rest of the tournament. This is not something that the MCC Laws sub-committee needs to look at. The law is clear, and just needs to be applied correctly.

World T20 Statistics

Here is a list of tables of some different statistics from the World T20. I have separate tables for the Group stage, the Super 8's and the overall data. Interestingly the batting numbers are reasonable similar, but the bowling numbers are significantly different. This is possibly a reflection on the strengths of the teams that missed out on the next stage, Bangladesh, Ireland and Afghanistan all have strong bowling line-ups and while Zimbabwe's strength is normally more about their batting, it didn't really fire in this tournament.

All of these are statistics that I have worked out previously, although I had to modify my DL partnership formula to reflect the nature of T20 cricket. I decided to use a score of 147 as an expected score as it's 56.6% of 260, and 56.5% is the resources left in an ODI match shortened to 20 overs.

I will try to update these regularly throughout the tournament.

Best innings:

For more info on how this is calculated see this post:

Group stage
Super 8's
Knockout Stage *
Overall Tournament

Best Partnerships:

Here I take into account the teams situation at the start and the teams situation at the end. Effectively these are the partnerships that have made the biggest contribution to their team's score. For more information see this post:

Group stage
Super 8's
Knockout Stage *
Overall Tournament

Contribution made by bowlers:

Every wicket is worth about 5 runs to a teams total. So I subtract 5 runs per wicket, and then work out the economy rate. For more info see this post:

Group stage
Super 8's
Knockout Stage *
Overall Tournament

Activity rates:

This is the runs a batsman scores per delivery that doesn't get hit to the boundary. I explain this in more detail in the glossary:

(minimum 10 balls faced)

Group stage
Super 8's
Knockout Stage
Overall Tournament

*I have reached my page limit on this platform, so these pages are in a different format.

CricketGeek Player Profile: Elias Sunny

In July this year, Elias Sunny became the first person to be named man of the match on debut in two different formats when he took 5/13 against Ireland at Stormont. It was another notch in what has become a stellar start to his cricketing career. He also took 6/94 on test debut.

Sunny is a slow left arm bowler, but he bowls with quite an open action, so the ball comes from a slightly different angle than an orthodox left-arm spin bowler. This has given him an ability to get left handed batsmen out with more regularity than most left-arm spinners. He also turns the ball quite sharply, and tends to bowl a slightly different length than most orthodox spinners. These combine to make him a real danger man for teams playing against Bangladesh.

His different angles mean that he's likely to be a particular threat to batsmen who have not faced him before, although he has shown the ability to get out some batsmen repeatedly, notably compatriot Mahmudullah, who he has dismissed a number of times in domestic cricket.

His international T20 record is remarkable, averaging 12.22 with an economy rate of 5.50, but that is somewhat artificial, given that he has only played against Ireland, the Netherlands and Scotland. However his overall T20 record is still very good, and includes being the local player of the Bangladesh Premier League. Here is a graph of his career averages.

We can see he is settling in to an average of under 20, and an economy rate close to 6. If he can translate that to international cricket he will be a massive asset to Bangladesh, and could be part of the catalyst that they need to go to the next level.

This tournament is likely to be a good litmus test for him. We may get the chance to see if he has just had a good start, or if he really is as good as his figures would indicate.

CricketGeek Player Profiles: Glenn Maxwell

Glenn Maxwell is an exciting young allrounder from Victoria. He is a very quick scoring batsman and a handy off-spin bowler.

His recent form has been very impressive. He had a reasonable BBL for the Renegades, played a couple of games for the Delhi Daredevils, but then really shone for Hampshire in the Friends Life t20 in England.

He had the 8th highest batting index in the competition, with an average of 44.75 and a strike rate of 175.49. To add to that he took 7 wickets at an average of 25.5 and an economy rate of 7.56.

He has proven to be particularly good at hitting boundaries, scoring roughly on boundary every 5 balls. He's also developed a reputation as a great fielder.

Here are a couple of graphs of how his career t20 averages have shaped up recently.

His batting averages are going up, and generally his bowling averages are going down. This is exactly what should be happening for a quality player in his breakthrough season.

But the ultimate proof of his rise is that the Australian selectors have opted for him ahead of Dave Hussey, the highest run scorer in t20 history. How he goes in that role will be interesting. The one thing that his opponents will probably be aware of is that he has tended to get out to off-spin early in his innings. That's not exactly a good weakness to have in Sri Lankan conditions, but it also might be something that the selectors feel is just an anomaly.

CricketGeek Player Profiles: Jeevan Mendis

When talking about Mendis, the first name that comes to mind for modern cricket fans is Ajantha, the mystery spinner. For slightly older fans, there could be a number of players thought of, as there have been over 30 players called Mendis play first class cricket in Sri Lanka (and one Gehan Mendis play 366 first class matches in England). The subject of this profile, however is Jeevan Mendis.

At schoolboy level Mendis was a star with both the bat and ball for the prestigious St Thomas' School. He got a call up to play in the Under-19 team, and he continued to shine, having respectable averages of 51 with the bat and 13 with the ball.

It has taken him a while to become a regular player for the national side, but he is starting to establish himself now. In his recent domestic T20 matches he's averaged about 30 with the bat and about 24 with the ball. If he can keep this ratio up in the international level, he could become an indispensable bits-n-pieces players, like Albie Morkel, Scott Styris or Abdul Razzaq.

He relies more on placement than power with the bat, but he has a good reverse sweep, so he has the ability to create headaches for the fielding captain by hitting the ball to unusual places. He bowls leg-spin, but with a slightly unorthodox grip that make it difficult to read him out of the hand. Accordingly he should be the sort of bowler who can get out the tail quickly, which might be a very useful skill in the first game for Sri Lanka. He might not be a bad player to have in your fantasy team for the match against Zimbabwe.