Flight, guile and Santner

Mitchell Santner ran in to bowl in his typically graceful manner. He bowled slightly short of a good length, and the ball skidded off the pitch. Hamilton Masakadza diffused it comfortably, playing it out into the off side.

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In his reply to David Hume’s argument about miracles, CS Lewis added in a chapter titled “A Chapter Not Strictly Necessary.” The idea was that it was a chapter that wasn’t really needed for his argument, but it gave him pleasure to write it, and so he added it into his book. His chapter was about the aesthetic beauty of nature.

Mitchell Santner is a very good bower. The fact that he makes what he does look good is a bonus, it’s not really necessary. If he took ugly wickets, it would look the same in the scorebook.

A closer look at Guptill's innings vs Sri Lanka

Yesterday, I witnessed one of the most unusual innings I've seen. Martin Guptill hit 58 off 34 balls opening the batting against Sri Lanka at the Bay Oval in Mt Maunganui.

It wasn't a particularly fast innings, nor a particularly slow one. It was a little faster than the average 50 in T20 internationals. (The median strike rate for 50's by openers in T20 internationals is 151.3, Guptill scored at 170.6. The upper quartile is 171.4, so Guptill's innings is in the second quartile). Here's a graph showing his innings compared to all fifties in T20I's scored by openers.

We can see that Guptill's innings doesn't really stand out from the pack. So why was it so interesting?