The numbers behind dropped catches and missed stumpings

Charles Davis in Cricinfo 

For all its bewildering array of data, cricket statistics still has a few blind spots. One of the most obvious is in the area of missed chances, where there have been few extensive studies. Gerald Brodribb in Next Man In mentioned that statistician RH Campbell estimated that 30% of catches were missed in Tests in the 1920s. I have seen a figure of more than 30 dropped catches by West Indies in Australia in 1968-69, a team plagued by poor fielding. But really basic questions like "Overall, what percentage of chances are dropped?" lack answers.

For a number of years I have collected all the missed chances I could find in ESPNcricinfo's ball-by-ball texts for Test matches. Since the site does not always use standard terms to describe missed chances, and different ball-by-ball commentators have their own ways of expressing themselves, I searched the text for 40 or more words and phrases that might indicate a miss, from "drop" and "dolly" to "shell", "grass" and "hash". The process generally flagged about 100 to 200 lines in the commentary for each Test, which I then searched manually to identify real chances. For some Tests, I also confirmed data by checking match reports and other ball-by-ball sources.

While the commentary goes back to 1999, the textual detail can be patchy in the early years. I logged missed chances from late 2000 onwards, but consider that data to be substantially complete only from 2003. I have compiled a list of over 4000 missed chances in Tests from this century; about a third of all Tests (635) are represented.

Unavoidably, there are caveats. Sometimes opinions may vary as to whether a chance should be considered a miss. I take a hard line: "half", "technical" and "academic" chances are included, and I try to include any chances where the fielder failed to touch the ball but should have done so, if they can be identified. Edges passing between the wicketkeeper and first slip are considered chances even if no one has touched the ball. Since 2005, I have divided chances into two categories, "normal" and "difficult", according to how they are described. About half fall into each category.

There will always be uncertainty about some dropped catches, as there is always the possibility that some others have been overlooked. However, as long as the collection method is as consistent and exhaustive as possible, I would argue that a great majority of misses have been identified and that the data can be collated into useful statistics.

So back to the original question: how many chances are dropped? The answer is about one-quarter; typically seven missed chances per Test. Here is a table showing missed chances by country.

Percentage of catches and stumpings missed from 2003 to 2015

Fielding team	2003-2009	2010-2015
New Zealand	23.6%	21.4%
South Africa	20.9%	21.6%
Australia	23.2%	21.8%
England	25.5%	24.8%
West Indies	30.5%	25.4%
Sri Lanka	25.3%	26.8%
India	24.6%	27.2%
Pakistan	30.8%	30.2%
Zimbabwe	27.1%	31.9%
Bangladesh	33.3%	33.1%

The difference between the top three countries in the last five years is not significant; however, there are more substantial differences down the list. Generally, Bangladesh have had the weakest catching record since they started in Test cricket, although there are recent signs of improvement. Other countries have had fluctuating fortunes. West Indies had a miss rate of over 30% from 2003 to 2009, but have tightened up their game in the last couple of years. India have seen a rate of 33% in 2013 fall to 23% in 2015, and Sri Lanka have also improved their catching significantly in just the last two years.

In some years, countries like Australia, South Africa and New Zealand have seen their rates drop below 20%; the best single-year result was 16.9% by South Africa in 2013, when they were the No. 1-ranked team in Tests. In good years, the proportion of dropped catches rated as "difficult" generally increases; good teams still miss the hard ones but drop fewer easy ones. Typically, two-thirds of Australia's missed chances are rated as difficult, but the same applies to only one-third of Bangladesh's missed chances.

The lucky

As a batsman's innings progresses, the odds of him offering a chance increase. About 72% of batsmen reaching 50 do so without giving a chance, but the percentage for century-makers is 56% in the first 100 runs. Only 33% of double-centuries are chanceless in the first 200 runs. The highest absolutely chanceless innings is 374 by Mahela Jayawardene in Colombo; Lara's 400 in Antigua contained a couple of "academic" chances.

The most expensive missed chance since the start of 2000 is 297 runs for Inzamam-ul-Haq, who made 329 after being missed on 32 in Lahore in 2002. Historically there have been more expensive misses: Mark Taylor (334 not out) was dropped on 18 and 27 by Saeed Anwar, and there was a missed stumping on 40 for Len Hutton (364) in 1938. Perhaps even luckier was Kumar Sangakkara, who made 270 in Bulawayo after being dropped on 0. Sachin Tendulkar was dropped on 0 when he made his highest score, 248 not out in Dhaka. Mike Hussey gave a possible chance first ball at the Gabba in 2010, and went on to make 195. Graham Gooch was famously dropped by Kiran More when on 36 at Lord's in 1990. He went on to make 333.

The data turns up four batsmen who have been dropped five times in an innings: one was Andy Blignaut, whose 84 not out in Harare in 2005 included an extremely rare hat-trick of dropped catches; Zaheer Khan was the unhappy bowler. (There was also a hat-trick of missed chances at Old Trafford in 1972, when two batsmen survived against Geoff Arnold.) The others who have been missed five times are Hashim Amla (253 in Nagpur, 2010), Taufeeq Umar (135 in St Kitts, 2011) and Kane Williamson (242 not out in Wellington, 2014). Nothing in this century quite matches the seven or eight missed catches (reports vary) off George Bonnor when he made 87 in Sydney in 1883, or six misses off Bill Ponsford in his 266 at The Oval in 1934 (as recorded by veteran scorer Bill Ferguson). Wavell Hinds was dropped twice at the MCG in 2000, and still made a duck.

The batsman with most reprieves in the study period is Virender Sehwag, missed 68 times, just one ahead of Sangakkara. About 37% of the chances Sehwag offered were dropped, which is well above average and probably a testament to the power of his hitting.
The unlucky

Broadly, spin bowlers suffer more from dropped catches and (of course) missed stumpings. Chances at short leg, along with caught and bowled, have the highest miss rates among fielding positions, and these positions happen to feature more strongly among spinners' wickets than pace bowlers'. Overall, 27% of chances off spin bowlers are missed, as against 23% of chances off pace bowlers.

In the study period, the bowlers with the most missed chances in Tests are Harbhajan Singh (99) and Danish Kaneria (93). Harbhajan has had 26 chances missed at short leg alone. Bear in mind that these bowlers' careers are not fully covered; the data for about 10% of Harbhajan's career is not available to analyse. Pace bowlers with the most misses, as of January 2016, are Jimmy Anderson (89) and Stuart Broad (85).

Spare a thought for James Tredwell, who has played only two Tests but suffered ten missed chances, including seven on debut, the most for any bowler since the start of 2000. Most were very difficult, with three of them missed by the bowler himself. Also worth mentioning is Zulfiqar Babar, who has had 30 chances missed in his Test career and only 28 catches (and stumpings) taken.

At the other end of the scale, Adil Rashid has had eight catches taken off his bowling with no misses (as of August 2016). Neil Wagner of New Zealand has had only seven misses out of 63 chances, a rate of 11%.

Two bowlers have had catches missed off their first ball in Test cricket: David Warner (Dean Brownlie dropped by James Pattinson, Brisbane, 2011) and RP Singh (Shoaib Malik dropped by Anil Kumble, Faisalabad, 2006).

There is an intriguing case from 1990. Against West Indies in Lahore, Wasim Akram took four wickets in five balls: W, W, 1, W, W. In a surviving scorebook, the single, by Ian Bishop, is marked as a dropped catch at mid-on. If so, Akram came within a hair's breadth of five wickets in five balls, since the batsmen crossed, and Bishop did not face again. (Wisden, it should be noted, says that the catch was out of reach.)

The guilty

When it comes to catching, some positions are much more challenging than others. That will come as no surprise, but putting some numbers to this is an interesting exercise. The table below shows the miss rate for different field positions.
 

hances by position (December 2008 to January 2016)

Position	Chances	% Missed
Keeper (ct)	2188	15%
Stumping	254	36%
Slip	2062	29%
Gully	404	30%
Third man	36	17%
Point	371	29%
Cover	319	23%
Mid-off	253	20%
Bowler	378	47%
Mid-on	340	22%
Midwicket	455	23%
Short leg	518	38%
Square leg	286	19%
Fine leg	170	30%

The highest miss rates are seen for caught and bowled, and for catches at short leg. Bowlers lack the luxury of setting themselves up for catches, while short leg has the least time of any position to react to a ball hit well. Many of the chances there are described as half-chances or technical. Slips catches are twice as likely to be dropped as wicketkeepers' catches, a measure of the advantage of gloves.

However, it would be unwise to read too much into the table above. Slip fielders or short-leg fielders are not inferior to those at mid-off; they get much more difficult chances. In the period of the study, Alastair Cook missed more chances than any other non-wicketkeeper, some 62 misses, but since many of his misses came at short leg, his miss rate doesn't look so bad.

While comparing lapse rates of different fielders is risky, it is worth mentioning Graeme Smith, whose drop rate of only 14% is the best among long-serving players by a considerable margin. Between August 2012 and February 2013, Smith took 25 catches and recorded no missed chances. Other slip fielders with outstanding catching records include Andrew Strauss and Ross Taylor on 20%, Michael Clarke on 21%, and Ricky Ponting on 22%. Elsewhere in the field, Warner at one stage took 20 consecutive chances that came to him.

Of those who have recorded more drops than catches, Umar Gul leads the list, with 11 catches and 14 misses. In 2014, Mushfiqur Rahim missed ten consecutive chances that came his way. Oddly enough, he caught his next 13 chances. Kevin Pietersen came to Test cricket with a fine catching reputation, but he dropped the first seven chances that came to him. He then caught his next 16 chances. The most missed chances in a match for one team, in this data set, is 12 by India against England in Mumbai in 2006. The most missed chances in an innings is nine by Pakistan against England in Faisalabad in 2005, and also by Bangladesh against Pakistan in Dhaka in 2011. In Karachi in 2009, Mahela Jayawardene (240) was dropped on 17 and 43, Thilan Samaraweera (231) was dropped on 73 and 77, and Younis Khan (313) was dropped on 92. The combined cost of all the missed chances in the match was 1152 runs, or 684 runs based on "first" drops off each of the batsmen.

There is some evidence of "contagious" butterfingers in teams. In the second Test of the 1985 series in Colombo, India dropped seven catches against Sri Lanka on the first day, on which the only wicket to fall was thanks to a run-out. India also dropped six catches in the space of ten overs in Rawalpindi in 2004, five of them coming in the first hour of the fourth day. It is rare enough for six chances to be offered at all in the space of ten overs at all, let alone to see all of them missed.

Behind the stumps

Here is some data on the miss rates, including stumpings, of various wicketkeepers of the 21st century. Not all are listed, but those with particularly low or high drop rates are given. 

Missed chances by keepers

	Chances	%Miss
Mark Boucher	364	10%
BJ Watling	119	11%
Tatenda Taibu	57	11%
AB de Villiers	94	11%
Adam Gilchrist	357	12%
Kamran Akmal	203	20%
Sarfraz Ahmed	63	21%
Dinesh Karthik	50	22%
Adnan Akmal	77	22%
Mushfiqur Rahim	86	32%

The wicketkeeper with the most misses is MS Dhoni with 66 (18%). In his defence, Dhoni had to deal with a high percentage of spin bowling, which presents a much greater challenge for keepers. Miss rates for leading wicketkeepers off spinners average around 30%, for both catches and stumpings, but it is only 10% for catches off pace bowlers. It can certainly be argued that keeping to spinners is the true test of a keeper.

It is not uncommon for keepers to start with a bang but fade later in their careers. Boucher, Watling, Gilchrist and de Villiers all had miss rates in single digits earlier in their careers. Gilchrist's miss rate rose in the last couple of years before his retirement. Others with very low rates, who did not qualify for the table, include Peter Nevill and Chris Read, on 7%. Read, to my eye, was one of the best modern wicketkeepers, but he did not get very many opportunities since he was unable to score enough runs to hold his place.


A short history of dropped catches

In addition to the data for the 21st century I have gathered data from other periods of Test history, using scorebooks that recorded dropped catches. The best sources are scorebooks by Bill Ferguson in the 1910s and 1920s, and by Bill Frindall from the early 1970s to the late 1990s. I have also used a limited number of other sources, including scores by Irving Rosenwater and some by Pakistan TV scorers. I have extracted data from about 200 Test scores in all, dating from before 1999.

Again, there must be caveats. We cannot be sure that the judging of dropped catches was on the same terms throughout, and we cannot be sure of the effect of TV replays on these assessments. I would say, however, that in the case of Frindall we have a meticulous observer with a very consistent style over multiple decades.

Once again, it would be unwise to read too much into each little blip in the data, but in general there is a trend toward lower rates of missed chances. The trend would probably be steeper if the data was limited to Australia and England, as the recent data includes countries such as Bangladesh that have had little or no coverage in earlier decades.

I might add an opinion from decades of observation: I believe that the greatest area of improvement has been with weaker fielders. Today everyone, including those with limited skills, has to do extensive fielding drills and take that part of the game very seriously. This has been one effect of the one-day game. In past decades many took fielding seriously. Jack Hobbs, Don Bradman and Neil Harvey worked hard at it, and I doubt if any player today works as hard on fielding as Colin Bland did in the 1960s (Bland would spend hours picking up and throwing a ball at a single stump: his record of run-outs is superior to that of anyone today). However, there were also players who did much less work on their fielding skills. In the modern game there is nowhere to hide, and everyone must put in the training effort. As a result, overall standards have risen.

On the spectrum of deceit, ministers have gone off the scale

Statistics have long been argued one way or the other, but this government twists them beyond reality to suit its ruthless agenda

• 
• • Zoe Williams
  • The Guardian, Thursday 27 June 2013

Illustration by Matt Kenyon

"Lies, damn lies and statistics," they say. "Torture a statistic enough and it will tell you anything," they say. Aphorisms that once sounded sound wry and urbane now make me want to set fire to things. I know, it is a risky old business, making a threat of arson, but I've already done it in an email, so this will hardly be news to GCHQ.

Worldwide, the era of post-truth politics began some time ago; during the last US elections, there were how-to guides for media outlets. "How does one evolve for the post-truth age?" asked the Atlantic, and it was a serious question. If you were trained in the "he-said, she-said" mode of reporting ("the chancellor says we are on the road to recovery; the shadow chancellor says, on the contrary, we are up shit creek with a baguette for a paddle") that will seem to you to be the fair and defensible way of doing things. If, however, one party starts to peddle a deliberate falsehood ("the chancellor says the deficit has gone down; the shadow chancellor says, on the contrary, the ONS figures show the deficit has gone up" – this is an example from real life, and happened on Tuesday), then the act of reporting both positions, in a tone of impartiality, serves to give them equal weight. Your neutrality shores up a lie.

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This is for newshounds to tie themselves in knots over; I have never aimed at nor pretended impartiality. But I did prefer it when politicians, broadly speaking, told the truth. I have a pretty high tolerance for personal fibbing, who did and didn't have sex with whom, who was driving when the speed limit was broken. I don't enjoy, but I accept as the price of human variety, perspectives so different to mine that we exist in the orbit of extra-fact, our ideological magnets repelling one another so strongly that facts wouldn't help, because we'd never get close enough to jointly examine them (examples: Osborne on the Philpotts' benefits lifestyle; Hunt on the unaffordability of the NHS; Gove on most things). I used to get riled by the misuse of statistics, but at least that's done on the shared understanding that people should tell the truth in public life. A fact may turn out to have so much topspin that it isn't really true, but so long as the politicians have plausible deniability the contract isn't broken.

That deal is over. As Daniel Knowles of the Economist pointed out, more in impatience than in anger: "Over the last few months, as welfare cuts have started, questionable numbers have floated out of Iain Duncan Smith's office into the public debate like raw sewage." The protest group Disabled People Against Cuts collated 35 major untruths to emit from the government since 2010, and almost half of them came from IDS, who is well known to the (statistics) authorities, and has been reprimanded many times. If I were in charge, I would institute an asbo system in parliament; beyond a certain number of lies, MPs would have to sport a visible tattoo so that the casual onlooker would know to double-check their remarks.

The key things to watch with IDS are claims that the benefit cap is working; claims that the Work Programme is working; claims that the benefit system is rife with fraudsters; any claim about jobless households; most things he says about foreigners (with the caveat that if he is talking about a specific foreigner, José Mourinho or Angelina Jolie, it's likely that defamation laws will keep him on the straight and narrow); and everything he says about family breakdown.

But what chilled me most was the (relatively) minor lie, put about in November 2010, that private sector rents had fallen by 5% the previous year, while the amount paid by local authorities in housing benefit had gone up by 3% (Inside Housing analysed and rejected the claim). The clear implication was that people claiming the benefit were on the take – it was never said outright because it would have been functionally impossible (housing benefit is paid directly to the landlord); yet there it was, an impression hanging in the air, yet more craftiness from the feckless spongers.

David Cameron, meanwhile, has been reprimanded by the Office for Budget Responsibility (for lying about what it had said); and by the UK Statistics Authority for lying about the direction of the national debt (he said we were "paying it down", when in fact we were beefing it up). Osborne, besides lying this week about the deficit, has been reprimanded by the OBR (for lying about the nation's risk of bankruptcy) and by the UKSA. Amusingly, the Office for National Statistics was recently reprimanded by the UKSA for allowing the chancellor to pretend that a raid on the Bank of England's cash pile was equivalent to tax receipts. It's a carousel of meta-rebukes, as Osborne pulls ever more agencies into his circle of deliberate untruth.

There is a point on the spectrum of deceit at which the totally unprincipled, who will say anything to hold sway (I put Osborne in this category), meet the deeply religious, who are so sold on the notion of their own superiority that it is not necessary for reality to support them, merely for us all to be quiet, while they set us on the course of righteousness (and IDS in this one). But more important than any of their motives – there must, surely, be conservatives who would rather lose the argument than win it like this.

Ministers who misuse statistics to mislead voters must pay the price

Politicians resign for fake expenses or receiving favours, but not for making false statements. They should be punished

• 
• • Peter Wilby
  • The Guardian, Friday 31 May 2013 20.30 BST

Andrew Dilnot, now head of the UK Statistics Authority, ‘exposed a Conservative party claim on numbers of people who dropped out of claiming incapacity benefit as a lie.’ Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian

Some years ago, I talked to Andrew Dilnot, then principal of an Oxford college, now head of the UK Statistics Authority. He picked up a copy of the Guardian front page, jabbed his finger at the figure $25bn, which was highlighted in a panel, and asked: "Is that a big number?" I looked at him blankly. He said newspapers, particularly upmarket ones, were full of numbers but, in many instances, neither journalists nor readers could explain their significance. "Numbers are just a particular class of words. There isn't any other class of words in a paper that we wouldn't ask ourselves what they mean."

We often hear politicians quoting numbers, but what do they mean? In March, a Conservative party press release, faithfully reported in the Sunday Telegraph, claimed "nearly a million people" had come off incapacity benefit rather than face new medical tests for what is now called the employment and support allowance. The press release intended us to think 1m was a big number – "more than a third of the total", it stated – though the true figure was 878,300. To explain the meaning, it quoted the party chairman, Grant Shapps. The figure was a vindication of the government's stricter policies on benefit claimants, he said, and a demonstration of "how the welfare system was broken under Labour". It showed, we were supposed to deduce, the scale of malingering before the coalition put a stop to it.

But the big number was – there is no other word for it – a lie. Dilnot, now responsible for protecting the integrity of official statistics, exposed it as a lie this week, albeit using mild Whitehall language in letters to Shapps and Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary. The 878,300 alleged malingerers had never received incapacity benefit. They were new claimants, aggregated over three-and-a-half years. Many (probably most) withdrew their claim because they recovered from their condition or found a new job. In 2011-12, out of 603,600 established benefit claimants referred for the new medical tests, just 19,700 (3.3%) withdrew before taking them. That figure – which most of us would think small – represented the true scale of people pretending to be sick.

This is not the first time Dilnot has issued reprimands for misuse of numbers or, to put it more bluntly than he would, the quotation of bogus figures. The prime minister himself was rebuked in January for stating that the coalition was "paying down Britain's debts"when the national debt had risen from £811bn to £1.1 trillion. Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, was told in December to withdraw his claim that NHS spending had risen in real terms "in each of the last two years". Last month Duncan Smith was on the naughty step for claiming that, as a result of the new benefits cap, 8,000 people had moved into jobs. This was "unsupported" by official statistics, Dilnot ruled. Last year Michael Gove, the education secretary, was criticised for claims that, under Labour, tests had shown British children falling steeply in international league tables. UK samples for tests in 2000 and 2003 were inadequate, Dilnot wrote; it was not therefore possible to make "trend comparisons" with later tests in 2006 and 2009.

Politicians – like journalists, campaigners and even academics – habitually quote figures selectively, seizing on those that support their case, ignoring those that don't. That is human nature. We cannot expect ministers to examine all available evidence dispassionately every time they speak or write. No doubt they also make genuine errors, misunderstanding, misreading or failing to check statistics.

But the examples above are surely deliberate attempts to mislead the public. It is not a matter of accurate figures being taken out of context, but of making false statements about what official statistics show. (Labour may have been equally guilty of such behaviour, but it was rarely properly highlighted because the UK Statistics Authority was not established until 2008 and Dilnot did not take charge until last year.) Unfortunately, there is no price to pay. The "nearly a million" figure will stick in the public mind. Dilnot's demolition of the Shapps claim was not widely or prominently reported.

The quotation of statistics is fundamental to modern political debate. Parties compete, not so much on ideology or even policy, as on their competence to manage the nation's affairs. Most voters would struggle to distinguish between a Labour NHS reform and a Tory NHS reform, a Labour academy and a Tory academy, a Labour "crackdown" on benefits and a Tory "crackdown". They look for evidence that things are going well and politicians respond by quoting hospital waiting times, GCSE success rates, numbers coming off benefit, and so on. We know politicians cherry-pick the figures, wrench them out of context, round them up or down, but we should at least have confidence that they aren't making them up.

Perhaps, as is often suggested, better maths and statistics teaching in schools would help us make more sense of the figures. But we cannot all be expected to scrutinise the raw official statistics to verify everything we are told, not least because the Office for National Statistics website is virtually unnavigable. Without some faith in ministers' veracity, public trust in democracy withers still further.

Can anything be done? The public administration select committee has proposed that Dilnot take greater control over the collation and publication of departmental statistics, and over how they are publicised. It has also suggested that ministers should not have automatic access to official figures before they are released, because it allows them to put out their own "spin" in advance. These changes would be an improvement, but ministers will continue to offend until they have reason to fear the consequences of making false statements.

Nearly all ministerial resignations are connected with not telling the truth: submitting false expenses, covering up a speeding points swap, receiving favours from lobbyists. But telling untruths about official figures is somehow regarded less seriously. Dilnot should have the power, in the worst examples, to require a full Commons censure debate on a minister's conduct – with an expectation that, if he or she failed to offer an adequate defence or show contrition, resignation would follow. That would guarantee press attention and ministerial trembling. Big lies about big numbers require big deterrents.

How do you play cricket without becoming a machine?

The challenge for most cricketers- and other sportsmen - is to retain their personality while getting better at the game

Ed Smith

September 26, 2012

Comments: 25 | Text size: A | A

	Afghanistan haven't yet had the joy ironed out of them by the cricket grind © Getty Images  Enlarge
Related Links Series/Tournaments: ICC World Twenty20 Teams: Afghanistan

"The challenge is to play cool without being cold." That was the assessment of the great jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis. What he said of playing jazz is also true of playing cricket. A sportsman cannot be at the mercy of his moods and emotions. And yet sport becomes dull and lifeless when it is drained of warmth and spontaneity. Sportsmen must search for the right emotional bandwidth: they want enough coolness to feel in control, and yet sufficient rawness and authenticity to feel excitement.

There is no doubt where the Afghan cricket team lies on that continuum. They are joyful, volatile, emotional, unpredictable and deeply expressive. That is why they are wonderful to watch and have lit up this T20 World Cup, even without winning a game. Their performance against India was deeply moving because you could see how much it mattered to the Afghan players. Every six was joyous, every fielding error was agony.

These were not the learnt, mannered responses of professional sportsmen playing to the gallery. The Afghan cricketers have not yet learned how to hide their feelings. In time, they will become more controlled and clinical. But hopefully not too much. Indeed, we can all learn something from the spirit and the naturalness of the Afghan cricketers. Joy - even vulnerability - has its practical uses, too.

There is a counter argument to my view, of course. Some argue that sport is not about self-expression or enjoyment at all, but rather resilience and reliability under pressure. I've never seen this view better expressed than by Chad Harbach in his excellent novel about baseball, The Art of Fielding. (I make no apology for quoting it at length):

The making of a ballplayer: the production of brute efficiency out of natural genius […] This formed the paradox at the heart of baseball, or football, or any other sport […] Baseball was an art, but to excel at it you had to become a machine. It didn't matter how beautifully you performed sometimes, what you did on your best day, how many spectacular plays you made. You weren't a painter or a writer - you didn't work in private and discard your mistakes, and it wasn't just your masterpieces that counted. What mattered, as for any machine, was repeatability. Moments of inspiration were nothing compared to elimination of error […] Can you perform on demand, like a car, a furnace, a gun? Can you make that throw one hundred times out of a hundred? If it can't be a hundred, it had better be ninety-nine.

It is a wonderful passage, full of insight. But while I agree with many of the steps, I cannot follow all the way to Harbach's final conclusion. Sport is not quite about the elimination of human individuality, or the progress - if that is the right word - towards machine-like efficiency. True, a good player cannot be too vulnerable, he cannot allow his human weaknesses to surface so often that they undermine his performance.

But nor do the best sportsmen, I believe, allow themselves to lose touch completely with their human dimension. We must think carefully before trying to turn ourselves into machines: we may find we lose more than we gain. There is a balance to be struck: between naturalness and pragmatism, between voice and efficiency, between joy and control. Crucially, that balance is different for every player (and every team).

Inevitably there are outliers on that continuum - some players are exceptionally self-denying where others are extraordinarily natural. Rafael Nadal's game is based on the fearless elimination of error, the repeatability of relentlessness. In contrast, Roger Federer's is freer and more intuitive. Federer has said how he cannot bear to "play the same point twice". He needs to be trying something new, at least to some extent, in order to fully engage his talents.

	There is a balance to be struck: between naturalness and pragmatism, between voice and efficiency, between joy and control

It is a myth that sportsmen can simply choose to adopt the best strands from the personalities of other players. Instead, they must search for the right balance that suits them. The natural, laconic David Gower would not have benefited from trying to become more like the dedicated professional Graham Gooch - nor vice versa. The quest for self-improvement must be tempered by the retention of authenticity.

The same balance applies to teams as well as individuals. Every team has an instinctive personality, a natural temperament. The challenge is to develop and strengthen that collective personality without losing what makes it unique. Over decades as a rugby fan, I have noticed that France play best when they keep their innate flair but harness it within collective discipline. They are much less successful when they rely too much on flair or when they travel too far in the direction of self-denial. To win, France must be France - they cannot pretend to be England.

This logic has consequences for the way we think about getting better at sport. Development - for both the individual and the team - is only partly about honing skills and perfecting techniques. Perhaps the bigger part of the story is learning how to be yourself. This can become harder, not easier, with experience, which explains why many players do not improve with age, but regress. The more they try to become machines, the worse they become. That is why the art of coaching - yes, the art, not the science - is at least as much about understanding people as it is about imparting technical knowledge. What kind of player might he become, what kind of person?

Where does all this leave Afghan cricket? Yes, they need to become more consistent. Yes, they will need to become better at controlling their emotions. Yes, their techniques will have to become more polished and reliable.

But all those things must be developed within a context of remaining true to themselves. They should not lose sight of the spirit and innocence that makes them such a compelling team to watch, and such a dangerous team to play against. In the lovely phrase of ESPNcricinfo writer Sharda Ugra, they "bring to a somewhat tired global community the fresh, bracing air of the mountains".

Afghanistan's cricketers are so refreshing because they aren't like everyone else. It would be a shame if they merely become part of the crowd.

Andrew Strauss: more straight bat than flashing blade

Robert Colville in The Telegraph

One of humanity’s besetting sins is that we’re addicted to charisma. Besotted by it, even. We look for the leader with the movie-star looks, the resounding oratory – the sheer, obvious talent. A Steve Jobs can behave abominably to his underlings, can decide that deodorant is for the little people, and still we swoon.

But is this really a good idea? Over the past few decades, English cricket has been conducting what might be termed an uncontrolled experiment in management theory. The lab rats in question have been those poor souls faced with the uniquely impossible demands of the national captaincy: helping to select a team, motivating the players, producing tactical plans and modifying them on the fly, coping with media scrutiny, and all the while maintaining their own level of performance.

Sometimes, there has been an obvious candidate – as yesterday, when Alastair Cook accepted the job with the air of a crown prince assuming his birthright. Cook, like Mike Atherton, was an “FEC”, a player always earmarked as a Future England Captain. But in their absence, the authorities invariably haver between charisma and character. For every Mike Brearley, whose man-management skills lay behind Ian Botham’s destruction of the Aussies, there is a – well, an Ian Botham, who had only just resigned the captaincy after a miserable tenure.

The temptation is often to hand the leadership to the player who shines the brightest, to a Botham or an Andrew Flintoff or Kevin Pietersen, in the (usually forlorn) hope that he can galvanise others with his sheer ability. There is, however, another path. Andrew Strauss, who resigned as captain yesterday, shares Pietersen’s South African birthplace, yet is his opposite in terms of character, temperament and playing style. Pietersen is the stupendously athletic strokemaker. Strauss is the man who had to work for his place, for his captaincy, for every one of his 7,037 Test runs.

As an England novice, he was “Lord Brocket” and “PT” (the P stands for “Posh”; the T is less kind). He failed an audition for the captaincy, losing out to Flintoff, only getting the job after Pietersen’s intrigues against the then coach resulted in both losing their jobs.

Here’s the strange thing, though. As a leader, Pietersen was a flop: on a tour of India, wrote team-mate Graeme Swann in his autobiography, the superstar was briefly reduced “to a period of screaming '----ing bowl ----ing straight’ at everyone”. It was his replacement as captain who led England to back-to-back Ashes victories (the second gloriously crushing), and briefly to the status of No 1 in the world.

Strauss would perhaps not make the short list for history’s greatest captain: as well as the many Australian or West Indian contenders, there is Graeme Smith of South Africa, who finished off not just Strauss’s captaincy, but those of Michael Vaughan and Nasser Hussain too. Even in purely English terms, Vaughan probably eclipses his former lieutenant for his hint of unorthodoxy, his tactical flair.

Strauss, though, is the man you trust to get the job done – the one to lead a polar expedition, to do everything by the book, and to bring his men back alive. “Strauss is one of those guys who demand respect,” writes Swann, “and on a daily basis you never really fathom why. He just does. He always says the right things, whether it be in team meetings or press conferences, and his word is never questioned.” Except by Pietersen, who disliked his captain so much that he reportedly advised the South Africans on how to get him out.

Was it a failure that Strauss, and coach Andy Flower, could not reconcile this wayward genius to a regime of grinding perfectionism? Perhaps. Yet surveys of what makes for a great corporate leader tend to look surprisingly like profiles of Andrew Strauss. In her book Quiet – which argues that flashiest is not always best – Susan Cain observes that true greats display “extreme humility coupled with intense professional will”: they are not messianic Steve Jobs types, but those “who build not their own egos, but the institutions they run”.

The rivalry between Strauss and Pietersen, then, incarnates not just the great divide within English cricket, but in leadership more generally. Study after study has shown that we pay attention to those who shout the loudest, who make the boldest claims. In the process, we wildly overestimate the role of pure luck and the contribution of others.

True, charisma does have its place. Yet for all that it would be wonderful to see Pietersen light up Lord’s again, it seems somehow fitting that he and Strauss, yin and yang, are locked together on 21 Test centuries, one behind the national record. At the start of his career, you would have found few takers for Strauss ending up in a position of such pre-eminence. But then, as Iain Duncan Smith once noted, you should never underestimate the determination of a quiet man.