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Showing posts with label tactics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tactics. Show all posts

Thursday 17 September 2015

Databall

Big data is already reshaping on-field tactics and team selection. It may not be too long before it changes the game as we know it
KARTIKEYA DATE in Cricinfo | SEPTEMBER 2015

In 2012, Rajasthan Royals signed Brad Hodge, one of a generation of high-quality Australian cricketers who spent years on the fringes of an all-time great side. Given Hodge's pioneering T20 efforts, above and beyond his first-class and Test experience, this was a major signing by IPL standards.

Conventional wisdom held that Hodge should bat early in the innings. But Royals used Hodge deep in the order, preferring lesser local players at Nos. 3, 4 and 5. Observers were perplexed. ESPNcricinfo's S Rajesh wrote that their decision defied logic because Hodge had better overall numbers than those who batted ahead of him.

Zubin Bharucha, Royals' director of cricket, explained the rationale behind Hodge batting at No. 6 or even 7 in an email interview. He said Royals had "nobody better to play the role against the fast bowlers, and with those last four-five overs deciding the course of a majority of games, wouldn't you want the player having the best stats against fast bowling to take on the responsibility for that phase?"

According to Bharucha, they found that Hodge had done brilliantly against pace (a strike rate of 157) but relatively poorly against spin (strike rate 115). Why use him at No. 3 when he would almost certainly have to face the full spells of the opposition's specialist spinners? Even if a spinner was bowling late in the innings, Rahul Dravid, then Royals' captain, told me in a Skype interview, the instructions to Hodge were to avoid taking chances, play the over out if need be, and save himself to attack the faster bowlers. Hodge's batting position was incidental. The point was to use him against fast bowling at the end of the innings. Data showed that this would be a better use of Hodge than the more conventional approach.

A journeyman Ranji Trophy batsman could work on one aspect of his attacking play to the exclusion of all others and become useful for his franchise as a hyper-specialist

This strategy seemed to work during Hodge's second season with Royals. He remained unbeaten seven times in 14 innings and scored 293 runs in 218 balls. Interestingly Hodge played for two other T20 sides between 2012 and 2014 - Melbourne Stars and Barisal Burners. Both used him in one of the top three spots and he did just as well in terms of strike rate and batting average. However, the success of Royals' experiment lay not just in Hodge's numbers but in the success of other players and of the team as a whole.

Royals was not the first side to make such a tactical choice. Don Bradman famously reversed his batting order on a drying pitchin Melbourne in the 1936-37 Ashes. Sunil Gavaskar has written in One Day Wonders about holding back Kapil Dev while Lance Cairns was bowling in the semi-final of the 1985 World Championship of Cricket. Gavaskar felt Kapil was better off taking on the pace of Richard Hadlee rather than the deceptively tempting mediums of Cairns. Kapil made 54 in 37 balls and saw India home.

There have also been more systematic tactical choices. During the 1995-96 Australian domestic season, John Buchanan, then the Queensland coach, used Jimmy Maher and Martin Love to take on fast bowlers in the last ten overs. As Buchanan explained in an email interview, "I wanted skilled batsmen who could also run well between wickets to take advantage of this period. It did mean we might sacrifice some scoring possibilities earlier, but I backed our top order as well as the fact that we chose some batting allrounders who could bat higher."


Fast-bowler slayer: Rajasthan Royals' use of Brad Hodge down the order defied conventional wisdom, but it paid off © AFP

More famously Ajit Wadekar and Mohammad Azharuddin used Sachin Tendulkar to open the innings in ODIs in 1994, a move that lasted 18 years, multiple captaincies and brought India 15,310 runs and two World Cup finals. Arguably, it also paved the way for two other middle-order batsmen, Sourav Ganguly and Virender Sehwag, to open in ODIs.

Note the difference between Bharucha's explanation for the Hodge tactic and the other examples. Buchanan's explanation was based on an understanding that a specialist batsman's methods are useful against faster bowlers. Gavaskar's educated guess was down to his reading of Kapil's approach. Bradman surmised that the surer methods of specialist batsmen would yield greater results on a drier pitch. The "data", such as it was, that Wadekar and Azharuddin had to go on, had to do with Tendulkar's ability to attack the bowling, and Tendulkar's enthusiasm for the job. Bharucha had nothing to say about Hodge's technique or approach. His reasoning was based entirely on a new kind of measurement - the measurement of outcomes, based on events that had been recorded.

The central question teams need to tackle is whether or not a coach has a legitimate role as a tactician when a game is in progress


It would be a mistake to think that tactical choices were not based on data before the IPL or before Buchanan became Australia's coach. Data was used. It was data about technique and approach, not outcomes. It may not have been tabulated into percentages or frequency distributions or probabilities, but technique has always been based on propensities. The history of the game is littered with stories of eagle-eyed slip fielders who could see a batsman and work out his weaknesses - which good bowlers could then exploit. The use of logical inference based on observed fact to improve performance and make tactical choices is as old as the game itself. What is new is the type of data being collected.

"Moneyball", the data revolution in baseball, is about getting better value for money. As Jonah Hill's character in the movie about Oakland Athletics explains, teams have to think in terms of buying runs and outs, not players. The argument in Moneyball is an argument between two types of data: data from scouts, who observe players and reach judgements about their potential, and data about outcomes - runs, outs, walks, strikeouts and the like.

In baseball, the basic use of data about outcomes is to identify inefficiencies in the way players are valued. The returns on this approach should logically diminish with time; an inefficiency is only an inefficiency until other teams also see it as one. For example, if Mumbai Indians decided to use their deeper pockets to ensure the most favourable match-ups for as many of the 20 overs as possible, Royals would no longer have a competitive advantage. If Mumbai Indians looked at the same data as Royals, and made sure that a spinner was held back until Hodge came in to bat, they would be able to somewhat negate Hodge's effectiveness. Before long the quest to eliminate inefficiencies will merely keep teams from falling behind, instead of giving them a competitive advantage.



LA Dodgers manager Don Mattingly runs the show from the dugout, involving himself before nearly every pitch © Getty Images

This could play a big role in the kind of players that teams will select. Royals provide a glimpse into the future. Their decision to open the batting with Dravid (and later with Ajinkya Rahane) was the result of a combination of insights. The data showed that being 45 for 1 after six overs was better than being 60 for 3 at the same stage, and so Royals, according to Bharucha, "wanted someone who could hit good cricketing shots along the ground and pierce the gaps". Between 2011 and 2013, Dravid was an above-average IPL opener, scoring quickly and surely. After the Powerplay his scoring rate often dropped and his efforts to score at pace led to his dismissal far too regularly. Both Dravid and Bharucha told me that the idea of Dravid throwing caution to the wind after the sixth over, instead of trying to anchor the innings, was considered. The data suggested that it was more advantageous for Dravid to get out trying to score quickly than to develop his innings in the conventional sense after the Powerplay. In other words, it was better for Dravid to be replaced by a player who is, say, exceptionally good at hitting legspin, but not so good at other aspects of batting, or eventually by Hodge, the late-overs specialist hitter of pace.

It is possible to imagine a future where players develop their game in such hyper-specialised directions. The IPL already rewards players who are exceptionally skilled at hitting medium pace over the infield - though their game has not developed in other directions. Teams may soon try to ensure that these hyper-specialists are not used in situations that require other talents. Platooning - the idea of using specific players against specific opponents - is a time-honoured practice in baseball. Many baseballers focus on enhancing specific skills for specific situations - like left-hand relief pitchers going up against left-hand batters late in the innings.

When Bob Woolmer tried to get Hansie Cronje to wear an earpiece he was not merely ahead of his time, he was trying to subvert the architecture of the sport

This trend could create new opportunities in cricket. A journeyman Ranji Trophy middle-order batsman, who will never challenge Rahane for a slot in India's Test team, could work on one aspect of his attacking play to the exclusion of all others and become useful for his franchise as a hyper-specialist. The logical conclusion of Hodge's story would be for Royals to leave him out of the XI against a team playing no fast bowlers, even if he was in fantastic form. Instead they might select a local batsman who is extremely skilled at hitting spinners. The data might eventually show that a $35,000 local player is better than a $350,000 international in a big final.

Developing such hyper-specialists runs counter to generations of coaching wisdom. This tension came through in my interview with Bharucha, who was keenly aware of the different emphases involved in training a Test player and training an IPL specialist. Royals say that their ambition is to produce cricketers for India. But they need to balance the necessity of training specialists - to make the most of their limited resources - against producing well-rounded Test cricketers. Bharucha, a former first-class batsman who learnt his cricket under old-school coaches in Mumbai, points to the development and ambitions of Rahane, Sanju Samson, Stuart Binny and Karun Nair (who hit a triple-hundred in the 2015 Ranji final) as all-format players. "The way we teach and instruct," Bharucha wrote, "will always be to tighten technique and play quality cricket shots, even though it is T20 we are talking about. I feel coaching has always got to be something far deeper and must include the overarching goal of improving the quality of cricket played around the world."


The cerebral coach: John Buchanan's method revolved around making players accountable for their decisions on the field © AFP

Bharucha is aware of the contradiction. On the one hand Royals take a radical approach to batting. As he explained with regard to Hodge, "There are no batting numbers at Royals, only an over in which a batsman could potentially go in."

On the other hand, Bharucha also said, "At Royals one always weighs all of this up against the promotion of Indian talent, as year on year we look to shape the life and career of someone who could be a valuable contributor to the country. It's never just a shallow decision of who should bat where."

Winning in the IPL may well require cold-blooded platooning and the pursuit of hyper-specialists. But it would be a mistake to ignore the way longer currents of history shape the work of coaches and tacticians, whatever the data might say.

Acombination of technology and vast sums of money on offer has played a big part in creating the basis for a data-centred approach to tactics and specialisation. Some, like Bharucha and Buchanan, see data in match play and coaching as a boon. Buchanan visualises the role of the cricket coach evolving into one of a tactician and match-manager. But like all change, progress has been interrupted by older conventions and attitudes.

The use of logical inference based on observed fact to improve performance and make tactical choices is as old as the game itself. What is new is the type of data being collected


Compared to Bharucha, Buchanan met with less success in implementing his ideas at Kolkata Knight Riders. His attempt to rope in a fielding coach with a baseball background (John Deeble) wasn't as successful as his path-breaking use of Mike Young with the Australian side. During his two-year stint as director of cricket in New Zealand, Buchanan says, a couple of economists used a huge data set to produce an "in-game analysis which gave information to the coach and team what tactics should be employed on the next delivery or next few deliveries to control the game, and thereby influence the probability of winning". The idea never took off and was resisted by coaches and players.

Buchanan makes the point about how a data-based approach to on-field strategy requires players to be accountable for each of their decisions. If the coaches don't know exactly what a bowler is trying to do with a given delivery, it is impossible for them to know whether the bowler's plan was successful (irrespective of the outcome). "If we [the team and coaching staff] know what the set play looks like, then we are all tuned to how well that is executed." Buchanan says players are resistant to this kind of accountability, and perhaps also to giving up autonomy.

The central question teams need to tackle is whether or not a coach has a legitimate role as a tactician when a game is in progress. The architecture of cricket grounds sets up many constraints. During T20 games players sit in dugouts - an innovation borrowed from American sport and football. However, in baseball and football, the dugout serves a specific purpose: the coach or manager runs the game from there. Not only does Don Mattingly, the coach of the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team, instruct his players before nearly every pitch, he also has an elaborate system of signs that is constantly updated so that it remains secret.


Peter Moores was criticised for being data-driven but so are many teams and coaches © Getty Images

In cricket, the relationship between those off the field and the active players has traditionally been distant. When Bob Woolmer tried to get Hansie Cronje to wear a earpiece he was not merely ahead of his time, he was trying to subvert the architecture of the sport. Cricket has traditionally had a different approach to accountability compared to baseball or football. This is no surprise. Baseball and football have been played for profit for far longer than cricket has, and consequently are mature big-money sports. It is unlikely that baseballers and footballers - often young men with little professional experience - are going to be left to their own devices when so much money is at stake. Every play has to be managed and every effort has to be made to get the most out of every play, or at least, teams need to be seen to be getting the most out of every play. Cricket may eventually get there but it will need both a change in attitudes, and there will need to be a means for coaches to get involved in each on-field decision.

The effectiveness of the use of cricket data is limited by how often new information can be conveyed to players and also by how often players can be substituted during a game. In baseball only nine players are in the game at any time, but each team's bench holds a further 16, of whom about 12 are usually available for use.

The use of match data in cricket is still in its infancy. Here is an example of software used by Cricket Australia (CA). It is developed by a company called Fair Play, and many cricket teams (franchise and international) use this system.


© Fair Play

Currently data is entered manually, in real time. The time available to make a record of each delivery is limited to the time it takes for the bowler to deliver the next one. As CA's Team Performance Information Manager Brian McFadyen observed in an email, it is much harder to capture data when spinners are bowling than when fast bowlers are bowling. A total of 166,006 balls were delivered in men's international cricket alone in 2014. Collecting data for 60 or 70 variables for each delivery would take about 5500 hours, assuming that it takes, on average, two seconds to record each variable. As you can imagine, this is an expensive and labour-intensive proposition.

Cricket might go the way of Major League Baseball's Statcast, a tracking technology used by many baseball franchises and now also available on broadcast. According to the MLB website, Statcast "collects the data using a series of high-resolution optical cameras along with radar equipment that has been installed in all 30 Major League ballparks. The technology precisely tracks the location and movements of the ball and every player on the field at any given time."

The data is mined using algorithms on the raw video data, and hence a large amount of data is captured for every single pitch. It is not only used by franchises for analysis but also in broadcasts to help fans develop a better understanding.

The use of data promises to change not only how cricket is played but also how it is watched and analysed. It is possible to foresee new types of television shows presenting data-based insights, and new types of fan engagements, like fantasy leagues, enhanced by the use of data. Perhaps conventional wisdom about risk-taking and probabilities of success will be refined. Today's television broadcast is littered with statistics like WASP, the Batting Index, the Bowling Index and the Pressure Index. What is missing is a critical mass of experts who are competent enough to discuss the merits of these measures and educate fans on how they work.

Instead of ambidextrous players - polymath super-cricketers - big data might produce mini-cricketers run by super-managers


The first decade of franchise-based cricket saw the language and grammar of long-form cricket being adopted wholesale to describe the new game. Spinners, we were told in the early days, were deceiving batsmen the same way they did in Tests. This despite the fact that batsmen were often of a different mindset facing spin in T20s than in the middle of a Test. It is now clear that the 20-over game has little in common with the longer versions, and perhaps the use of data to maximise each player's productivity will provide the impetus for a new language.

The larger question is how this will affect the way the game is played. Buchanan's dream of using data and technology to systematically develop ambidextrous players - polymath super-cricketers - may well have to give way to developing thousands of players who loft the ball better than Tendulkar ever could, but can't play the short ball at all. Instead of super-cricketers, big data might produce mini-cricketers run by super-managers.

We have already seen how things can go pear-shaped for super-managers. Peter Moores had two stints as England's head coach. Kevin Pietersen, the England captain during Moores' first stint, would later ridicule him for constantly emphasising metrics. In his autobiography Pietersen suggested that the central effect of all the data input was to irritate the players. Moores' second stint ended farcically when an innocent comment, after England were eliminated from the 2015 World Cup, was used as proof of his unhealthy obsession with data. The subtext was obvious: sport is played with heart and brawn, so who does this guy think he is to assume numbers are important? For fans humiliated by a big defeat, this type of chauvinism is too delicious to resist. Data - facts - would just complicate their catharsis.

At the same time, data is central to every team's preparation for matches. In an interview to the Cricket Monthly, Ricky Ponting observed that matters have reached a point now where every player has a laptop, and every player has to study before games. Whatever Moores' critics might say, every team pores over vast amounts of data and studies their opponents.

What remains to be seen is the effect of big data on cricket's evolution. Will the overall quality of the game improve? Will the coach emerge as match-manager and chief tactician? Will tomorrow's average cricketer be fitter, stronger, more skilful, more versatile than today's? Or, despite the best intentions of coaches, captains and players, will the data ensure that new types of tail-enders proliferate?

Time will tell.

Thursday 5 July 2012

What's so wrong with negative fields anyway?



When England set cautious fields they are called tactically naïve; but they win
Ed Smith
July 4, 2012


A month ago, I had one of the most interesting conversations I've ever had about sport. It was in a tiny restaurant in Paris with the brilliant football writer Simon Kuper. The subject was how Spain became the world's dominant football culture.
Spain have now won Euro 2008, the 2010 World Cup and Euro 2012. They are also currently world champions at Under-19 and U-17 levels. The Spanish way - high skill, brilliant passing, and little focus on physical size or brutality - has mastered the world. Not only are Spain serial winners, they have also set football's philosophical agenda.
Our conversation in Paris began with football, but I realised afterwards that the question applied to all sports. How do games evolve? Can original thinkers change their sports forever? Is intelligence - or better still, insight - the most underused resource in sport? Can you think your way to success?
Kuper explained to me that the origins of modern football began with a single inspired insight by the superb Dutch player and coach Johan Cruyff. Like many great ideas it sounds obvious but it is actually profound. The pass, that is what really matters in football. The precision, the perfection of the pass. Everything else - the arm-waving, the brave running around, the passionate sweat and tears - is peripheral. Being better at passing is what wins football matches.
Prompted by Cruyff, Barcelona set up La Masia academy to educate players about the pass. When you watch Spain mesmerise opponents, you are watching an idea brought to life. There is a bloodline that runs from Cruyff - via Pep Guardiola - to Xavi, Iniesta and Fàbregas, the champions of Europe, champions of the world. One idea changed the game forever. Spanish dominance is not just based on skill. It is founded on brains.
Yet the most interesting part of the story is the resistance to Spain's success, the refusal to follow the logic that has created it. Throughout Euro 2012, English pundits continued to accuse Spain of being "boring". The English old guard even condemned Spain's selection and tactics. How risk-averse, how stupid of Spain not to play a centre forward at all? Well, Spain won the final 4-0, without playing a centre forward for much of the game. Their first goal was brilliantly set up by Fàbregas, a midfielder picked instead of a regular centre forward. Stupid Spain, boring Spain? Behind the insult, observe the anger. When a pack of conventional thinkers are confused, they lash out at what they don't understand.
We see the same criticisms thrown around in cricket, the same reluctance to accept that new thinking might lead to better results. Here is an example. Pundits often ridicule captains for setting "negative" fields. The assumption is that it is always a "positive" move (i.e. that it will lead to more wickets) to have more slips and fewer fielders saving the single.
But what is positive, what is negative?
When I was a player, I often liked batting against very "positive" fields. Because I liked to bat at a reasonable tempo, feeling that the scoreboard was ticking along. Many players have a natural tempo, a pace of scoring that makes them feel they are in control. In a perfect world, of course, batsmen should be able to defend for hours without worrying about the scoring rate. But most batsmen are human beings.
 
 
I would much rather bat against an egotistical captain trying to impress the crowd than an unobtrusive captain trying to stop me batting in the way that suited me
 
That's why I often found it easier to score runs against flashy, "positive" captains, who were always trying to set eye-catching "aggressive" fields. While they were arranging catchers in apparently original groupings, runs flowed from the bat. I would much rather bat against an egotistical captain trying to impress the crowd than an unobtrusive captain trying to stop me batting in the way that suited me.
Now I've retired, I can reveal an effective and underused tactic: stop people scoring (whatever the type of match) and you'll probably get them out. This has become even more relevant to Test cricket during the era of T20 cricket. Batsmen have become increasingly used to hitting boundaries in Test cricket because T20 has changed the way people feel about their natural scoring rate. That's why Andrew Strauss is unafraid to have more fielders saving one and fewer catchers in Test cricket.
When England set cautious fields, they too are called "tactically naïve". And they win. When Spain don't play a centre forward, they are called boring and tactically naïve. And they win.
It is time to revisit some definitions. What are tactics but tools for winning sports matches? And since when was it naïve to play to your strengths?
A case study of thinking and winning is the story of the Oakland Athletics in baseball. Thanks to the book, and now film, Moneyball, it is has become one of the famous stories in sport. As with Cruyff's insight about the pass, the over-performance of the Oakland A's began with a single insight. The best way to approach winning a baseball match is not thinking about scoring runs. It is to focus on getting on base. A run is usually the by-product of getting on base. Runs are hard to predict; getting on base is much easier to assess and calculate. So the Athletics focused on the tractable, controllable parts of the match, ignoring the headline-grabbing end-product.
In 2002 the Athletics unveiled their new strategy. Guess what: the pack of baseball pundits and insiders didn't like it. They accused the Athletics of wrong-headedness, hubris and over-intellectualism. Undeterred, Oakland won a record 103 matches out of 162.
Conventional wisdom moves at a glacial pace because people become attached to ideas that are no longer relevant. Military historians say that generals are always preparing to fight the war that has just ended. So it is in sport.
Boring Spain, naïve England, wrong-headed Oakland? I prefer the idea that sport is always evolving, with new ideas driving the pace of change.
Former England, Kent and Middlesex batsman Ed Smith's new book, Luck - What It Means and Why It Matters, is out now. His Twitter feed is here

Wednesday 30 May 2012

How to Adapt to the 4 Types of Attacking Batsmen

From Pitch Vision Academy

http://www.pitchvision.com/how-to-adapt-to-the-4-types-of-attacking-batsmen

Sometimes your bowling spell doesn't go to plan and the batsman is the one on the attack.
Now it's time to adapt our plan to take into account how and where the batsman is hitting the ball.

One option is to move a fielder or two around to cut off his favourite shot, and try and force him to play a shot he isn't so comfortable with. This will often lead to his dismissal.

Another option is to leave the field as it is. Instead back ourselves to dismiss him by adjusting our bowling strategy itself. Here we look at how to counter-attack four types of aggressive batsman:

1. The batsman who is playing aggressively against the spin
The batter is cutting and cover driving the off spinner, or playing across the line against the leg spinner. Here the percentages are with you, so simply keep spinning the ball as hard as possible to try and beat the bat. Probe for an error. Work in some simple variations and find the hole. Keep spinning the ball as much as possible. Eventually, he will make a mistake.

2. The batsman who is consistently playing with the spin
Here the batter is cutting and cover driving the leg spinner, and working the off spinner into midwicket. He has now left himself vulnerable to the ball moving in the opposite direction. The killer blow will come from beating the opposite side of the bat to the direction of turn. To do this, use either a googly to bowl him through the gate or an arm-ball to find the leading edge.

3. The batsman who is attacking with cross batted shots
Sweeping and pulling in the order of the day with this batter. The wrong ‘un or a big spinning stock ball will have little effect against the cross batted shots. In this case, we need to vary our flight - especially using topspin and backspin - to get the ball over or underneath the horizontal swing of the bat. A backspinner will get us a bowled or LBW. A top spinner will result in a top-edge or a nick behind.

4. The batsman who is charging down the track or slogging.
These two can be dealt with in the same way. You're looking for a stumping or an aerial shot resulting in a catch. Changes of pace are key here, so that batsman is unable to time his shot. Top spin will also create extra dip and bounce and make the ball more likely to go in the air. If you can make the ball move away from the batsman, you will also have a better chance of a stumping.

About the author: AB has been bowling left arm spin in club cricket since 1995. He currently plays Saturday league cricket and several evening games a week. He is a qualified coach, and his experiences playing and coaching baseball often gives him a different insight into cricket.

The ART of Flight to deceive the batsmen

What spin bowler hasn't heard these clichés in his cricketing career?

"Toss it up" the young spin bowler is so often told. "You've got to flight the ball, give it some air, and get it above the batsman's eye line".

The problem is that experience soon teaches that simply lobbing the ball up in the air does not suddenly make a competent batsman turn into a tail end bunny. Whilst the advice may be well meaning, it completely misses the point. Flight is about deception. There is nothing deceptive about simply bowling the same ball but slower and with a higher trajectory.
 
So what is flight then?
 
The art of spin bowling is the art of deceiving the batsman as to what the ball will do. This comes in two parts: we are able to confuse him when the ball pitches by making it turn. It might turn a small amount, it might turn a large amount or it might turn the other direction entirely.

We are also able to use the same set of techniques to deceive him as to where the ball will pitch in the first place.

This is flight: the art of deceiving the batsman as to the exact location where the ball will pitch.
How do we do this?

Well, first and foremost we use the same technique we use to make the ball turn: by spinning it hard. In the case of flighting the ball, this primarily means using topspin and backspin.

These make use of the Magnus effect to change the trajectory of the ball as it travels towards the batsman.
  • Top spin will make the ball drop more quickly and land further away from the batsman than expected. Imagine a tennis player playing a top spin shot with his racquet, hitting over the top of the ball. You can apply this same spin on a cricket ball. How you do it will depend on whether you are a finger spinner or wrist spinner but the effect of spinning “over the top” is the same.
  • Back spin will make the ball carry further and land closer to the batsman.  Our tennis player would slice underneath the ball to make the shot. Again your method for doing this will vary but think ‘slicing under the ball’ to create the effect.

Using the two in combination makes batsman completely clueless as to whether to play forward or back to any given delivery.

Saturday 1 August 2009

Warne, Cricket and Poker

The spin legend is attempting to turn a lifelong hobby, poker, into a career every bit as illustrious as the one he is leaving behind on the cricket field

Andrew Miller

July 31, 2009



"I see a lot of similarities between poker and cricket, and I thoroughly enjoy them both" © 888.com



When great sportsmen retire, they often find it hard to carve a new niche in life. Some find solace in coaching or commentary, but many drift listlessly into middle age, unable to find a suitable outlet for the competitive instincts that drove them to the peak of their professions. Not for the first time in his life, however, Shane Warne has taken it upon himself to buck convention. His 40th birthday is fast approaching at the end of the summer, but far from dwelling on past glories, he has immersed himself in a second career that promises a whole new wave of fame, fortune and razor-sharp gameplay.

The world of professional poker is where Warne's passions reside these days, and it's hard to imagine a cricketer more likely to succeed in such a glitzy and unfamiliar world. While his punditry during Sky Sports' Ashes coverage has been lauded for his acerbic opinions and typically keen insight, his absence from last month's historic first Test in Cardiff was ample proof of his new priorities. Instead of fronting up at Sophia Gardens, Warne spent the week holed up in the Rio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, competing in the World Series of Poker - the single most prestigious tournament on the circuit - and coming within a whisker of taking the event by storm.

It's a safe bet that, somewhere in a quiet corner of the England and Australia dressing rooms on a frustrating first day at Edgbaston, a deck of cards and a stack of chips were brought out of someone's coffin, as the players whiled away the washed-out hours in traditional fashion. In his retirement speech on the eve of the Ashes, Michael Vaughan said that the England squad's regular poker games at the back of the team bus were an aspect of his professional life that he would particularly miss, while in London last month, Warne and Darren Gough brought the two pastimes together under one banner, and led their respective countries in the inaugural Poker Ashes, a contest that finished in a familiar 4-1 Australian victory.

"I see a lot of similarities between poker and cricket, and I thoroughly enjoy them both," Warne told Cricinfo. "People associate poker with gambling, but that's not actually the case. Tournament poker, which is what I play, is completely different to playing at home or in a re-buy tournament, and it has actually been deemed in a court of law a sport and a game of skill. It's all about reading your opponents, it's all about when you think they are bluffing and when they are not, it's about table image, and position on the table, and playing the percentages. There's a real sense of satisfaction about risking your chips and making a great call, or making a great lay-down when you're behind, Playing your cards right gives a massive sense of satisfaction."

Poker, like cricket, has a wealth of jargon designed to baffle the uninitiated, but when you cut through Warne's complicated turns of phrase, it's self-evident why he is so well suited to this alternative form of cut-and-thrust. When you think of the traits that turned him into arguably the greatest match-winner of his generation, there's more at play than merely his peerless ability to spin a cricket ball on all surfaces. There was the showmanship that he brought to his game - the strut and confidence with which he set his fields and controlled the tempo of the innings, the look of incredulity after each delivery that failed to take a wicket, the absolute confidence that he, and only he, had the power to dictate the direction of a match.



"It's all about reading your opponents, it's all about when you think they are bluffing and when they are not"




There was his ability to seize the slightest moment of weakness in a team (especially England, who were in thrall of him from the very first ball he bowled in Ashes cricket) or an individual (for instance, Daryl Cullinan, who was effortlessly out-psyched throughout their jousts in the mid-1990s). And there was his ability to adapt his game to suit the needs of the hour, never more memorably than at Adelaide in 2006-07, when he took his licks from Kevin Pietersen during a humiliating first-innings return of 1 for 167, only to strike with lethal speed and intent on that irresistible final day, when at last the cards fell in his favour.

"There's a huge element of skill and tactics involved in poker, and that's one of the things I enjoyed with cricket," said Warne. "The tactical side, the gamesmanship involved, when to push your opponent around and when not to, when to huff and puff and when not to. I'd like to be as successful on the poker table as the cricket field, but I think I've got a few years to go before that happens.

"Days at big tournaments are pretty tough," he added. "Before my first World Series [in 2008] I played in three or four Aussie Millions, a tournament in South Africa and a European World Series, and they are all long days in which you have to concentrate from first hand to last, and in that respect it's just like cricket as well. You have five two-hour sessions, and every two hours you have 20 minutes off. That adds up to 12- or 13-hour days, which start at 12pm and finish at 1 o'clock in the morning." His Test-match instincts could hardly have honed him to better effect.

The basic rules of Texas hold'em poker, the world's most popular form of the game, are simple enough to grasp. Each player is dealt two cards, upon which they make an initial judgment on whether to bet or to fold (and as a rule, picture cards or pairs are the likeliest route to success). After an opening round of betting, the first three of five community cards are dealt in the middle of the table ("the flop"), followed by "the turn" and "the river", each punctuated with another round of betting. The aim of the game is to create (or give the impression you've created) the strongest five-card hand from the seven cards available, just as the aim of cricket is to score more runs than the opposition. But as with both games, the devil is in the details.

"The more tournaments you play, the more you get to understand the tactics, and you don't get intimidated when the big heavies are at play," said Warne. "One of my tables [at the WSOP] was described as the table of death. I started on 19,000 chips with six really aggressive pros at the table, but I managed to get down at 100,000 and then walked away at the end of the day in 24th position overall, and more than 173,000 in chips. You don't just do that by luck. There's a lot of strategy at play."

Dealing with aggression, particularly of the batting variety, is something Warne proved long ago he was a past master at. While fast bowlers have their own aggressive tendencies to throw back at belligerent opponents, Warne could only rely on his innate skill and deeply considered strategies to stay in command of the situation. Given that he has been a card-player for as long as he can remember (he and his brother Jason used to play for matchsticks while their parents hosted Friday-night card games) you sometimes wonder in which direction his skills have travelled.


You've gotta schmooze: Warne with Matt Damon at the World Series of Poker © 888.com




But even Warne was not an instant success at Test level. On debut against India in January 1992, he was clattered around the SCG for figures of 1 for 150, and it wasn't until the tour of Sri Lanka eight months later that he came up with the performance that confirmed he could mix it with the big boys. His final-day figures of 3 for 11 inched Australia to a remarkable 16-run victory, and from that moment on there was no stopping the momentum of his career.

"I had to try and hide my nerves in my first Test, and in poker the same thing applies," he said. "When I played my first Aussie Millions tournament in 2004-05, sure, I was nervous, but I pulled off a bluff on the flop, and won my first pot, and once I'd got over that, I started to feel okay. After that, you can start to understand the tables a bit more, and establish your own table image, and then you can begin to work out who the pros are, and who the weak players on the table are. Hopefully the weak players steal the good players' chips, and then you steal the weak players' chips! But it takes a while to work all that out."

And when it comes to stealing weak players' chips, that is where the bluff comes into its own. "A bluff is all about telling a story," said Warne. "You have pick the right opponent, and set it up right from the word go, pre-flop. It's about representing strength. You have to fire again on the flop, and fire again on the turn, and expect some action on the river, and actually have the strength to do that. It takes a fair amount of skill to actually back your bluff up, or if you're halfway through a bluff and you realise you haven't got the best hand after all, you have to have the skill to know that too, and lay it down."

Once again, the parallels with Warne's Test career are self-evident. Take, for instance, the occasions (usually before an Ashes series) when he would announce to the world that he had developed a new and mysterious delivery, such as the zooter, which nobody to this day is sure ever actually existed. "I vary my play depending on what table I'm at," he said. "If I'm at a super-aggressive table, I just play tight, and try to pick my mark, and wait for someone to try to take me off a hand that I've actually hit. But if I'm at a tight table, I play aggressive, because I'm a pretty aggressive player full stop, which probably doesn't come as much of a surprise!"

All the same, there's a subtle difference between aggression and blind recklessness, and as far as Warne is concerned, the greatest pride he takes from his play comes on the occasions he actually has to admit defeat - which he never knowingly conceded on the cricket field. "It's really tough to do, but it gives you great satisfaction when you make a great lay-down," he said. "Sometimes you don't find out whether you were beat, but usually, about five seconds after a hand has finished, you generally get an instinct or a gut feel that it wasn't on, just by your opponent's reaction. He'll look down at his chips or he'll swallow, all those little tells that say you got away with one, and actually made a great decision."


Sometimes, however, even the best calls don't work out in your favour - as Warne, to his chagrin, discovered in Las Vegas this month. The manner in which he was eliminated on the third day of the World Series still brings him out in a grimace, but typical of his sporting career, he refuses to take a backward step. Here, in his own words, is his tale of World Series woe:



"Hopefully the weak players steal the good players' chips, and then you steal the weak players' chips!"




"About an hour into the day's play, a guy in middle position raised four times the blind, I called on the button with J10 hearts. The flop came 7, Q, K hearts. I think I'm good. He checks, I bet the pot, he calls, the turn card comes a spade. He bets the pot, and has about 70,000 left in his chip stack. I put him all in. He calls and turns over a set, he's got three kings. I'm good, I'm miles ahead, but then he beats the bullet with a queen on the river, and that crippled my stack."

In layman's terms, Warne was brutally unlucky. After the first four cards of the crucial hand had been dealt, he was sitting pretty with a king-high flush, which meant, at that stage, the only hand that could have beaten him was one involving two further hearts, one of which had to be an ace. When the two players laid their cards out on the table for "the race", the only way his opponent could escape was if the river produced the last remaining K, to complete four-of-a-kind, or paired up with one of the other cards on the table, for a full house. The odds were therefore roughly 4 to 1 in Warne's favour, and had he won the pot of 300,000 chips, he would have been propelled up to fifth in the chip count, from an initial field of nearly 6500 competitors.

"People say poker is all about luck, but it's not about good luck, it's about not getting unlucky," he said. "Four out of the five times I risked all my chips at the World Series, I actually had the best hand. The fifth and final time came right at the end of my tournament, after I had waited an hour with my last 20,000 chips. I went all-in with a pair of eights, and when the flop came 4 2 6 rainbow [a variety of different suits] I was looking pretty good. But I ran into a pair of aces, and that summed my day up. I copped some pretty ordinary beats."

There's no question, however, that Warne will be back for another crack next year. With the best players in the world, a buy-in of $10,000, and an outlay of US$70 million in sponsorship and TV rights, the World Series of Poker is a massive event, and as prestigious in its own way as any cricket contest he's ever played in. "The winner of the WSOP gets more than $10 million, and I can't think of any individual sporting prize in the world that pays out that amount," said Warne. "You might get a million dollars for winning Wimbledon, or three or four million for a golf tournament, but $10 million is massive."

So too is his desire to turn a lifelong hobby into a career every bit as illustrious as the one he is leaving behind on the cricket field. In only one aspect does his outlook to poker seem to differ, however. "I just stick to my game, and don't worry much about the verbals," he said. "If a conversation comes up I might get involved, but usually I just stick my headphones on, and that's it." If, one day, we spot Warne goading Phil Ivey to "have a go, go on, you know you want to," in the manner in which he destroyed Mark Ramprakash at Trent Bridge in 2001, then maybe we'll know for sure that he really has arrived as a poker star.

888.com is offering cricket lovers the opportunity of a lifetime - a net session with Shane Warne. The king of spin will visit one lucky cricket club and put the players through their paces as he shows off the skills that earned him 708 Test wickets. Warne is looking for a group of cricketers who share his passion for poker. For full information on how to enter, please email Shanewarne@888.com

Andrew Miller is UK editor of Cricinfo