Player Average: An Overview

[Rubu]

Average is probably the most important stat for a batsman. In the long run, it becomes pretty much the identity of a player.

How does our players look in terms of average? I only included our current players, who is not completely out of equation, and has a bit of batting skill. Players such as Shahadat Hossain or Enamul Jr is not included for this reason. Well, there is not too many players in this list, only 20. Lets have a look:

No		Name		Innings		Not out		Runs		Average
1		Shakibul Hasan		17		5		487		40.58
2		Shahriar Nafis		38		3		1391		39.74
3		Mushfiqur Rahim		6		1		151		30.20
4		Aftab Ahmed		53		6		1374		29.23
5		Forhad Reza		10		2		231		28.88
6		Rajin Saleh		43		1		1005		23.93
7		Javed Omar		53		4		1166		23.79
8		Mehrab Hossain Jnr		9		0		200		22.22
9		Habibul Bashar		94		5		1963		22.06
10		Khaled Masud		110		27		1818		21.90
11		Manjarul Rana		21		5		331		20.69
12		Mohammad Ashraful		82		6		1548		20.36
13		Alok Kapali		52		3		964		19.67
14		Nafis Iqbal		16		0		309		19.31
15		Tamim Iqbal		2		0		35		17.50
16		Mashrafe Mortaza		43		9		556		16.35
17		Abdul Rajjak		22		13		142		15.33
18		Tushar Imran		36		0		547		15.19
19		Mohammad Rafique		96		14		1124		13.70
20		Taposh Baisya		41		13		336		12.00

Shakib and Nafis stands out among the rest and no surprise there. They have been playing good. The first person to talk about comes at number 6. Why he is not in the team? There are several things that can be factors beside average such as form and strike rate. Yes, Rajin does have a low strike rate. But are we a team that does not need any player who can play the sheet anchor role? People's answer will vary on that. But he should be, in my opinion, be in the 15 member WC team. Number 10 is another person not in the team. But since Rahim is staying so up on the ladder, I guess no one will complain. Number 11 is, of course, the biggest surprise to me. He seems to be having all the quality to stay in the 15 men squad as a bowler or a batsman. Still, he seems to be no where. How does that happens, I have no idea. Number 12 is a surprise in a different way. He is said to be one of the most talented batsman of our time. How come he is so low in there. However, time to time, he does show what he is made of and make our lives a sheer joy. I guess, we can afford to stick to a player like him in this stage of our cricket. I don't think someone with below 20 average can be called a batsman, but surprisingly, we see a few there who we call batsman, but stays in this here. Well, Tamim has played only 2 games, so he can be excused. But, there is still two other, namely Alok Kapali and Tushar Imran. You call them batsman? One of them is actually playing in the team now. What exactly he is doing in there?

Its about time we really start to think about the 15 member squad for the WC.

[Aritro]

Excellent post mate, and I agree with that word for word.

[sadi]

Mashrafee and Razzak has better average than Tushar Imran. Hasbo na kadbo.

[cracky]

Damn, Tushar Imran is really good, he is ahead of Taposh Baisya and scored 0.5 run per innings. That's a great achievment. Don't be amazed if you see him world's top 11 soon.

[BangladeshFan]

thanks rubu for the info. but i am not sure if that accurately reflects batsman ability because some of those batsmen have played most of their matches against zim, kenya or scotland while others played more against stronger opposition.

specially someone like sakib having av 40 while kapali or nafis iqbal having 19. kapali or nafis didnt have the luck to play against these minnows otherwise their av will have benefitted from it also. is it possible for you to come up with the same info but with their performance against top 8 teams? i think that will give us a better indication of ability.

[Aritro]

Originally Posted by BangladeshFan
thanks rubu for the info. but i am not sure if that accurately reflects batsman ability because some of those batsmen have played most of their matches against zim, kenya or scotland while others played more against stronger opposition.

specially someone like sakib having av 40 while kapali or nafis iqbal having 19. kapali or nafis didnt have the luck to play against these minnows otherwise their av will have benefitted from it also. is it possible for you to come up with the same info but with their performance against top 8 teams? i think that will give us a better indication of ability.

I think if that were to be done, it would quite rightly remove our newcomers from the agenda.

But moreover, it would reflect even more embarrassingly on the likes of Bashar, Ashraful, Imran, Iqbal and co.

[Rubu]

BangladeshFan, you have a valid point. I would have done it, but its so hard to do, it would require some time. However, here is a different perspective that discourage me to do it: the likes of bashar, ash and others who played both against stronger and weaker team, does not have a recent boost in average. so, the players such as shakib and nafees are has the advantage of playing against weaker team, but that can't be the sole reason.

[sadi]

Since players like Sakib, Mehrab, Tamim or Mushfiq haven't really played against any quality opposition yet, such comparsion won't make sense just yet. Let them play a few games and then we can compare who fares better against the top 8. Maybe we can have some sort of data after the world cup.

[TheWatcher]

Rubu, throwing some stats without proper analysis can be very misleading. Let us look how some of our senior batsmen have done against Zim as opposed to their overall career-

Batsman	Career Avg	Against Zim
Bashar	22.14	33.54
Javed	23.79	30.00
Rajin	23.92	29.36
Aftab	27.86	32.12
Ashraful	20.36	21.31

As you can see all of them except Ashraful has a much higher average against Zimbabwe.

About Rana, when you take out his scores against Zim, his average comes down to 17.76 as opposed to his career average 20.68. SN's average comes down to 22.87 (as opposed to his career average 39.74) when you take away his scores against Zim, Kenya, and Scotland.

[TheWatcher]

I don't want to spend the whole weekend doing stat analysis, but just out of curisity, I compared averages of Ash, Aftab, Rubu's beloved Rajin, and Alok that he so hates, against big eights teams (means teams excep Zim, Ken, Sco, Can, HK etc). This is what I got-

Ashraful - 19.82
Aftab - 19.96
Rajin - 19.36
Alok- 19.93

Funny, how similar the figures are !

[Fortuner]

Tushar Is Special To The Selectors Coz No Matter Wht So Ever His Perfomance Be In League He Will Be Taken. He Is Worst Then Certain Ppl Who R Not In Team Right Now. For Instance Rajin....he Is Way Better Than Tushar.

Selects Jst Love Tushar Coz He Gets A Chance Some How

If Tushar Can Get Chance Why Not Others Like Rajin N Some Oda New Fellows...

[BangladeshFan]

Originally Posted by Rubu
BangladeshFan, you have a valid point. I would have done it, but its so hard to do, it would require some time. However, here is a different perspective that discourage me to do it: the likes of bashar, ash and others who played both against stronger and weaker team, does not have a recent boost in average. so, the players such as shakib and nafees are has the advantage of playing against weaker team, but that can't be the sole reason.

thats true, but i am not belittling the efforts of sakib or shahriar nafis etc. what i am saying these players who played most of their matches recently has got inflated averages because their is a big difference in quality between these teams and top 8.
the other confusing thing is zim or kenya even 3-4 years ago had much better teams than present, zim made super 6s in last 2 WC, kenya made it to semis in last one. now zim lost all their main players and kenya got weakened without proper competion and ICC support or funding.

thats why comparing performace against top 8 will give a better picture. and from thewatcher stat they look almost similar at 20. SN at 22. if we go by averages which is a good reflection of batsman ability, our batsmen are all nearly same, surprising!:p

[Kabir]

Good initiative Rubu bhai.

For those of you who are arguing that the new players have a different average against minnows, that's definitely a valid point. But do keep in mind that players get better with time...and since we're playing a lot of the minnows lately, we cannot discredit the fact that these players may have gotten better anyway. So it's highly debatable...and I hope you guys realize it.

Apart from these facts, I would also like to point out that the boost in average in recent matches against the minnows that you guys are talking about don't apply for players like Rajin Saleh and Manjurul Rana.

[Rubu]

Talking about minnows, everyone had the chances to play against minnows. More or less, but everyone had. How many centuries we got from then at that time? None. This give a good indication of, if not anything else, temperament. And as you all know, talent without temperament is nothing, just nothing. If we had players who plays good against minnows before, we would not have lost to canada. It is also part of the game. And as Kabir rightly pointed out, Rana and rajin did not have this laxuray too much against playing minnows. Even Zim was stronger that time. Even more, if you go over the history, all the top 8 did not play the full strength team against us in many many occasions. meaning, those teams were not as good as they sound, still those players failed.

another argument can be done using comparison. The likes of Aftab/Hablu played better than Alok and Tushar against stronger teams. If that means that the first group is better than these two, then look at now: shahriar/shakib are performing better than than aftab/habibul/ash. So, if they were playing against stronger teams, they would probably still be doing good.

in summary, a lot of argument can be give for both side, but at the end, you would have to agree with me that rajin and rana would be better option for the team than alok and tushar. you may disagree today, but agree tomorrow.

[Kabir]

Originally Posted by Rubu
in summary, a lot of argument can be give for both side, but at the end, you would have to agree with me that rajin and rana would be better option for the team than alok and tushar. you may disagree today, but agree tomorrow.