Of stars and dogs: A business case analysis

[Zunaid]

About a year ago, I came across an interesting analysis of ODI Batsmen on ESPNCricInfo’s blog “It figures”. The author, Anantha Narayanan, adopted a well-known business tool created by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) called a “Growth-share matrix”. This simple chart helped large corporations decide how to allocate cash among their business units. The goal was to find who the stars were and who the dogs were.

A typical BCG chart



Narayanan ‘s work was actually inspired by Arvind Iyengar who originally modeled the batsmen using a chart that used Batsman strike rate and Batting average as the two axes. Narayanan felt that since the batting average can be arrived by multiplying the strike rate and average balls per innings, SR shows up in both axes. Narayanan changed the axis variables to SR and AVG balls per innings.



He had drawn a number of charts, one of which I reproduce below:



This chart is based on using the selection criteria of all those who have scored > 6500 runs in ODIs. Do note that the author’s comments on the selection of central dividing lines to break the matrix into quadrants:

“…. is to draw the lines around the median value so that we get around half the batsman on top of the mid line of the Average balls per innings and around half the batsmen to the right of the mid line of the Strike rate line… This leads to unequal quadrants but would make analysis of the batsmen far more meaningful. Let me add that the drawing of the asymmetrical central lines is my own idea and most of the BCG charts have only centrally located divider lines. However my idea of asymmetrical dividing lines ensures a fairer distribution of players across quadrants.”

No real surprises in the chart. The pantheon of greats includes Tendulker, Lara, Mark Waugh, Saeed Anwar and Richards. Gayle, Md Yousuf, Sangakarra and Bevan were almost there (at least when the chart was created a year ago). The dashers had Jayasuriya, Gilchrist, de Silva, and Yuvraj with Sehwag almost off the chart. The stayers had the Miandad, Flower, Dravid, Chanders etc. Again, no real surprises. It seemed in tune with my intuition.

I wondered how this chart would translate to Bangladeshi Batsmen in the ODI arena. Of course, none of our stalwarts has scored 6500+ runs nor have they had the axes numbers to join the vaunted company above. I chose only those who have scored over 1000 ODI runs. I had to lower the standards and drew my horizontal divider at 35 average balls faced as opposed to the 45 in the original chart. This was a significant handicap I had to give to our batsmen.

Without much ado, here is the BCC.



Surprises?

Some, yes. None with the quadrant where Shakib and Tamim reside. They are truly our stars. In spite of the lack of love for JO and Imrul, look where they are. Interesting to see SN on the verge of breaking into the star category. Or perhaps, if I took out his stats against Zimbabwe, he will come down to earth. No surprises with Mashrafe and Boom Boom Aftab. But do look at where Alok and Ashraful are. Spare a thought and do excuse Shujon and Rafique - Rafique actually made it to the batsman chart and Shujon was our only all-rounder for a while. Bashar makes sense – he was never top-notch in ODIs.

I am going to expand this into Tests as well as experiment with other axes variables into an article. Your thoughts and comments are most welcome.

[riad]

Great job Z vai.
I miss these stat analysis for our boys. AF used to have some stat before and after each series. Don't know why he stopped those. I loved those as they gave me some sense of up and down of our boys form.

[Naimul_Hd]

ah...how dearly i miss Dogs and Cows. 'Business Management' was is my one of the most favorite subjects. 'Competitive Matrix model', 'TOWS', "QSPM Matrix' - ahh...feels good to back to school days

anyway, thanks Zunaid bhai for this great and very informative work.

[Zunaid]

Originally Posted by Naimul_Hd
ah...how dearly i miss Dogs and Cows. 'Business Management' was is my one of the most favorite subjects. 'Competitive Matrix model', 'TOWS', "QSPM Matrix' - ahh...feels good to back to school days

anyway, thanks Zunaid bhai for this great and very informative work.

Well, if you like that, maybe you'll like my Gartner's magic Quadrant as applied to BD cricket:

http://www.banglacricket.com/alochon...ad.php?p=44365

I need to update.

[Zeeshan]

Ahem ahem...while we are all promoting stuff my Omega Point manual was based on six sigma's marriage with military survival manual. Does it "count"?

[Zunaid]

Originally Posted by Zeeshan
Ahem ahem...while we are all promoting stuff my Omega Point manual was based on six sigma's marriage with military survival manual. Does it "count"?

Link please.

BTW, cricket >>> war

[Zeeshan]

Originally Posted by Zunaid
Link please.

BTW, cricket >>> war

Only of pure can see it... :p

http://www.banglacricket.com/alochona/showthread.php?t=31158

[Zunaid]

Too much to read. You need to distil everything into one compelling pictograph. Execs don;t have time to read through pages and pages of texts - the big picture is all they need to make the decisions.

[Zeeshan]

So back on topic : How far high would Bradman be on the star quadrant?

[Zunaid]

Originally Posted by Zeeshan
So back on topic : How far high would Bradman be on the star quadrant?

What would his one day stats be?

[zman]

Great work Boss. Results are pretty much in line with what I expected--except SN for the precise reason you've alluded to--even before looking at the chart. The chart in my mind represents the players' value to the team over the span of their whole career. If I were to leverage the chart to pick the current squad however, the only thing I'd probably do different is assign a higher weight to the last one year.

[Naimul_Hd]

Originally Posted by Zeeshan
So back on topic : How far high would Bradman be on the star quadrant?

Originally Posted by Zunaid
What would his one day stats be?

hahahaa....Zeshan bro plz dont mind. Cant help but sharing this pic

[Zeeshan]

Originally Posted by Naimul_Hd
hahahaa....Zeshan bro plz dont mind. Cant help to share this pic

arrey bhai...zunaid da jokhon post kore tokhon to emon ek digbazi mara somarsalt deya post den je one has to do double triple or quadruple takes to even get a feel for it, let alone comment on it...

it's like they kill insects with massive canonballs...ami chunopoti mota mathar manush ami ki eto bujhi naki

[Zunaid]

Originally Posted by Zeeshan
arrey bhai...zunaid da jokhon post kore tokhon to emon ek digbazi mara somarsalt deya post den je one has to do double triple or quadruple takes to even get a feel for it, let alone comment on it...

it's like they kill insects with massive canonballs...ami chunopoti mota mathar manush ami ki eto bujhi naki

The kid was trying to be a mini me:

http://www.banglacricket.com/alochon...55#post1429755

[RazabQ]

Good dig. Mushy I suspect will move into the stayers quadrant.

[Zunaid]

Originally Posted by RazabQ
Good dig. Mushy I suspect will move into the stayers quadrant.

If I use it on the basis of last 3-4 years performance, I am sure he already is in there.

[Tiger444]

Thanks Zunaid bhai for the thread. It gives us a very good outlook on our players. This graph really shows why Tamim and Shakib are our star players. What's impressive about Mushy is that he seems to always be improving. 1 thing that hurt him no doubt was the fact that he was batting too low in ODIs for a long period of time. Expect him to be in the star performer category soon though. I think the same can be said about Mahmudullah even though I believe he's been more frustrating then Mushy. Once Nasir hits the 1000 run mark, expect to see him with Shakib and Tamim as well.

SN seems to be a guy that's falling off after a very impressive start to this career. Don't see much hope for him I'm afraid although I would love to be proven wrong. Same can be said about Rokibul as well. A great start to his career but has had trouble improving his game. He can stay at the wicket for long periods but the big knock has always been that he's not efficient enough in scoring runs in ODIs which is not acceptable for a #4 batsman. Junaid's problem was always his inconsistency. He always threw away his starts which is also unacceptable for a #3. Imrul is usully good at staying at the wicket but he too doesn't score his runs sufficiently enough although this year it seems he's having trouble even doing that.

I think that it's quite clear once again that we're having trouble finding high class top order batsmen besides Tamim. Once we get at least 1 more class top order batsman, I believe that's when we can become a really good side.

[al Furqaan]

I think we should have a filter for matches against top 8 sides. Also, what axises will you use for Tests? I think balls faced and bat avg are appropriate.

[Rubu]

only surprise is mushy ryad. Will this be the thing that make you bow to me and say you, sir, you have been right all along about Alok?