The T20 Blast does produce world-class finishers, but England just have to look at the data

Analytics consultant DAN WESTON investigates the numbers behind how the English domestic league and its late-order sloggers stand up to their glitzy global counterparts

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Social media has been busy with discussion about the quality of the T20 Blast in recent weeks, with this fascinating article from CricViz driving much of the debate.

The first notable assertion from the piece was that England’s T20 team does not have any finishers, with a possible reason given by the author, Ben Jones, being that “the Blast isn’t very high quality”, and I want to examine both arguments in a little more detail here, both regarding England’s cohort of international T20 finishers and the quality of the Blast itself.

In a brief summary of the latter debate, my answer as to whether the Blast is of high quality is that it’s complicated. As a player recruitment and strategy analyst working directly with teams, I have a lot of data covering this area, and it is indeed vital to assess the quality of a league and how it is likely to impact a player’s statistics both positively and negatively.

For example, my historical data suggests that the T20 Blast is one of the easiest leagues around the world to bat in, yet it isn’t nearly as good for bowlers. Several reasons for this could include generally small ground dimensions and a supply bias towards average and above-average domestic batsmen when compared to bowlers.

To give a basic comparison, I’d anticipate a domestic bowler in the Big Bash to exhibit slightly worse data when playing in the T20 Blast, while a T20 Blast domestic bowler would be more likely than not to have a lower economy rate in the Big Bash. This isn’t necessarily due to the Big Bash being a lower standard league than the T20 Blast – in fact, many people would suggest the opposite – but is simply because bowling conditions are more likely to be easier in Australia for the Big Bash than in England and Wales for the T20 Blast.

A combination of Australian allrounders and bowlers who took part in both tournaments this year took wickets at 25.27 in the Big Bash and 26.97 in the T20 Blast. While this isn’t a huge sample size, including just over 1,500 balls bowled in each competition, it is fairly closely aligned to more long-term data as well.

Given the relative ease of batting and relative difficulty of bowling in the Blast, measures of league quality can be a little difficult to use accurately. Ideally we’d be able to assess a league’s quality via focusing on overseas and domestic players, and on both batting and bowling. Additionally, we may perhaps also split bowling between pace and spin, with bowlers likely to face markedly different conditions worldwide.

For example, a spinner in the T20 Blast (with the aforementioned batting supply bias, often small boundaries, and relatively pace-friendly conditions) could well be made to look worse than they actually are than if they were to play in the Bangladesh Premier League (BPL), which is a low-scoring, spin-friendly competition.

A smart T20 player, particularly those who regularly participate in franchise leagues worldwide, would do well to consider this when deciding the drafts and auctions they wish to enter, as well as the impact this would have on their base or reserve prices – a bad tournament or two in conditions which don’t suit a certain player could see that player’s earning streams dramatically reduced.

Conversely, using my expected data for each player worldwide for each individual league, it also wouldn’t be difficult to help players pick tournaments to be drafted in which would have the potential to flatter their data.

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Sussex's Laurie Evans is now a franchise regular on the strength of his T20 Blast performances

Despite stating that it would be likely for a T20 Blast spinner to improve their data by playing in the BPL, many people would argue the BPL is a higher quality competition. Certainly, CricViz stated as much in their piece, ranking the BPL second only to the IPL in terms of T20 tournament quality.

This is where things get more complicated – there are arguments for and against here. Firstly, I can see one clear potential reason as to why the BPL is rated highly compared to the T20 Blast.

While the CricViz article understandably doesn’t give a detailed description of their methodology, presumably the impact of high quality overseas players favours the BPL in grading its quality. In the BPL, four overseas players are permitted in a team’s playing XI, whereas a T20 Blast side is allowed just two, and these are frequently not maximised.

In recent years, a number of T20 Blast teams have chosen not to utilise their full quota of overseas players for various reasons, such as issues of finance, player availability, injury, poor recruitment, or a general failure to understand the greater overall expected runs and wickets benefit that comes from fielding a full allowance of high-quality overseas players.

Many counties have brought in overseas players of questionable quality, with some in low demand worldwide, not even being regular T20 players or being in clear decline from an age-curve perspective – a nod to the poor recruitment strategies of numerous cricket teams which I discussed previously in detail for The Cricketer here.

Even over 15 years since the format’s inception, many T20 teams still are yet to understand the value of specialist player recruitment analysts and choose not to appoint one.

Generally, overseas players have the potential to be more consistently available throughout the season in the BPL than the Blast (it’s often a choice between that or BBL to play in at that stage of the calendar) while it is fairly rare for a T20 Blast overseas player to offer full availability in the English summer, given demands from both national teams and drafts for competing leagues such as the Caribbean Premier League, Global T20 Canada and the eventually-postponed Euro T20 Slam.

Given this, it is unsurprising that BPL franchises benefit more from the impact of overseas players. During the most recent editions, a total of 293 players featured in the T20 Blast, compared with just 136 utilised by the seven BPL teams.

To give further insight into the impact of overseas players, the latest edition of the BPL saw overseas players average 26.56 with the bat, striking at 136.57 and hitting 18.46% of balls faced for boundaries – impressive numbers considering the batting difficulty of this competition. This compared extremely favourably to the league’s domestic players, who averaged 18.14, struck at 114.51 and hit just 13.83% of balls faced to the boundary.

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In the Blast this season, there was considerably less difference between overseas and domestic batsmen: overseas players averaged 28.40, striking at 138.93, and hitting 17.34% of balls faced for boundaries;domestic players averaged 23.69, striking at 130.45 and scoring boundaries from 15.73% of balls.

Domestic players faced 85.42% of all balls bowled, casting a stark contrast with the BPL, where, domestic players faced a comparatively low 52.76% of balls, with overseas players at the crease for the remaining 47.24%.

These numbers show that both the quality and volume of overseas players drags up the quality of the BPL as a competition – there is a vast difference between the overseas batting numbers in the BPL compared to the domestic – and this has less of a profound effect on the Blast.

However, this does illustrate the benefit of the average overseas batsman over the average domestic batsman and is an example of demonstrating how much teams are giving up in expected value by not maximising their full overseas player quota in the Blast.

However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that England’s batting isn’t helped by the format of the T20 Blast. In fact, the above data would indicate that England’s domestic batting in general is considerably better than that of Bangladesh, despite the BPL potentially being a higher quality league.

Certainly, the fact that over double the amount of players were used in the T20 Blast this year, as well as a far higher balls faced percentage compared to the BPL points to greater opportunities for English domestic players to play first team T20 cricket, although it is rather obvious that this will also lead to dilution of quality as well – it’s simply impossible to maintain general player quality with more than double the amount of teams of franchise leagues abroad.

Even India, who can boast a vast and high quality playing pool, would see a downturn in league quality if the IPL were expanded to 18 teams. It would be no different to football’s English Premier League doubling to 40 teams – it would be impossible to source cost-efficient talent of similar quality for all teams at the current level.

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The Somerset duo of Pakistan's Babar Azam and youngster Tom Banton topped the T20 Blast runs table in 2019

So, as you should be able to see, the answer to the question about whether the Blast is of a high or low quality is complicated.

Dilution of talent from a huge playing pool, overseas player restrictions and frequent poor recruitment of overseas players are all negatives, but I also consider its domestic player quality to be higher than a lot of T20 franchise leagues.

Certainly, my perception is that what I describe as ‘tier two’ players (those on the fringes of the national team or who are inexplicably omitted from the national setup) and ‘tier three’ players (solid performers capable of playing overseas franchise leagues and being above-average domestic players) are considerably better than those comparatively available in the BPL.

To put this into some context, my BPL expected data algorithm indicates that a number of English domestic players who went unselected in The Hundred draft would add value to BPL franchises if they were allowed to play in that league as domestic players.

This discussion of ‘tier two’ and ‘tier three’ players neatly brings me on to how effective a feeder competition the Blast can be for England’s T20 squad.

I’ve been vocal previously that I consider selections in recent years to have been extremely debatable from a statistical standpoint, with the selectors often paying little heed to format-specific data, failing to utilise players in their best roles and frequently treating it as an extension of England’s ODI team, particularly in the run-up to this year’s 50-over World Cup.

Certainly, even in the squad currently on a five-match tour of New Zealand, there are still several players who either fall into these brackets or who my expected data indicates are selected as ‘hunches’ who the selectors hope will improve in the international arena.

The problem with this point of view about players improving at a higher standard is that it is completely illogical, unless a player is on an extremely steep part of the improvement/decline age curve. If, for example, as a T20 batsman you aren’t expected to be above-average against the average domestic attack, you’re hardly likely to thrive against the likes of Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins, Jasprit Bumrah or Rashid Khan.

England are far from the only team in this situation – I’d certainly suggest some of Australia and Pakistan’s selections in their current series have little in the way of statistical merit either – but not only is this approach illogical, but the foolishness of it is borne out by numbers – it is extremely rare for players to improve domestic numbers in international cricket.

Many international teams appear to be in a rather experimental phase a year out from the T20 World Cup in Australia, but some of the players picked have little in the way of statistical rationale both from an ability and an age perspective. One of the many benefits of using data to assess players is to weed out those who are unlikely to thrive either short-term or long-term in a high quality playing environment.

That brings us onto the second question: why are there a lack of finishers in Blast ready to add to the England T20 team? Starting off, as Jones suggests in his piece for CricViz, it would make sense for the majority of teams (domestic and international alike) to be keen for their better batters to face as many balls as possible.

The table below illustrates the balls faced per match (divided by 2, given that there are two innings in each match) as well as the average, strike rate and boundary percentage for each batting position in T20 internationals between the major nine Test-playing nations from the start of 2018 until November 6:

Batting Position Balls Faced Per Match/2 Batting Average Strike Rate Per 100 balls Boundary Percentage
1 18.36 26.50 138.74 19.90
2 18.97 27.63 136.86 19.23
3 19.74 29.31 128.11 15.51
4 16.75 27.48 135.26 16.31
5 13.35 23.48 124.74 13.63
6 9.40 20.99 127.66 14.97
7 6.54 18.22 127.03 14.44
8 3.71 14.93 132.54 16.57
9 2.39 9.80 103.67 11.72
10 1.18 6.86 96.26 12.62
11 0.65 8.40 70.58 6.72

 

Here we can see that the top four batsmen in T20 internationals faced around 74 balls combined per team innings, with a marked drop-off in both strike rate and particularly batting average in particular after these players.

It seems reasonable to draw the conclusion that international teams pick their best batsmen in the top four and there’s a decline in quality subsequently.

However, I would also contend that this issue is also due to a lack of role clarity for players and particularly a lack of specialists in certain batting roles.

For example, the average number three, whose overall numbers above clearly indicate stability (relatively high average, relatively low strike rate and boundary percentage) may lack the skillset to score above an average strike rate of 200 at the death, and I consider there to be a strong argument that international teams are often guilty of picking their best players, regardless of their suitability to the roles that they are assigned, and failing to understand the value of specialists.

It’s a bit like the England football team having five world class strikers at their disposal and then picking them all in their team, despite then needing to shoehorn three of them into centre midfield.

What is surprising from the table above is that there isn’t a surge in strike rate and boundary percentage in positions between six and eight, which frequently bat solely against pace bowling during death overs and which, in theory, have less value on wicket preservation.

Players selected in these spots should be able to contribute hugely with the bat from a boundary hitting and strike rate perspective, but it seems either that players possessing this skillset are frequently overlooked by T20 international teams, or that there are a lack of options for some nations. All a number seven really needs to do on average with the bat is score 12 or 13 runs from the ballpark seven balls they will face, and they have done their job.

Interestingly, England have better numbers than average in these batting positions in this time period – averaging 18.92 at a strike rate of 144.71, with a boundary percentage of 18.24% – suggesting that they are perhaps better placed than most with regards to identifying players with this specific skillset.

Having said this, it doesn’t necessarily indicate that they are always using the best players suited for the role. The chart below illustrates historical boundary percentage deviation between players in various T20 leagues and the same players in T20 internationals: 

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Here we can see that the T20 Blast has quite a poor ratio (0.90) for replicating boundary hitting in that competition compared to when its players play internationally.

Assuming a linear relationship with this ratio between high and low quality boundary-hitters, an example would be that if a player hits 20% of balls faced for boundaries in the T20 Blast, he’d be expected to hit 18% of balls faced for boundaries in T20 internationals, given better quality bowling and perhaps less batting-friendly conditions in those international matches. 

It should be noted that leagues with a high ratio (such as the Big Bash and Mzansi Super League) aren’t necessarily of higher quality, simply that it’s likely to be considerably tougher to score boundaries in those particular bowler-friendly leagues.

Given that there are a number of uncapped or not recently capped domestic finishers in the T20 Blast who boast very high boundary percentages during the death over phase of mid-20% plus from a fairly solid sample size of data, it is reasonable to suggest that some of these players could have a decent chance of having an impact in this specific role for England in T20 internationals as well given the data above, particularly as several offer a second skillset as well, such as being an allrounder.

Finally, another long-standing problem that the Blast has had with regards to providing suitable players for the national side is the lack of exposure that the competition provides worldwide – an issue which should be resolved somewhat by The Hundred, starting next year. Given both its length and number of matches it would be logistically very difficult to televise every single T20 Blast match worldwide.

On the international stage, not only do players have to perform, they have to do so on TV as well, yet smaller counties in the Blast may not be on live TV more than two or three times a year, with those matches also at the mercy of the notoriously inclement English weather.

It is far from unrealistic to think that some players at smaller counties may have the chance to perform in front of this increased audience just once or twice a year, and variance will be a huge driver of performance in these isolated matches.

In my opinion, this has a two-fold knock-on effect. Firstly, quality performances by English players in the T20 Blast are often unseen by a worldwide audience (including overseas franchise coaches and decision-makers) which potentially could have a negative impact on the off-season earning power of these English players.

My expected data illustrates that there are numerous English players who either rarely or never feature in overseas T20 franchise leagues who are better (or at least no worse) than their overseas positional rivals who get greater TV exposure.

In addition, greater visibility of English players to overseas franchises would see players benefit from exposure against high quality opposition – often the same opposition they’d be likely to face in T20 internationals – as well as working with and benefiting from the ideas of high quality franchise league coaches allowing further up-skilling.

Having as many players developing as possible in these environments would clearly benefit the English national team in the T20 format both in the run-up to next year’s World Cup and beyond.

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