Cummins' Form

Some have questioned Cummins' current position in the ICC all time rankings, but it's worth contextualising just how good he has been since his first home summer since his return. I've included numbers for Rabada and Bumrah, the two closest two him in his age group, just as a comparison:

Player	Mat	W	Ave	WPM	Rating
Cummins	18	89*	19.91	4.94*	0.4981*
Bumrah	11	50	22.18	5.54	0.4526
Rabada	15	74	20.48	4.93	0.4908

Noting that this rating at the end is a way of combining both wickets per match and average into one measure (it's the geometric mean of 1/ave and wickets per match, or effectively, the square root of WPM/ave). Anything north of 0.4000 is very high, 0.5000 or higher is ridiculously high. For comparison, here is a table I posted in a recent thread, so the data is only correct as of 27 days ago (players with 300+ W and an average below 28.50):

Player	Mat	W	Ave	WPM	Rating
M Muralitharan (ICC/SL)	133	800	22.73	6.015	0.5145
Sir RJ Hadlee (NZ)	86	431	22.30	5.012	0.4741
MD Marshall (WI)	81	376	20.95	4.642	0.4708
FS Trueman (ENG)	67	307	21.58	4.582	0.4608
DK Lillee (AUS)	70	355	23.92	5.071	0.4604
GD McGrath (AUS)	124	563	21.64	4.540	0.4580
R Ashwin (INDIA)	65	342	25.44	5.262	0.4548
AA Donald (SA)	72	330	22.25	4.583	0.4538
DW Steyn (SA)	93	439	22.95	4.720	0.4535
CEL Ambrose (WI)	98	405	20.99	4.133	0.4437
SK Warne (AUS)	145	708	25.42	4.883	0.4383
Waqar Younis (PAK)	87	373	23.56	4.287	0.4266
Imran Khan (PAK)	88	362	22.81	4.114	0.4246
SM Pollock (SA)	108	421	23.12	3.898	0.4106
Wasim Akram (PAK)	104	414	23.62	3.981	0.4105
HMRKB Herath (SL)	93	433	28.08	4.656	0.4072
CA Walsh (WI)	132	519	24.45	3.932	0.4010
MG Johnson (AUS)	73	313	28.41	4.288	0.3885
JM Anderson (ENG)	148	575	26.94	3.885	0.3798
RGD Willis (ENG)	90	325	25.20	3.611	0.3785
IT Botham (ENG)	102	383	28.40	3.755	0.3636
M Morkel (SA)	86	309	27.67	3.593	0.3604

This is of course only recent form, and many of the above will have had runs of this kind of calibre. The second point with Cummins' though is just how good he has been compared to others in the same matches. Again using Rabada and Bumrah as a comparison, using the same time frame, and breaking averages up into the player, their team's average otherwise and their opponents' average:

Cummins

Player	Ave	Econ	SR
Cummins	19.91	2.76	43.2
Australia	32.44	2.96	65.7
Opposition	32.86	2.96	66.4

Bumrah

Player	Ave	Econ	SR
Bumrah	22.18	2.65	50.1
India	26.89	2.83	56.8
Opposition	28.25	2.90	58.4

Rabada

Player	Ave	Econ	SR
Rabada	20.48	3.28	37.3
South Africa	23.23	3.14	44.3
Opposition	26.62	3.20	49.8

To summarise the three tables:

Player	Ave	Team Ave	%Dif	Peak ICC Rating	Current ICC Rating
Cummins	19.91	32.44	38.6%	914	914
Rabada	20.48	23.23	11.8%	902	851
Bumrah	22.18	26.89	16.4%	711	711

Which puts Cummins' recent form into perspective. Doing this analysis for everyone around those high ratings will likely find similar, and that may well be a useful thing to do. The key point though is that the ICC rankings find players who perform well compared to others in the same matches, and Cummins has done exactly that.

As a side note, contrary to what some have claimed, it's not "easier" to get high ratings early in a career, as old matches fade in significance under their system. If anything, you need a lot of matches behind you to form any kind of base. This is why Bumrah is still in the 700s, though his rating will continue to rise.

submitted by /u/Anothergen
[link] [comments]

from Cricket https://ift.tt/2KQmz8U
via IFTTT