Introduction
Under Trevor Bayliss, a common criticism of England's Test team was that the batsmen played too aggressively rather than demonstrating patience and waiting for the bad balls to hit. The appointment of the new England head coach, Chris Silverwood, appears to have marked a shift from Bayliss in that under his leadership, our Test batting has been a little more cautious (under Bayliss, the aggregate strike rate of our Top Six was 49.98, whereas under Silverwood so far, it has been 48.05). This in and of itself is not a bad thing; in fact, it is how Test cricket is supposed to be played.
However, some England fans appear to be under the impression that the 'correct' way to play Test cricket is to block as many balls as possible unless you receive a full toss which you can hit for four; if you're really lucky, you might be able to run a single. Of course, this is an exaggeration of sorts on my part, but the general sentiment is not too far off. To be clear, I can certainly understand the mentality: After all, we have had four years of batting with INTENTTM under Bayliss and while that strategy has worked wonders for the ODI team, it has not been nearly as successful in Tests.
That being said, there have been times when that sentiment has rubbed me the wrong way, and there are two examples in particular which I want to highlight.
- Opening batsman Dom Sibley has come under criticism from some pundits for his rather slow rate of scoring. To some degree, openers ought to prioritise survival over run-scoring, at least at the start of their innings, but the way in which some England fans have responded to this criticism has been to accuse said pundits of wanting Sibley to start attempting to slog every ball for six, even though this is clearly not what those pundits are asking him to do.
- Some time around the Ashes, back when I was a mere lurker, a user brought up the possibility of bringing Ollie Pope, who averages around 60 in domestic FC cricket, into the England Test side. Said user made an offhand remark about how Pope could bat aggressively, and another user decided that this was justification to leave him out of the team as England had already tried and failed with aggressive middle-order batsmen.
In both these situations, the perception among some fans appears to be that the only way to bat positively in Test cricket is to smack boundaries; if you are not blocking every ball then you must be batting as if it is a T20. This couldn't be further from the truth, however. Do people seriously believe that some of the best batsmen of the modern era (Ponting, Tendulkar, Lara, Smith, Kohli, Sangakkara) achieved their success through negative defensive batting?
It is easy enough to look at strike rate alone, but in Tests, success is not measured by how quickly you can score runs but rather how many runs you can score, so most people do not pay much attention to it. However, in my view, strike rotation is an important yet undervalued skill, especially in Tests where even though attempting to score boundaries can indeed be too risky, this doesn't change the fact that you can't win games without scoring runs. I would argue that any good Test batsman should at least be competent at rotating strike and running those cheeky ones and twos, though the stats may end up proving me wrong.
To this end, I would like to analyse England's Test batsmen of the past ten years (plus some past greats) using a metric I call 'rotation rate'. This is essentially just the strike rate of a particular batsman, but only after all boundaries are discounted. For example, if a batsman scores 30(50) having hit two fours and a six, their strike rate will be (30/50)*100 (i.e. 60.00) while their rotation rate will be (16/47)*100 (i.e. 34.04). In other words, through running alone, that particular batsman will be expected to score 34 runs for every 100 deliveries.
In addition to that, I'll be calculating what I call 'boundary reliance', which is simply strike rate divided by rotation rate. Yes, it really is that crude. Basically, a higher value implies that the batsman is forced to (or chooses to) score more of their runs from boundaries, whereas a lower value implies, well, the opposite. With that out of the way, it's time to begin the analysis.
Aggregate Stats
As always, I am going to start with the aggregate stats of all Test batsmen (which for the purposes of this analysis I am defining as any player batting in the Top Six). However, instead of just running Statsguru on every single batsman ever, I am going to restrict it to the past ten years, for no other reason apart from the fact that I am mainly interested in seeing how modern English batsmen fare when compared to modern standards (though I will also be comparing them to past English batsmen), and ten years is modern enough for me. In addition, I will be breaking down the stats by batting position in recognition of the slightly different demands that each particular position places on its occupant.
Here is the aggregate data for all non-English batsmen for the past ten years:
| Batting position | Batting average | Strike rate | Rotation rate | Boundary reliance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Openers (#1 and #2) | 34.66 | 50.59 | 26.24 | 1.93 |
| Top order (#3 and #4) | 40.42 | 50.43 | 27.65 | 1.82 |
| Middle order (#5 and #6) | 38.42 | 50.95 | 27.11 | 1.88 |
It would not appear from this data that top-order and middle-order batsmen are significantly better at rotating strike than opening batsmen and, perhaps surprisingly, top-order batsmen score slightly slower than openers (but are also less reliant on boundaries). However, this is for all Test batsmen, including ones who are frankly not that good. Let's see what happens when we restrict our search to only those who average 40+ with a minimum of twenty innings in the past ten years:
| Batting position | Strike rate | Rotation rate | Boundary reliance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Openers | 58.53 | 31.05 | 1.89 |
| Top order | 51.86 | 29.31 | 1.77 |
| Middle order | 51.42 | 27.88 | 1.84 |
I double-checked and yes, openers who average 40+ tend to strike at nearly 60. Great openers are very good at rotating strike when compared to average openers, and are also slightly less reliant on scoring boundaries (though still more reliant than other batsmen). In other words, the best openers do not simply sit back and allow the bowlers to place them under pressure, but rather they rotate strike relatively often. The rotation rate then decreases as you move down the order.
As for the middle order, it might be the case that batting with the tail makes farming the strike more desirable than rotating the strike, which would explain why the rotation rate is relatively low. It might also simply be the case that hitting boundaries is less risky as the innings continues, so batsmen further down the order might be more open to the idea of relying on boundaries for most of their runs. Even then, though, the boundary reliance for the middle order is not as high as it is for openers.
In any case, the best batsmen do a better job at rotating the strike than the average batsman regardless of position, and are also less reliant on scoring boundaries than the average batsman (boundaries generally being more risky than running), which should hopefully prove my point regarding why it is such an important skill to master.
England Openers
Finally, we can move on to England! Let's start with a position which England struggled to fill throughout most of the 2010s: The openers. It's fair to say that we've been through a lot of openers since 2010, initially due to the retirement of Andrew Strauss and later due to the retirement of Alastair Cook, but the position has also been a bit of a revolving door for England, with the result that only six openers (Burns, Cook, Hales, Jennings, Stoneman and Strauss) have batted twenty innings or more for England since 2010. Sibley barely misses out having batted nineteen innings; since he only missed the cutoff by a whisker and since he's one of the two main reasons I made this post in the first place, I'll stick him in there.
I'll also include every England opener to have averaged 40+ in the past thirty years (aside from Cook and Strauss, there's also Gooch, Stewart, Trescothick and Vaughan) and I'll include Boycott and Tavaré just to see how low they rank in terms of rotating strike.
Before I present the stats, there are three caveats. Firstly, I am only considering each batsman's stats as opener. Secondly, I am considering overall career stats, not just the stats since 2010. Finally, for Boycott, consistent ball-by-ball data for his innings is not available prior to March 1968, so the early years of his Test career are unfortunately cut off from this data set.
| Player | Batting average | Strike rate | Rotation rate | Boundary reliance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Graham Gooch | 43.88 | 49.96 | 26.83 | 1.86 |
| Alastair Cook | 44.86 | 46.93 | 26.45 | 1.77 |
| Andrew Strauss | 40.85 | 49.03 | 26.01 | 1.89 |
| Michael Vaughan | 45.48 | 54.13 | 25.41 | 2.13 |
| Rory Burns | 32.44 | 44.83 | 24.35 | 1.84 |
| Keaton Jennings | 25.16 | 42.32 | 23.98 | 1.76 |
| Alec Stewart | 44.64 | 49.01 | 23.70 | 2.07 |
| Marcus Trescothick | 43.78 | 54.51 | 22.91 | 2.38 |
| Mark Stoneman | 27.68 | 44.27 | 22.84 | 1.94 |
| Geoffrey Boycott | 49.68 | 35.18 | 22.46 | 1.57 |
| Alex Hales | 27.28 | 43.84 | 20.13 | 2.18 |
| Dom Sibley | 38.11 | 36.68 | 19.91 | 1.84 |
| Chris Tavaré | 31.16 | 29.57 | 18.60 | 1.59 |
Now let's see what we can conclude from this data.
- Cook and Gooch (arguably England's two best openers of the last thirty years) are the only batsmen on the list who are better at rotating strike than the average opener from the past ten years
- Cook was notably less reliant on boundaries to score runs than the average Test opener
- Strauss was a fairly typical opening batsman by these metrics
- Burns, though a bit more defensive than Strauss, plays in a similar style; I'll note that Burns doesn't receive nearly as much criticism from pundits for scoring slowly as Sibley does
- Some England fans have compared Sibley's defensive batting style to Cook's, but this notion that Cook was some glorified nightwatchman who always took forever to score a single run is clearly not backed up by the stats
- Jennings gets a lot of stick from England fans, and it's true that his batting average is appalling, but one thing you can't criticise him for is playing too aggressively; if anything, perhaps he bats too defensively for his own good, and a more positive outlook on his part might relieve the pressure somewhat
- Vaughan, Stewart and Trescothick are somewhat odd in that they didn't rotate strike that often, but all of them batted positively nonetheless; it just so happened that those batsman (especially Trescothick) relied on their ability to hit boundaries to apply pressure to the fielding side, and to be fair, that strategy worked for them
- That particular strategy didn't work for Stoneman, however; I feel as if he'd have been better off rotating strike more often, as his boundary-hitting clearly wasn't up to scratch
- Let's dispel with this myth that Hales failed as a Test opener because he was too aggressive; if anything, he remained trapped within his crease for almost as long as Sibley, and the subsequent reliance on scoring boundaries clearly didn't help him one bit
- Boycott and Tavaré (especially the former) both had the mental fortitude not to get drawn into big shots despite the fact that both struggled to score runs at a brisk pace
- Boycott had a much better average than Sibley does at a strike rate that was only slightly lower and a rotation rate that was actually higher, yet even he was criticised for scoring too slowly; it should thus not surprise anyone that Sibley cops the same criticisms
It is true that Sibley's done a good job so far, but looking at this table, I have to say that I see where the pundits are coming from. The only English openers in recent times to stay in their crease for as long as Sibley does are Hales and Stoneman, and both of them were failures. Sibley is, in fact, even worse than those two when it comes to rotating strike, and his resolve not to chase boundaries is not nearly as impenetrable as Boycott's or Tavaré's (though thankfully stronger than Hales'). No English Test opener since Boycott has succeeded while playing in the manner which Sibley has so far, and the fear that Sibley places too much pressure on himself by not taking singles is understandable. This does not mean that Sibley will fail (he could very well end up being a modern Boycott); I am just saying that if he does succeed, he will be the exception, not the norm.
Top-Order Batsmen
Much has been made of England's problems finding an opener during the 2010s, but our top order (i.e. #3 and #4) for that period has basically been Joe Root plus whoever Ed Smith feels might do a job at any particular time. Whether or not the emergence of Zak Crawley has finally solved that issue remains to be seen, but in any case, let us compare how well our top-order batsmen have done at rotating strike. Six batsmen have batted twenty innings or more at positions #3 or #4 for England in Test matches in the past ten years: Ballance, Bell, Denly, Pietersen, Root and Trott.
In addition, I'm including any top-order batsman who averages 40+ for England with a minimum of twenty innings in those particular positions in the last thirty years...and the only one who fits that bill who hasn't already qualified is Thorpe. Wow, I didn't realise just how bad the 1990s were for English top-order batsmen. Also, I will once again be including Chris Tavaré just because I'm curious to see how low he features.
| Player | Batting average | Strike rate | Rotation rate | Boundary reliance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Joe Root | 44.73 | 55.46 | 31.27 | 1.77 |
| Kevin Pietersen | 48.95 | 62.48 | 30.91 | 2.02 |
| Jonathan Trott | 46.89 | 47.40 | 26.46 | 1.79 |
| Graham Thorpe | 41.88 | 46.45 | 26.01 | 1.79 |
| Ian Bell | 35.54 | 48.29 | 25.36 | 1.90 |
| Gary Ballance | 41.22 | 48.13 | 22.97 | 2.10 |
| Chris Tavaré | 34.30 | 31.95 | 19.47 | 1.64 |
| Joe Denly | 29.04 | 39.39 | 18.07 | 2.18 |
Time for some more observations.
- It genuinely makes me laugh that Denly played more negatively than even Chris flipping Tavaré; it's no wonder that he tried the pull shot so often or else he wouldn't have been able to score a single run!
- Jokes aside, as much as I enjoyed seeing Dendulkar occupy the crease while scoring denturies left, right and centre, his style of batting just left him under far too much pressure to score runs some other way, thus his habit of attempting risky boundaries (this is probably why he had a tendency to get himself dismissed cheaply once he had faced around a hundred balls)
- Root and KP, two of England's best in recent years, feature at the top of the list, thus proving that it is possible to bat positively in Tests without getting yourself dismissed for playing stupid shots
- KP supplemented his ability to rotate strike with superb boundary-hitting skills, whereas Root relies more on running quick singles
- Trott and Thorpe were slightly more defensive than top-order batsmen have generally been for the past ten years, but in Trott's case at least, it didn't do him any harm
- Bell's cover drives were majestic, but as can be seen by his stats, relying on those alone cannot ensure success near the top of the order
- Ballance loved playing on the backfoot to hit bowlers for fours, but not only did this leave him incredibly vulnerable to Test match bowling, it also appears to have limited his ability to find the quick singles to rotate strike effectively
That's about all I have to say regarding the top order, so now it's time to move on to the final category: The middle order.
Middle-Order Batsmen
There are seven batsmen who have batted at #5 or #6 in at least twenty innings for England in the past ten years: Moeen, Bairstow, Bell, Buttler, Malan, Root and Stokes. I'm going to include Pope solely because, along with Sibley, he's a big reason why I wanted to post this analysis in the first place; I must caution you, however, that he's only batted in fourteen innings at #5 or #6, so it's not quite as big of a sample size as I would ideally want.
In terms of England middle-order batsmen who average 40+ with a minimum of twenty innings in the past thirty years, in addition to the above, we have Collingwood, Crawley (John, not Zak), Smith (Robin, not Steve) and Thorpe. No Chris Tavaré this time, unfortunately, so everyone has a shot at claiming the 'Most Negative Batting' title.
| Player | Batting average | Strike rate | Rotation rate | Boundary reliance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Joe Root | 63.68 | 55.63 | 33.01 | 1.69 |
| Kevin Pietersen | 42.16 | 58.42 | 30.47 | 1.92 |
| Jos Buttler | 43.08 | 56.12 | 29.71 | 1.89 |
| Ollie Pope | 46.09 | 56.90 | 28.76 | 1.98 |
| Jonny Bairstow | 32.88 | 51.83 | 27.92 | 1.86 |
| Ian Bell | 52.35 | 50.87 | 26.88 | 1.89 |
| Paul Collingwood | 40.76 | 47.20 | 26.39 | 1.79 |
| Graham Thorpe | 46.51 | 45.75 | 25.58 | 1.79 |
| Ben Stokes | 40.47 | 58.14 | 25.31 | 2.30 |
| Robin Smith | 50.36 | 46.52 | 25.11 | 1.85 |
| John Crawley | 42.57 | 41.11 | 24.69 | 1.67 |
| Moeen Ali | 24.17 | 41.12 | 21.50 | 1.91 |
| Dawid Malan | 32.65 | 41.77 | 19.76 | 2.11 |
Now let's analyse all that data.
- We saw previously that a good rotation rate is not necessary for a good middle-order batsman, and these stats seem to bear that out
- Root and KP are once again the frontrunners in this category (Root especially loves to rotate strike when batting in the middle order and is far less reliant on boundaries than most middle-order batsmen)
- Buttler does a pretty good job at rotating strike when batting at #5 or #6 (although Foakes' rotation rate would be 29.72)
- Pope is adept at rotating strike, but not to the degree that I thought he was, and he is very reliant on boundaries as a result; that being said, he is fluent enough with the bat that this hasn't posed a problem for him so far
- Bell played in a similar fashion regardless of where he batted but his strategy of 'cover drive and inshallah' clearly worked much better in the middle order than in the top order
- Pope has often been compared to Bell, but in the middle order, the former bats much more positively than the latter
- Bairstow isn't particularly aggressive for a middle-order batsman; his issues at Test level have little to do with his positive mentality and much more to do with the fact that he gets bowled a lot
- Collingwood and Thorpe batted in similar fashions but Thorpe found much more success with it than Collingwood did
- Stokes isn't particularly good at rotating the strike (either that or he's left batting with the tail too often and thus has to farm the strike), which leaves him feeling the need to chase boundaries far too often
- Robin Smith's average is surprisingly high, but he was not out eleven times in forty-four innings which no doubt boosted his batting average; even so, he showed remarkable discipline for a middle-order batsman
- John Crawley was praised for his leg-side game but criticised for not being able to play off-side shots (sound familiar?)
- Crawley was moved up and down the order for England, but his best performances came in the middle order despite his defensive mindset (it should be noted that like Boycott, he is an anomaly in that regard)
- Malan and Moeen are sometimes seen as encapsulating the issues with Trevor Bayliss' attempts to instil a more positive mentality into the Test team, but both batted far more negatively than most middle-order batsmen when it came to rotating strike (Malan had a lower rotation rate than Dom Sibley!), which is probably what forced them to try to play big shots (unsuccessfully, as you can see)
As Smith and Crawley show, it is not impossible to be a good middle-order batsman while staying on strike, and as Stokes shows, it is indeed possible in the middle order to rely largely on boundaries to score runs. The exciting thing about Ollie Pope (and this is going to sound clichéd) is that he likes to look busy at the crease; he feels comfortable both with rotating the strike and with hitting boundaries. If he can continue to play in that fluent manner while still scoring runs on a consistent basis then he will hopefully develop into a very fine middle-order batsman indeed.
Conclusion
One thing I found interesting was that the batsmen who England fans most associate with Trevor Bayliss' 'aggressive' strategy (Hales, Bairstow, Moeen, Malan) tend actually to score slower than the 'proper' Test batsmen (with the exception of Bairstow) and also don't tend to run as often (once again, with the exception of Bairstow); instead, their issue is that they are too reliant on scoring boundaries (for the final time, with the exception of Bairstow) not necessarily because they want to show INTENTTM but rather because they feel that it's the only way they can score runs (which is the main job for any batsman).
As a check, I decided to compare the stats of Top Six batsmen under Bayliss to the stats under Chris Silverwood and to the stats under Andy Flower (who was England head coach from 2009 to 2014):
| Head coach | Batting average | Strike rate | Rotation rate | Boundary reliance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Andy Flower | 40.72 | 48.70 | 25.97 | 1.88 |
| Trevor Bayliss | 33.13 | 49.98 | 26.04 | 1.92 |
| Chris Silverwood | 42.88 | 48.05 | 25.05 | 1.92 |
Hmm. This is awkward. My initial conclusion was going to be that the problem under Bayliss was that we were inept at rotating strike when compared to how we played under Flower and that this was what led to an over-reliance on big shots, which inevitably led to batting collapses. I would then go on to say that under Silverwood, we were not any better at strike rotation despite putting away the big shots and so our batsmen would continue to crumble under pressure and we were left not much better off as a result.
However, looking at that table there...that conclusion is no longer sustainable. Yes, we are worse at rotating strike under Silverwood than we were under Flower, but there was practically no difference in our rotation rate between Flower and Bayliss (if anything, it was higher under Bayliss), nor are we any less reliant on hitting boundaries under Silverwood than we were under Bayliss. Despite these supposed shortcomings under Silverwood (we have gotten worse at rotating strike and we are no less reliant on boundaries to score our runs), our Top Six are not only batting better than they were under Bayliss but they are batting better now than they were under Flower.
What explains this? How has our batting improved despite the fact that our batsmen are inviting even more pressure on themselves at the crease than they were inviting under Flower and Bayliss? Part of it is no doubt the fact that Silverwood is still a recent appointment and that apart from New Zealand (who we were beaten by), we haven't exactly faced strong opposition. Perhaps things will return to normal once we tour India and Australia and get whitewashed as usual.
Then again, that is quite a significant leap between Bayliss and Silverwood, too large to be mere coincidence. Could it really be the case that England batsmen are now more mentally prepared to deal with pressure from the bowling attack than they were before? Under four years of Bayliss, England scored five double centuries in Tests (three from Cook, one from Root and one from Stokes). We've had less than a year under Silverwood and England have already scored two double centuries (Root and Crawley being the batsmen responsible).
Under Flower, we had twenty-one daddy centuries in around four years and nine months at a strike rate of 58.50. Under Bayliss, we had nine daddy centuries in four years and five months at a strike rate of 67.96. Under Silverwood, we have had four daddy centuries in around ten months (that includes a global pandemic) at a strike rate of 54.70. Under Flower, positions #1 to #6 had a balls per dismissal rate of 83.63. Under Bayliss, that figure was 66.29 and under Silverwood, that figure is 89.24.
...
You know, under Silverwood, England batsmen haven't been the best at rotating strike. However, based on what has occurred so far, it seems as if we're doing alright as it is, and if we can improve our strike rotation to what it was previously, there's no reason why the Silverwood era can't be better than the Flower era.
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