Introduction
Hello all! And yes, I am that bored. We all know that Steve Smith is a batsman (and man) full of eccentricities and quirks. His leaves, fidgets and unorthodox technique has attracted much attention, but so has his obsession with batting away from the game. His shadow-batting and visualisation is nothing less than glorious, but it comes at a price, sleep. Smith told Sky Sports before the start of the 2019 Ashes that he averages 15-20 hours sleep per test match, across the 5 days. So, lets average that to 17.5 hours throughout the test, 3.5 per day (including the night before the test).
The sleep foundation says, as do many institutions, that adults should get 7-9 hours sleep per night, so let's call that 8. Let's take a look at how many hours of sleep smith is "behind" the average recommendation, per day:
| Day | Recommended sleep | Smith's sleep | Hours in the red |
|---|---|---|---|
| Day 1 | 8.0 | 3.5 | 4.5 |
| Day 2 | 16.0 | 7.0 | 9.0 |
| Day 3 | 24.0 | 10.5 | 13.5 |
| Day 4 | 32.0 | 14.0 | 18.0 |
| Day 5 | 40.0 | 17.5 | 22.5 |
Steve Smith, and the fab 4
To even things out, I will only be looking at Smith's numbers since he returned to the test team as a specialist batsmen (the Border Gavaskar trophy of 2013). In other posts, this would be seen as cherry picking because his stats are, obviously, a lot more impressive since then, however here we are not measuring how "good" batsmen are, so to make it fair on Smith the bastman, I've elected to do just that. So, how much does Steve Smith's record vary across innings?
| Player | Inn1 | Inn2 | Inn3 | Inn4 | BattingAve |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SPD Smith | 99.08 | 61.14 | 46.89 | 30.73 | 64.01 |
Wow! Look at that decline. Averaging 100 in the first innings, down to a measly 30 in the fourth. But let's put them into context; compare them to "similar" batsmen. Innings averages of all 4 batsmen to average 60+ in tests (minimum 40 innings):
| Player | Inn1 | Inn2 | Inn3 | Inn4 | BattingAve |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SPD Smith | 99.08 | 61.14 | 46.89 | 30.73 | 64.01 |
| RG Pollock | 56.71 | 76.88 | 48.30 | 142.00 | 60.97 |
| GA Headley | 84.90 | 40.62 | 47.42 | 89.00 | 60.83 |
| H Sutcliffe | 61.58 | 56.88 | 74.75 | 53.66 | 60.73 |
Pollock's 4th innings average is helped by having 3 innings and 2 not outs there, but you can see that, while averages vary a little among other batsmen, none have such drastic changes, and none have such a clear pattern.
Analysis of fab 4:
| Player | Inn1 | Inn2 | Inn3 | Inn4 | BattingAve |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SPD Smith | 99.08 | 61.14 | 46.89 | 30.73 | 64.01 |
| V Kohli | 53.18 | 74.85 | 34.69 | 49.77 | 53.41 |
| KS Williamson | 47.07 | 66.27 | 47.56 | 49.14 | 52.90 |
| JE Root | 47.80 | 58.05 | 46.77 | 35.26 | 47.99 |
Again, a little bit of deviation there, mainly with Kohli, but no such clear pattern. Smith vs "the big 4" of the 2000s:
| Player | Inn1 | Inn2 | Inn3 | Inn4 | BattingAve |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SPD Smith | 99.08 | 61.14 | 46.89 | 30.73 | 64.01 |
| JH Kallis | 56.80 | 53.07 | 65.26 | 41.62 | 55.37 |
| SR Tendulkar | 65.97 | 55.26 | 46.81 | 36.93 | 53.78 |
| BC Lara | 70.17 | 59.01 | 40.42 | 35.12 | 52.88 |
| RT Ponting | 61.39 | 52.92 | 38.54 | 50.41 | 51.85 |
Aha! So we've found two other decliners in Tendulkar and Lara. From what I can find, Lara had no sleeping problems at all, and Tendulkar only complained of insomnia when he had injury, which would certainly affect his record, but a 30 year career would level most of those affects out.
Measurements: The Coefficient of Variation
It's all well and good to look at these numbers and know what they mean, but is there a metric we can use to analyse players' consistency across innings? Yes! When looking at means and standard deviations, a metric that can be used is the "coefficient of variantion", which effectively equalises standard deviation across different scales. It is the relative standard deviation. It's simply calculated by standard deviation over mean.
Having said that, let's look at the relative standard deviation of some batsmen (the higher the figure, the more spread the data is):
| Player | SD | Mean | Rel-SD |
|---|---|---|---|
| SPD Smith | 25.28 | 59.46 | 0.43 |
| BC Lara | 14.10 | 51.18 | 0.28 |
| V Kohli | 14.34 | 53.12 | 0.27 |
| SR Tendulkar | 10.70 | 51.24 | 0.21 |
| JE Root | 8.07 | 46.97 | 0.17 |
| JH Kallis | 8.49 | 54.19 | 0.16 |
| RT Ponting | 8.17 | 50.82 | 0.16 |
| KS Williamson | 7.98 | 52.51 | 0.15 |
So folks, there it is. Proof that Smith is a fair bit of an outlier when looking at consistency across innings of test matches. Is it because of his sleep? I'd say so, if you scroll up and look at the "hours in the red' table.
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