Are all bowlers spinners?

A tour of the subcontinent leads quickly to talk of spinners. And this winter hasn't bucked the trend. Imagine for a moment that scorers recorded words spoken rather than balls faced. Strip out the non-cricket vocabulary and I'd bet that "spin" "spinner" and "spun" would be chart-toppers at the moment.

So, purely in the interests of linguistic fairness here's how to get spin-happy commentators talking about Chris Woakes this winter...

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Mr Commentator: Can I talk a bit about spin bowling?

You: Well of course you can, that would be lovely. But I assume you won't limit it just to the side spinners and top spinners. I take it we'll be talking about about backspinners too.

Mr Commentator: Er....

You: I mean, all bowlers are spinners really aren't they?

Mr Commentator: Not sure I follow.

You: Well... you can't propel a sphere without spinning it. Try chucking an orange across the living room and you'll see what I mean.

In fact the only people I can think of who get anything like spinless flight are those deliberately eccentric baseball oddities - knuckleballers.

And even they are seen as as bit of a secret society frankly. I think it's something to do with all those years of practicing funny grips to try to perfect something which is impossible to control even when you do get it right.

Mr Commentator: Can we stop talking about baseball please?

You: Of course... Sorry about that. So, just as everyone ends up spinning the ball when they throw it, so all of our "seam" bowlers are in fact backspinners. Just look at them in slow motion and you'll see them rotating the ball backwards as it leaves their hand.

In fact backspin is crucial to a so-called "seam" bowlers craft. Without backspin along the axis of the seam it wouldn't hold its position and the nibble off the seam would be toothless. And as for swing bowling... without backspin we wouldn't even know it was possible. Want a shiny side and a rough side? You need to spin it. Backwards.

And just because a "wrist spinner" is getting 1200 revolutions per minute while a "medium pacer" is getting 300 rpm doesn't mean we can't call them both spinners.

Mr Commentator: Really?

You: Absolutely. The bowlers that we currently refer to as "seamers" are in fact high-speed, low-revolution backspinners while the bowlers we currently refer to as "spinners" are in fact low-speed, high-revolution topspinners and sidespinners.

Mr Commentator: Erm... interesting... Isn't there a difference though between a bowler who imparts spin in order to hold a ball steady and a bowler who imparts spin in order to generate deceptive movement?

You: Well that's the thing about backspin. It holds the seam steady not because the bowler wants a steady flight. It holds the seam steady because that generates a deceptive movement - either seaming off the pitch or swinging in the air. And that's without getting into the whole thing about backspin making the ball hover.

Mr Commentator: Excuse me?

You: That's the other thing about backspin. It delays the point of impact with the ground. Just look at tennis. All those backhand slice shots at Wimbledon floating up to the baseline. Looks like they're happening in slow motion doesn't it? Well that's all because of the Magnus Effect.

Mr Commentator: The Magnus what?

You: Basically, there's an upward motion lifting the ball as it spins. And effectively that's delaying the moment when the ball lands. So a ball with backspin in cricket (i.e. anything bowled by a so-called seam bowler) is going to land slightly ahead of where the batsmen would calculate judged simply on angle of release, speed of delivery and gravity. That's deception wouldn't you say?

Mr Commentator: How does the Magnus thing work again?

You: Hmmm... Well anyway the next time you see a batsman getting yorked maybe you should give a little more credit to the backspin and a little less to the speed.

Mr Commentator: Fine, whatever. Can we talk about spin bowling now?

You: Sorry. Out of time.

Mirpur in the morning

The tour of Bangladesh may not have captured the public imagination but there’s little doubt it’s been a fine spectacle for the cricket lover. The one day matches were dramatic and the Tests have been low scoring and hard fought. As predicted the strong heat and spinning wickets have challenged the English players in new ways and we’ve seen different sides to many familiar figures. 

Ben Stokes has shown a less explosive more introverted kind of aggression by charging bloody-mindedly through short spells in sweltering conditions and Moeen Ali has belied his generally placid manner to lead the spin attack with determination despite some mixed results. 

Then there's the young players in the squad, each of whom are looking in their own way to make the transition from county and one-day success to an uncontested place in the Test team. Today it was the turn of the magnificently named Zafar Ansari who took his first two Test wickets - getting the second with the last ball of the day. Tomorrow its likely that Northamptonshire's Ben Duckett will get a chance to make up for his relative failures so far at the top the order.

If the security requirements had been less restrictive and the Bangladeshi crowds a bit more fair-minded then this might have been the ideal tour for a travelling fan.

As it is, following on early morning radio and catching up on nightly TV highlights has been a welcome bright spot amid a generally grey and cooling October. I’ve been particularly interested by the new players in the squad and the decision to open with Duckett not Hameed. That decision, and the previous one to try Hales in the spot, seems to be the inevitable outworking of the idea that Cook must be partnered by a stroke player rather than someone who accumulates in the same manner as their captain. If Duckett continues to struggle how long before they try Hameed? And (as I’ve written about previously) in the wider scheme of things are either of them really the best openers available?

Potentially the biggest story from this tour lies with the other team though. As I write Bangladesh's batsmen are building a lead which may just put them in a position to win the second Test. It would be only their eighth Test victory in ninety-five attempts and their first ever against a side other than Zimbabwe or a crippled version of the West Indies suffering cash-induced player absences. The consistency of Tamim at the top of the order (averaging 57.75 in a low-scoring series) and the deception of Mehedi with the spinning ball (playing in his first ever series) deserve not just recognition but also reward. 

One thing we can say for certain is that if Bangladesh do win then the celebrations are likely to light up the country. And although I'd welcome an England fightback it's hard not to feel the historic attraction of a win for the home team. If it happens it could even mark the moment when, like so many new Test nations before them, Bangladesh turn from whipping boys into something far more competitive and feared. That prospect only adds strength to an already potent brew. For my part I'll be tuning in tomorrow with a strong brew of my own to find out which way it swings. Sher-e-Bangla stadium has never felt closer. 

Picking Hameed

The season is over  - ended in fine style by Middlesex at Lords. The next event on the English cricket fan's horizon is the Bangladesh tour. One of the really exciting things about that tour will be watching how Haseeb Hameed fares. He has been announced as part of the squad and will almost certainly open alongside Cook.

The case for Hameed's selection grew steadily over the summer. Evidence of his fine batting accumulated run by run and the expectation of fans was pumped up superlative by superlative in newspapers and commentary boxes around the country. England have selected a gifted teenager to open the batting. What could be more exciting?

But here's my question... how did they actually pick Hameed? Because it seems very odd to me that they overlooked openers who scored more and averaged more. I hope it turns out well for Hameed and for England but I'm not convinced by the decision and I think that looking at the process of how it happened tells us a lot of interesting things about English cricket.

The hype

Hameed's selection was announced in early September and there swiftly followed a hot blast of cricket press attention. If you live in cricket world then you won't have been able to ignore it (although it probably hasn't made much of a dent if you don't). Sitting back and reviewing some of the things said in the press it's hard not to see them as hype.

First of all there was the background-to-greatness stuff like the Telegraph telling us that Hameed was a "once in a decade" batsman who grew up practising in his living room with his Dad throwing balls from the sofa - as if his end of career biography was already being written.

Then there was the Guardian who opened their report of the selection by quoting Mike Newell, England selector and Notts supremo, saying that Hameed was born to open in Test matches.

Others compared him to Mike Atherton (another Lancastrian opener) and almost everyone has pointed out how rare it is for England to pick a teenager - allowing more comparisons, this time to Brian Close. Probably my favourite bit of hyperbole though came from ESPN Cricinfo.

On their influential website Paul Edwards penned a piece which was titled "A Chateau Lafite cricketer in a wine-box world". The article wasted no time in getting very emotional "Watching Haseeb Hameed bat is to be reminded of one's innocence and Blake's 'echoing green'"... wrote Edwards and he went on to explain why "...because for all the technique, the coaching, the selection of shot, there is in his play a palimpsest of his childhood."

Leaving aside the fact that it's a prime candidate for Pseuds Corner, Edwards' piece is a classic example of the hype that has gathered around Hameed. A Chateau Lafite cricketer? Hameed hasn't played a single international game and his career consists of only a season and a half of county cricket. Yet he's described as if he was already a legend of the game. It all seems to amount to praise for acts that are yet to be accomplished.

If he had averaged 90 for Lancashire this season then perhaps it would make sense. But he didn't. He averaged 49.92. It's good but it's not the best out there, not for openers and not by a long shot and that includes England qualified players.

The numbers

Hameed for his part has come across as modest and very clearly focussed on his own game and can't be blamed for the over-heated opinions of others. And yet the hype has come thick and fast. So why? Why is there such a weight of expectation around him?

Because if you're looking for an opening batsman to replace Hales, then why not the ones who are actually averaging the most this year? Why not Keaton Jennings from Durham or Nick Gubbins from Middlesex? What have they done wrong?

They both averaged more and scored more runs in the aggregate. Jennings averaged 64.5 (1548 runs in total) and Gubbins averaged 61.26 (1409 runs in total). They're both a long way ahead of Hameed who averaged 49.92 across a total of 1198 Championship runs.

And when I say a long way ahead I mean it. Jennings' average is 29% higher - Gubbins' 26% higher. These don't seem like statistics you can just wave away.

Red ink inflation?

Maybe the reason for the Hameed selection lies in the fact that averages aren't everything and that over the course of a season averages can be inflated and misconstrued.  So let's have a look at that....

One of the things that can really inflate an average is the not outs column - red ink inflation. It happens all the time. A batsman gets lucky with a series of not outs and finds his average pleasantly padded out. So what about not outs for Hameed, Jennings and Gubbins - who comes out on top?

Actually the red ink inflation argument doesn't help Hameed at all. Jennings and Gubbins haven't had any more not outs than he has. In fact Gubbins has had two fewer. And a more sophisticated adjustment for not outs doesn't change the picture either...

If you wanted to adjust for red ink inflation, here's what you might do. Count all the innings as statistical "outs" even if the batsman was in fact not out. Then all you'd need to do is adjust for the unfairness of a batsman with a high average getting left stranded not out on a low score. And you could do this fairly simply by rounding up his below average not out scores to be the same as his average.

This way 200 not out becomes 200 and out. And 3 not out for a player averaging 42 becomes 42 and out. It's a bit like the map projection in geography that distorts shape in order to be true to size - this method distorts the runs total in order to be true to the "actual" average.

So what happens when you do that? Well Hameed's average drops by 5.55, Jennings by 6.63 and Gubbins by 2.55. That still leaves Jennings (adjusted average 57.87) and Gubbins (adjusted average 58.71) well ahead of Hameed (adjusted average 44.37).

Home ground advantage?

So what about home ground advantage? Because this is the other thing that could affect an average - one batsmen playing half his matches on a flat home track while another has to play home matches on bowler friendly wickets.

This season the average team score for completed innings in Hameed's home matches was 314. While the same number for Gubbins' home matches was higher at 345, in Jennings' home matches it was actually slightly lower at 312. Trying to take into account home ground advantage favours Jennings as much as Hameed.

The narrative argument

So why Hameed? What is it? Because it clearly isn't the statistical evidence. 

Well if you're being cynical you'd say it's a narrative thing. he's just one of a group of talented opening batsmen but what marks him out is a narrative that's been constructed around him. Not one that he's constructed himself but a construction nonetheless.

The building blocks are simple enough. He's very young. He's come up from the Lancashire leagues and scored runs all along the line. And of course he's a British Asian player at a time when not enough of them are breaking through and when a lot of people suspect that more could be done and that high profile role models would help enormously.

That narrative is only helped by the fact that when you see Hameed interviewed or look at his Twitter feed he comes across as humble, grateful and mature for his age.

Passing the eyeball test

So maybe it's narrative. But if you don't buy that there's another fairly obvious reason for his selection. Simply put, the people who have seen him play in the flesh have "seen something". They've judged his technique and temperament to be better than that of Jennings or Gubbins or any other county opening batsman qualified to play for England.

And that's interesting because it's probably what the selectors have done here - made eyeball judgements and listened to the eyeball judgements of others. All of which has helped them to understand that his technique and temperament are better.... except there's a problem.

If Hameed's technique and temperament are better than Jennings' or Gubbins' then why doesn't he average more than they do? If he's a better player why doesn't he play better?

Because the problem with judging his technique and his temperament is that that's all subjective. I mean what is a good technique? Presumably the best technique is the one that scores runs and doesn't get out. And what is a good temperament? Well again presumably it's one that helps you to score runs and not get out. This year Hameed has been very good at those things but he hasn't been quite as good at it as Jennings or Gubbins and that's clearly what the stats tell you.

Picking on a hunch

So I'm struggling to understand the Hameed selection. That may seem a bit harsh given that he's had such an excellent season and shown a lot of talent. But it isn't really about being anti-Hameed or pro-Jennings or anything else. It's about being pro understanding selection. It's about being pro picking players based on performance and anti picking on hunches.

Because I think picking on hunches takes you into dangerous territory. Unconscious bias and ingrained assumptions come into play and you miss good players even though they're performing well right in front of your eyes.

I'm assuming here that the selectors don't have access to a giant secret database of stats (and maybe they do and their analysis is a lot more sophisticated than what I'm able to do at home with a simple spreadsheet). But if we assume that they don't have a secret statistical weapon then they have picked Hameed on entirely subjective criteria - they have picked him based on a hunch.

Is that unfair given how good his numbers are? Well, if the numbers tell you that Jennings and Gubbins are better opening batsmen and you still pick Hameed then it's a hunch. And at a time when so many other sports are advancing their understanding of the game through statistics it makes me scratch my head.

Not trusting the data

Frankly it looks as if the selectors don't trust county cricket to be a good barometer of success. And that might not come as a surprise to a lot of cricket fans. After all the summer started with the chairman of the ECB suggesting that one of the key competitions was "mediocre" and ended with a £1.5 million promise to each county as long as they sanctioned a competition that wouldn't include them (city-based cricket).

Of course the ECB and the selectors will feel that their attitude is born out by the history of player selection. They would point to players picked for England based on county stats who underperformed and players picked on a hunch who went on to do great things.

They would point to Hick who was a giant for his county and a minnow for his country, and they would point to Trescothick who was picked on Duncan Fletcher's hunch and went on to score plenty.

So I can understand why selectors are so willing to pick on subjective factors rather than hard stats. But frankly it's a mindset that doesn't really convince me. I think it leads to players being picked on style rather than substance. And I think that over time it corrodes the link between the county game and Test cricket.

Sometimes it even seems to get to the point where good players are overlooked because of good county careers. Sometimes it's as if there's something cheap about scoring runs or taking wickets time after time, day after day in the country's premier competition. As if this somehow makes you less fit to play for England in the long term.

For a young player wanting to play Test cricket it's not impossible to imagine that the optimal strategy to getting picked would be to get into England youth and Lions teams nice and early and spend as little time as possible actually playing for their county. All of which is a huge shame. 

Nevertheless it seems to be happening and I think we're starting to see the results with some of the players getting picked for the Test team. I think James Vince was a good example of this over the summer. He has a long way to go as a player and may come back to have a successful Test career but frankly the fact that he was picked to play for England following a season in which he averaged 28.58 while players like James Hildreth who averaged 53.46 (only Bairstow, Bell and Voges averaged more) was ignored is telling.

Rounding up

So there we are - I hope the hunch of picking Hameed turns out to be justified and that he scores gallons of runs in Bangladesh and India this winter. Who knows he may even justify the Chateau Lafite comparison. In which case I'll drink a bottle to celebrate.

Nevertheless in the absurd parallel universe where I select the England team Hameed would never have been on the plane. I'd have taken Jennings with Gubbins as a reserve. More important than my fantasy selection though is the question of how these decisions are actually made. The next time an England selector picks someone because of technique and temperament instead of numbers I want to know why.

Why talking about strokes makes us worse at batting

"Talent is an interesting word in batting. People think about how well you hit a cover drive or how far you hit the ball. For me it was about making good decisions."

Chris Rogers

What does “cover drive” mean to you? To anyone outside the game it’s probably a mystery. To cricket fans it’s obvious. We don’t even have to think about it. Three syllables are enough. We hear them and into our heads pops a figure in motion attacking a wide full ball on the off side. The imaginary figure and the imaginary ball are more or less the same for all of us.  

And it's like that with every cricket stroke. The name short circuits to the image. It’s efficient. Our imagination is spared the work of having to invent a picture from scratch.

The names of strokes are so obvious in their meaning that we forget that each one of them is a label for a combination of complex movements. And we forget that those movements are difficult to describe otherwise. If we were cultural historians we’d say that phrases like “cover drive” represent a visual archetype.  But we’re not so we just call them textbook strokes.

And textbook strokes are special. A player can bat all day but only the textbook stroke will draw universal praise. When a textbook stroke takes place – and this can be in the middle of a stream of deeply impressive non-textbook batting – it is as if two lenses suddenly snap into focus. Our vision of the game we were taught and our vision of the game as we see it are triumphantly reunited.

This occasional coming together of archetype and reality is one of the many reasons that cricket is so good to watch. But I also think it’s a trap. And I think it’s a trap that starts with short hand labels and ends with young players being taught to limit their options of response.

Until relatively recently in cricket’s history there were more or less twelve textbook strokes and they went like this.

Pull

Hook

Cut

Late cut

Off-drive

On-drive

Straight drive

Cover drive

Square drive

Leg glance

Forward defensive

Backward defensive

For a while that was more or less it.  Then, with the renewal of professional one-day cricket, we got a few more:

Sweep

Reverse sweep

Slog sweep

Scoop

Which gives us about sixteen recognised strokes. And those of us who talk about the game use the names of those strokes all the time. In fact we are exceptional at combining them with skill and variation to describe every batting performance we see, from the one ball duck to the marathon double century. Now and again we’ll use a few catch-alls to paper over the cracks (words like ‘nudge’, ‘nurdle’ and ‘hoik’) but by and large we stick to the list of strokes.

But why? How useful are these definitions?

What’s the exact height at which a pull becomes a hook?

How wide does a ball have to be before it ceases to be an off drive and becomes a cover drive?

How much wider before it becomes a cut?

Start asking questions and you start to find grey areas. One stroke blurs into another and most of what a batting player does isn’t textbook at all. To be accurate in how we describe batting either we expand our lexicon of strokes to number in the hundreds (possibly thousands) or we leave the language of strokes altogether.

Just imagine for a moment that we took that second option. Imagine we stopped talking about strokes. What would we talk about then?

Well we might talk about batting in a more fundamental sense. We might talk about balance, footwork, watchfulness and speed of hand. And we might look at each delivery in isolation and ask whether those fundamentals had been applied in a way that was skilful or not. Then we might aggregate those deliveries and describe the player in terms of their fundamental choices. Finally we might talk about how those choices vary and how each player finds different batting solutions according to their temperament and style. How they show us their character in how they bat.

This would be an interesting way to talk about the game and it isn’t impossible. In fact it already happens. You’ll hear it now and again on TV and radio coverage every time the broadcaster makes room for 'specialist analysis'. It tends to the exception rather than the norm however. After all there isn’t much time between balls and frankly talking about fundamentals doesn’t convey meaning half as quickly as saying “he played a pull shot in front of square”.

The language of strokes persists. It has to. We couldn’t talk about the game if it didn’t. Cricket strokes are the way we understand batting – they are the minimum unit of meaning.

So we carry on using the language of strokes. And as we do we tend not to notice the damaging effect it has on the way we think about the game. Because the real problem is not that we use the names of strokes, but that by doing so we let strokes become the means through which we teach the game.

Sixteen shots seems to offer a golden opportunity to anyone learning to bat. Learn sixteen repeatable actions and you can cope with anything. Master them and you won’t just cope you’ll thrive. You’ll have a watertight defence and score runs for fun. Of course good coaches and good players know instinctively that it isn’t true but nevertheless that’s often what we’re taught when we come to batting for the first time. Just take a look at any number of coaching manuals for beginners starting with the MCC’s famous manual.

That’s a problem because the reality of the game is that no two balls ever land in the same place in the same way. No two surfaces are the same. No two atmospheric conditions are identical. Every ball is different. Every delivery a batting player faces is subtly unique.

So why is it that at cricket practice around the world you see children being instructed to play 'cover drives' and 'pulls' as if those categories were anything other than convenient labels?

Keep watching and sooner or later you’ll see a strange sight – young players with bats practising repeatable, mechanical strokes over and over again in order to 'groove' their movements while nearby young players with balls are practising how to avoid ever pitching in a place where they can be driven, pulled or anything else that falls into a neat category.

When the two groups are put together the results can be confusing for the players with bats. They discover (to their surprise) that carbon copy cover drives and steady hip high pull shots are less common than they have been led to believe.

As the bowlers get better so the problem grows. The best players, or those with access to the best coaches, grow out of this problem. But how many skilled, innovative, artistic batsmen do we lose along the way?

As Graeme Fowler has described it, the half-second between the bowler’s release and the ball arriving is the time in which every player makes an artistic choice in how they respond – it is a performance and they make it their own. If we teach players to limit themselves to set responses then those moments of choice, of performance, simply disappear.

And I don’t think one-day cricket brings them back either. The short form of the game brings batting innovation but in a very clear direction. Aggression is the order of the day and responses driven by the imperative of the strike rate too often wind up becoming premeditated.

What luck the truly versatile batsman? The one who responds uniquely to unique variations and who never falls back on categories of stroke or pre-meditated hitting? They exist of course. We talk about them endlessly because their brilliance sticks in our mind. But there are precious few of them around. Perhaps the language of strokes, the very way we describe the game, has something to do with it.

One final illustration of the problem I’ve been describing… five years ago I completed a coaching course. I still have the coaching pamphlet I received in return for paying my fee. It is front of me now as I type. In it there are small laminated cards showing batting exercises for 10-12 year olds. Each one is a drill - repeatable, machine-like and consistent. Next to each exercise is a diagram showing the stroke to be practised. I have just counted up the strokes in that pamphlet. There are six. At the end there is a note suggesting how you can coach the other strokes as the players grow older. At the front of the pamphlet is the name of the organisation that produced it – England and Wales Cricket Board. Six strokes? Sixteen strokes? I certainly hope not.