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Hitting Against the Spin: How Cricket Really Works

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Seeing the title of this one, coupled with the appearance on the front cover of scribbled mathematical formulae, I immediately realised its content would probably be outside of my comfort zone. The tethered cat analogy is good, but equally the question from Trevor Bayliss asking 'Do we need to change or get better at what we are already doing? Especially fascinating was how spinners in general, and leg spinners in particular, have thrived in T20 which wasn't at all what was predicted. What are all the different sorts of ways that data can be used to play, coach and manage the game differently, and what happens when you use it in that way?

It's focus is on using economics-style quantitative analysis to explain trends and developments in modern cricket. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. At heart I am a traditionalist, and like my books to fall into predictable genres, such as biographies, autobiographies, tour books and history books. Some of them are counter-intuitive and highlight how the "glorious uncertainties" of the game can now be quantified for the perceptive fans (and team managers).One way of viewing this book is as cricket's A Brief History of Time, a layman's guide to deep complexity, an act of communication as much as one of science.

At a time when women’s cricket is becoming increasingly popular, I would urge the authors to make the pronouns in this book gender neutral, and also to draw insights from the women’s game as well as the men’s game. Also, since the story of sports and evolution is relatable across different kinds of sports (and non-sports fields too), non-cricket fans could end up enjoying this book.

This was really great really interesting and having just seen moneyball the comparisons were really interesting. As someone who is a great fan of cricket and has a large knowledge of cricket it was rare to find a book that challenged my perceptions of how the game operated. I only occasionally found myself confused, and overall it’s a really good read for anyone who’s interested in his cricket is developing.

It raises one particular issue I'd never previously considered but which is obvious once pointed out. Strangely, the book contained only one reference, and a tangential one at that, to Duckworth-Lewis, a subject which I'm sure would have warranted an entire chapter of its own. He held degrees in both English and Economics, and the ability to to articulate the world of one, with the words of the other.Much of this book is, indeed, devoted to the greatest expression of the game (in my view) and there is much to learn here even for a student of the game, or at least someone who takes more than a passing interest. There are duplicated graphs and indeed incomprehensible ones, and ones that do not imply what the authors clearly think they do. They also explore the new world of franchise cricket as well as the rapid evolution of the T20 format. I could have done without the flowery Oppenhemier and Duality chapter and like Trent Boult I will extravagantly leave alone Leamon's cricket novel if I see it. The book explores some genuine curiosities, such as why over half of opening batsmen at Test level are now left-handers, why that's not the case in India and Bangladesh, and why this preponderance has surged in recent years.

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