Cricket numbers reveal only so much when using Impact Index

Using Impact Index to interpret stats in modern cricket can propel some historical players and also expose surprising truths about the game, writes Osman Samiuddin.

New stats reveal India cricketer Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi was the best under pressure. Dennis Oulds / Getty Images

For years, the good folks at Impact Index have been preaching a different way of looking at cricket ­statistics.

It is not an easy task. Cricket statistics are like the sport: embedded in tradition, stubbornly refusing to acknowledge that there may be newer, more holistic approaches to measuring a player and ­performances.

Cricket is mostly happy relying on long-trusted measures: batting and bowling averages, strike rates and that is pretty much it.

It always has been that way, a veritable cartel of measurement.

What Impact Index has been saying is that those numbers need a context.

Don Bradman’s superhuman Test batting average of 99.94 means something in isolation, but it could mean a lot more – or less – if the context of the era and circumstances in which he played are factored in.

The Impact Index way is to provide context for everything, from the taking of wickets, or scoring runs, to absorbing pressure, to where, when, against whom and with whom the performances came. The measure is for the impact a player makes, on a match and also within a series or ­tournament.

These are meaningful measurements. In traditional statistics, numbers are blind. A hundred on a road of a pitch in a high-scoring drawn game counts for the same in an average as another on a more difficult track, against a stronger attack, which leads a side to a narrow win.

Sure, we appreciate them in different ways and we know which one is more important. Impact Index quantify that importance.

Often they come up with counterintuitive findings. Phil DeFreitas, for instance, was found to be all-time No 4 among English players for the impact he had in ODIs.

He was good, but that good?

The ODI players in Pakistan’s history to have the highest impact are Wasim Akram and Imran Khan, which is a sensible conclusion.

But they are followed in order, inexplicably, by Shahid Afridi, Mohammad Hafeez and Aamer Sohail.

That is the beauty of it – these are not just some hokum analytics. They are based on the numbers we all see. They are just interpreted differently, or better.

Impact Index is compiling a list, which, in many ways, captures their essence. It is likely to be the definitive counterintuitive list of all time, one of “100 Hidden Cricket Facts”.

The first treasure appeared last week, about one of India’s most influential captains, Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi.

Pataudi’s leadership is well-appreciated but his batting is engulfed by the wistful and ultimately pointless nostalgia of what might have been.

What if, for instance, he had not lost sight in one eye in a road accident six months before his debut in December 1961? How good could he have been?

The conventional answer is, considerably better than an average of 34.91 from 46 Tests. Not so, or, going on Impact Index figures, we have been looking at that answer the wrong way.

What their stats reveal is slightly and pleasantly startling. No batsman in the history of Test cricket absorbed greater pressure of falling wickets when he came in to bat than Pataudi (taking a minimum of 40 Tests played by a batsman). Not even renowned batting strong men such as Andy Flower or Brian Lara.

“Pataudi scored tough runs, more than anybody else in the world in that period,” the Index found.

“In fact, he was the third-highest impact batsman in the world [from 1964-68], after Garry Sobers and Ken Barrington, partly because of his extremely high pressure ­impact.”

It is the kind of finding that the opinion-polarising Misbah-ul-Haq and his fans might have a lot of time for.

My early favourite in the series, though, is one that appears today. Pakistan have had some wonderful spinners, but it is a surprise that spinner Iqbal Qasim has come out, by some measure, as their greatest.

Qasim emerges as the bowler with the second-highest impact in Tests for Pakistan, behind Imran.

That sounds wrong, especially as his career ran as a sideshow to Abdul Qadir’s, widely considered Pakistan’s greatest spinner.

Qadir was liberally – sometimes excessively – feted because of the novelty at that time of his art. Qasim was boring old left-arm spin, of which there was a flood in Pakistan at the time; on some days he was not even the best of his kind for his domestic side.

There is, however, solid reasoning behind Qasim’s rating, most significantly that he was a more stable contributor than Qadir and put in some seminal clutch performances in series-winning Tests.

There is more. Qasim was no great shakes with the bat but, as tail-enders go, he was dogged and not easily dismissed.

It turns out that a couple of his match-saving hands place him as the player with the third-highest impact in Tests in Pakistan’s history, which is astonishing, but not offensive.

If nothing else, it is a much-needed, deeper appreciation and if such a list similarly shines a starrier light on cricket’s lesser cast, that is no bad thing.

Follow our sports coverage on twitter at @SprtNationalUAE