Hitting Against the Spin: How Cricket Really Works

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In keeping with my age, upbringing and general nerdiness, I generally mean First class cricket and, in particular, Test cricket.

Similarly there are a couple of places where something mentioned in passing in a chapter goes against the details in some other chapter. Only fifteen years ago it would have been difficult to answer them - cricket was guided only by decades-old tradition and received wisdom. Revolutionary in its insights, Hitting Against the Spin takes you on a fascinating whistle-stop tour of modern cricket and sports analytics, bringing cricket firmly into the twenty-first century by revealing its long-kept secrets. Limited overs cricket, on the other hand, is a much more team-oriented activity in which the outcome of a match is as likely, if not more likely, to be determined by the team's tactics as by the performance of any individual. I was intrigued by this book as it covered aspects of cricket that I hadn’t considered before and revealed stats that you wouldn’t expect.My interest in T20 has heightened after reading the chapters about data analysis in t20 tournaments which seem to create the best circumstances for data driven insight in cricket. This looked at wider trends on basic aspects of cricket, like the mode of dismissal over time in Test cricket, to deeper stats like average by small pitch area. It was split into longer form cricket and T20, although the authors made a convincing case that they are very different in terms of approach and risk-taking.

There were a couple of things to correct like the labelling of some charts and a more intuitive naming of T20 styles but along with the Duality chapter these were very minor gripes.He is currently the Lead Analyst with the England One-Day and T20 teams, and Strategy Consultant for the Kolkata Knight Riders. Easy to read and packed with illustrative diagrams, it manages to be both enjoyable and accessible to the newcomer who wants to understand the game better, and also shocking and absorbing to the expert. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.