Constable Hitting Against the Spin: How Cricket Really Works

Interesting

I've been reading this with our 11 year old son and he loves it.It is written in an easy, conversational tone, drawing repeatedly on popular moments in sport. However, it is packed with hard data.It will deepen your understanding and answer or illuminate some of the most arcane questions in cricket.A thoroughly enjoyable read, I highly recommend this for aspiring cricketers and fans of the game.

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. 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.However, I was initially disappointed as the first chapter covered one-day cricket. I was hoping for a serious discussion and here I had analysis on a dumbed-down version of the game!I was thinking of giving up then and there but persevered and how glad I was that I did! The next few chapters were fantastic, analysing in great detail some massive trends in the game. Most importantly the discussion was all about the real thing, Test cricket.There were some great profundities, many of which you’d think people should already know, but don’t, and which captains, coaches, selectors and players should be using to their advantage, but aren’t. Things like how batting first shouldn’t be a fait accompli and until 2014 was actually a losing tactic (on average), how neutral umpires caused batting averages of the best batsmen to increase and helped left handers, why left handers have it easier against pace, right handers against spin. Quite amazing conclusions, all backed up by thorough analysis.By now I was hooked and was looking forward to the final few chapters of the book when I was presented with an analysis and discussion of the dumbest, most unsophisticated form of cricket, T20. If the discussion of ODIs was dull, the discussion of T20s was annoying and downright insulting! It was like analysing the songs of Justin Bieber alongside the works of Beethoven and Bob Dylan or Uwe Boll alongside Stanley Kubrick!If Chapters 1 and 10-14 were left out this book would be excellent, a 5/5.

I really wanted to like this book--to read about how one could use basic numeracy skills to get a deeper understanding of cricket, and explode some myths (or at least question some received wisdom) about the game. But the argument in the first chapter on "how to win a world cup" was a pretty ordinary qualitative one--I kept waiting for the data that would redeem it. Leamon may be entirely correct, and he may even be legitimately entitled to claim a little of the credit for England's victory in 2019. But as you read the book it becomes increasingly clear that Leamon is not a great analyst--he has much more in common with the innumerate fools. He has never read Tufte, for one thing, and tends to draw big graphs to present tiny little bits of data--I don't have space in this review to explain how silly his graphics are. But what finally made me put down the book was his claim (on page 41) that 11.1 is "nearly three times" 4.6. Since when is 2.4 nearly 3? And do you really want to read a book of data analysis by someone so lacking in basic number sense? No, you don't. Read the new Crickonomics book instead.

Ostensibly a book about cricket and how data applies to a complex sport, but in between the explanations of the rise of left handed batsmen or the importance of leg spin in 20:20 are some lessons about how to apply data. 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?' sounds simple but is filled with nuance and challenge. Some good explanation of what stats can and can't do, as the search for the counter-intuitive revolutionary insight continues.

ideal for a cricket lover