T20 World Cup Group 2 permutations

With the second round of matches in Group 2 of the T20 World Cup finished we can now look at the possible permutations in that group as well. As far as points go it is actually set up the same way as group one is, but the NRRs are different and actually produce a slightly simpler result.

First what’s already been confirmed: nothing. In theory anyway. In practice Australia are all but through to the semi-finals and are almost certain to top the group as well. Using the same formulae from yesterday, we get that Pakistan would need to win by around forty runs or with 5.2 overs to spare to catch Australia on NRR. That’s just to put Australia into the runners-up spot, however. For Australia to actually be knocked out, India would have to beat South Africa by just as much. It’s pretty safe to assume that Australia will top the group and very safe to assume they will at least advance.

That’s where the safety ends though, all three other teams have decent shots at getting the runners-up position. Pakistan’s match against Australia is first and as discussed above they have very little hope of catching Australia’s NRR. But they are not safe from the two sides below them; they are so close to India they are essentially in a dead heat and only a small amount above South Africa on NRR. This puts Pakistan in almost a must-win scenario. The only way they can advance with a loss is if South Africa then win and not by enough to go ahead of Pakistan on NRR. In practice that means that Pakistan would have to lose by only two or three runs or with only one ball to spare and South Africa could not win by more than four runs or with more than two balls to spare.

So Pakistan essentially have to win, but a victory is actually not enough to get them to safety. They are so close to India that if both sides win it will come down to which of them can do so by more. Although Pakistan are slightly ahead right now, they won’t necessarily come off better if both sides win by the same margin either. A low scoring win by, say, 15 runs counts for more than a higher scoring affair decided by the same margin (which makes sense as 15 runs represents a higher per cent of the total RR in a lower scoring affair) so the specific scores for both sides would come into play if they both won. The upshot is that Pakistan need to win by as much as they possibly can and then hope South Africa do them a favour and either win or lose by a smaller amount than Pakistan win.

South Africa may not be feeling too charitable in that situation, however, as a Pakistan will eliminate the Proteas. South Africa need Australia to win first and foremost, but if they get that they will have more than just a sniff of hope. An Australian win would actually make the South Africa v India match almost a winner-take-all affair. Certainly if India were to win after Australia won then both teams would go to the semi-finals. And if South Africa won after Australia won then probably both teams would go to the semi-finals. The caveat in the second case is that it would actually go down to NRR again between all three of South Africa, India and Pakistan. They are all three close enough together that South Africa’s victory would likely sent them above the other two. To go above India they would need to win by at least four runs or with two or more balls to spare. That would also automatically send them above Pakistan unless Pakistan lost off the final or penultimate ball or by only two or fewer runs. Neither of those are likely, but both are possible, so South Africa must make sure they read their NRR sheets better than they do their D/L sheets!

In summary:
-Australia are all but through.
-Pakistan need to win and then hope that either South Africa also win or that if India win it is by a smaller margin than Pakistan’s win.
-South Africa are out if Pakistan win, but otherwise can advance by beating India by more than four runs/two balls.
-India can advance with a win if Australia also win or by beating South Africa by more than Pakistan beat Australia. A very close defeat to South Africa will also probably be enough.

T20 World Cup Group 1 permutations

After the first two sets of matches in Group 1 of the Super Eights all four teams still have a chance to advance and all four teams still could fail to advance, though in Sri Lanka’s case that would be unlikely. The last round of matches sees the West Indies face New Zealand and England face hosts Sri Lanka. For Sri Lanka, almost any result is enough. A win will guarantee that they will top the group and even if they lose they can still advance if the West Indies fail to hammer New Zealand. If England win they will probably be in the semi-finals and might even top the group if they win by enough. A defeat will not necessarily eliminate England, however. It will depend on the result of the other match. The West Indies can can not ensure a place in the semi-finals even if they beat New Zealand, but they can put some pressure on the other teams to get a result. But they are out if they lose, as are New Zealand. The Kiwis are in the most dire position, needing both to win and get some help from elsewhere.

It gets interesting in the specifics though. Whilst a Sri Lanka victory and a West Indies victory is simple enough (they both advance), if England and the West Indies both win then they and Sri Lanka will all be on four points at the top of the table and the group winner and runner-up will be decided on Net Run Rate. Sri Lanka have a comfortable lead right now, but a loss to England will obviously eat into that. England can realistically top the group if they win by a decent amount and in theory the West Indies can as well, though it will take an incredible win.

For England to top the group they have to beat Sri Lanka and hope that the West Indies don’t win by enough to top their NRR (which would be unlikely). The first situation is the most straightforward, Sri Lanka’s NRR right now is: $\frac{304}{35.2} - \frac{303}{40} = 1.029$ and England’s is $\frac{313}{38.5} - \frac{327}{40} = -0.115$ . (NB: The decimal values for overs are not ‘true’ decimals, but the usual cricket notation for fragments of an over. That is: ‘38.5’ = ’38 + 5/6′.) Unfortunately, the way NRR is set up means that it can’t be said that England need to win by x runs or with y balls to spare; the required margin of victory will actually vary with the first innings score. If England bat first and score x and Sri Lanka then score y the equation (and I’ve set it up as an equation instead of an inequality because England technically only need to draw level; the next tiebreak is head-to-head result) for England to overtake Sri Lanka is $\frac{313+x}{58.5} - \frac{327+y}{60} = \frac{304+y}{55.2} - \frac{303+x}{60}$ (bearing in mind that the sides are considered to have used their full overs even when bowled out and that England are assumed to win since otherwise the analysis is irrelevant). This solves out to a linear equation that gives Sri Lanka’s maximum score, y, for a variety of English scores, x: $y=0.969x - 16.5$ . This works out to a 20-25 run margin for likely scores.

It gets a little bit more complicated if Sri Lanka bat first though. Then it becomes a question of England needing to knock the runs off in a certain number of overs. If Sri Lanka score x then the overs, y England have in which to get the total is given as: $\frac{313+x+1}{38.5+y} - \frac{327+x}{60} = \frac{304+x}{55.2} - \frac{303+x+1}{40+y}$ which works out to: $y=\frac{28.8(\sqrt{x^2+618x+95500}-0.369(x+331))}{x+315}$ . (As much as I’d like to say I worked that out by hand, it would not be true.) This is a more complicated graph, but it actually has a happier result. It is quite flat for reasonable run totals and the quantised nature of the run chase gives us a handy result: for any Sri Lankan score between 101 and 205 (inclusive), England will have 17.2 overs in which to chase it if they wish to better Sri Lanka’s NRR. There is the caveat though that if it is close then England could hit a boundary for the winning runs and possibly get over the line with an extra ball used. For totals of 100 or fewer England will have 17.1 overs and for totals of 206 or greater England will have 17.3 overs, but in the first instance it isn’t likely that Sri Lanka will score so few and in the second instance it isn’t likely that England will chase that many even in twenty overs.

That’s for England and Sri Lanka and England are safe if they can get above Sri Lanka. But the the West Indies are still in the mix with a win. The easiest scenario for them is that they win and England lose. That will guarantee them the runners-up position. They can also finish second if England win narrowly, though and if England manage to drag Sri Lanka’s NRR down far enough the West Indies could even top the group. The problem for the West Indies is that right now their NRR is very low. It’s well behind Sri Lanka and pretty far even behind England. Even if England win by only a very small amount and only increase their NRR by a small amount, the West Indies will need to win pretty comfortably to catch them. The other possibility for them is that England hammer Sri Lanka and bring Sri Lanka’s NRR within range, but that will likely require another comfortable victory for the West Indies. They also have the slight problem of playing first, so they will not know what they need. Getting their NRR back to parity would be a good way to make England (and Sri Lanka to a lesser extent) sweat a bit though. To do that they would need to win by about twenty runs $\frac{308+x}{60} - \frac{294+y}{55.2}=0 \Rightarrow y=0.928x-8.24$ or with about two and a half overs to go $\frac{308+x+1}{40+y}-\frac{294+x}{55.2}=0 \Rightarrow y=\frac{15.7(x+347)}{x+294}$ . It certainly can be done, though it won’t guarantee anything. They’d need a much more convincing win to have a chance to top the group though. Either England or Sri Lanka will have a NRR well into the positive range and for the West Indies to get their NRR that high would be a massive effort.

What they will be hoping above all is that England lose. And If the West Indies win and England lose then the West Indies will finish as runners-up. If the West Indies lose, however, they are out even if England also lose. They would actually be level on points with England and New Zealand, but their NRR is already worse than New Zealand and would of course go down even farther. This is actually New Zealand’s only chance of going to the semi-finals. Right now their NRR is only a little bit worse than England’s and there is every chance that a win could send them above England or even close enough that a subsequent English loss would send their NRR under that of the Kiwis. Like with the case of the West Indies it is hard to calculate what they need as they don’t have a clear target, but the closest thing is probably England’s current NRR (although England can actually raise it with a loss if the loss is in a super over). Still, for New Zealand to go past England on NRR would put a lot of pressure on England and the equations to do that are (defending): $\frac{322+x}{60} - \frac{323+y}{58.5}=-0.114 \Rightarrow y=0.981x-6.59$ and chasing: $\frac{322+x+1}{40+y} - \frac{323+x}{58.5}=-0.114 \Rightarrow y=\frac{18.83(x+324.4)}{x+322.3}$ . They could do this relatively easily by winning by about ten or eleven runs or by chasing a target in 18.5 overs. Their chances should certainly not be written off.

Summary
Sri Lanka can get through and top the group with even a reasonably close loss. If they get within 20-25 runs of England in a chase or make England take more than 17.2 overs to chase down a target they will very likely win the group. They could theoretically be knocked out if England pass them and the West Indies beat New Zealand by enough to pass them both, but the odds are against it.

England can top the group by beating Sri Lanka by more than 25 runs or chasing down Sri Lanka’s target in 17.2 overs or quicker. A win of any type will probably be enough to advance though the Windies could knock them out with a comfortable win over New Zealand. They can advance with a loss if New Zealand win, but very narrowly.

The West Indies can advance if they win and England lose. They can also advance if they beat New Zealand by about 25 runs/three overs and England win fairly narrowly. If they thrash the Kiwis they will have a chance to even top the group, but it is very unlikely.

New Zealand can advance if they beat the West Indies comfortably and England then lose. But anything else will send the Kiwis out.

T20WC format

The format for this years T20 World Cup has been widely derided as a farce. And rightly so; it never really made sense and especially with the rain intervening it has seen the West Indies go through to the second round without even having completed a match. (England benefited from a similar situation two years ago when they went into the second round on the back of a rain-hit loss and a no-result.) We’ve also seen Zimbabwe eliminated from the tournament before England had even played a match and a dead rubber for England in only their second match of the tournament. The only way things could have been worse for the ICC is if a minnow had, god forbid, made it into the second round.

The current format most resembles that of the 2007 fifty over World Cup which was famously terrible. I would look at the 2011 fifty over World Cup which dragged on forever, but at least was considered a success. In that tournament there were 14 teams instead of twelve, but they each went directly into two groups of seven instead of playing a pointless first ’round’ of only two matches. There is no reason why the T20 World Cup could not do the same. It’s actually the exact same number of matches for each of the seeded teams as in the current format (five), plus another three for each of the minnows. Whilst it admittedly isn’t fun to see the minnows play each other, it would only happen twice and the nice thing about T20 is that there is time for two matches in a day so there can be one ‘good’ match along with the one involving minnows. This gives the lesser nations a fair time in the tournament and a decent shot at an upset if they do well enough to earn it.

Unlike in the fifty over World Cup, however, I would not have the groups lead into quarter-finals, but instead go directly into semi-final matches. This means that instead of having the top eight teams get a pretty easy pass into the knockouts there will be real pressure in the group stages. It will add another layer of intensity to the ‘big’ matches and it will also mean that the matches of established v smaller nations will still have something relevant riding on them.

The other benefit of this format is that it doesn’t drag on. By my count there would be thirty matches in the group stages and with two being played a day that would last just over two weeks, Another two days for the semi-finals and final gives a total time for the tournament of either 17 days or 19 to give some rest days between knockouts. Either way it would be long enough for a good result but not nearly so long as to get people wondering when it will all end. It also leaves some leeway to expand the tournament. Adding another two teams would only make it 23-25 days long.

That format is not perfect, of course, (I doubt there is any way with the current situation of world cricket to make a format flawless) but it would be a huge improvement on the current one. It would be fair to the teams, watchable and of a decent timespan. The only other way to improve on it would be to hold it every four years like a real World Cup!

England in the T20WC

England had a dead rubber T20 World Cup match yesterday against India. It’s just as well for England that there was nothing riding on it as it didn’t go as well as one would have liked. England conceded too many with the ball and then looked less than helpless with the bat en route to a comprehensive defeat. The main problem when England were batting was their old nemesis: spin. It wasn’t even good spin, but England still looked helpless in reading it and collapsed quite farcically. There have been several predictable statements about the implications of the collapse and whilst it is bad I think there are only a few things one can take from this match.

The first is nothing to do with the batting and instead relates to England’s failed tactic with the ball. They decided the best way to go after India was with four seamers and a lot of short stuff. It didn’t work. Bresnan was hit around the park, Dernbach had a disastrous last over (and wasn’t great in the other three) and Broad was never terribly effective. The only bowler to do well was Swann, the lone spinner, who took 1-17 off his four overs. It was a dead rubber, so some experimentation was understandable. But England must take note that it didn’t work. Whilst that wasn’t the reason they lost, chasing a large total never helps the batsmen either.

Stuart Broad is still not convincing as a T20 captain. (Or any captain, actually, but this is the only format in which we’ve seen him.) Admittedly it’s harder to judge captaincy in so short a format, but he does not really seem to be on top of matters. From what we saw last year, Graeme Swann looks much better suited and although the ECB did interview several candidates before deciding on Broad I think they might want to reconsider at some point.

Whilst there is no doubting that England do have a big problem against spin, it is important to remember that such things do happen in T20s. At the end of last summer, England collapsed in a very similar manner against the West Indies at the Oval and lost a match they probably ought to have won. No one said anything about there being a fatal weakness that would haunt them in Tests then and rightly so. There are similarities, but the style of play is overall so different that I think it is very hard to draw long-term conclusions from one T20 innings. Again, England do have a problem against spin. But we knew this from watching them in the UAE and Tests against Sri Lanka, not watching a single T20 innings.

Looking at the next round of the tournament, for which England qualified after their first match, they will still have a lot of confidence in getting to the knockouts. Their group contains the West Indies, Sri Lanka and New Zealand and they only need to finish in the top two to the semi-finals. They will want an improved performance before then, but they certainly can do so. They’ve actually done rather better in this group stage than they did two years ago when they won. Of course, this all assumes the rain stays away. Given the forecast, that might be optimistic and we might see some ridiculous rain shortened results.

Twenty20 World Cup preview

Now that England have finished their rain affected series against South Africa there is no other men’s cricket until the start of the T20 World Cup. Of course there should be another two years, but because the ICC only sees various currency symbols in the fixture list they decided to go ahead and compromise some of the integrity of the tournament in exchange for the extra cash of having it once every two years instead of once every four. But it’s a reasonable enough decision as it’s only T20 and the whole point is just to make money anyway.

The format for the tournament is one of two group stages leading to the semi-finals. The first group stage is four groups of three with the top two from each advancing to two groups of four. It’s exciting in that any of the top teams can see their tournament end quite quickly if they slip up in the first two matches and rubbish in that this gives a huge role to chance. Still at least it’s a direct tournament and not the flawed rankings.

Group A contains England, India and Afghanistan. England are officially the best team in the world in the shortest format in the world and to be fair have won seven of their last ten (completed) matches. India are theoretically T20 powerhouses. They have probably the best disposed fan base toward T20 and this is manifest in the IPL. Despite (or very possibly in part because of) this India actually have a very poor record in T20 and have lost at home to both England and New Zealand in the past year. And then there is Afghanistan who I think I might be required by law to call ‘plucky’. Their story in getting to the tournament has been documented elsewhere in a much better fashion than I could, but what is most relevant is that they are not at all a bad side. They gave Australia a scare in a fifty-over match not long ago and they cannot be written off. One would probably not expect a major upset; England and India have to stay on their guard, but they will probably both advance.

Group B contains Australia, the West Indies and Ireland. A bit was made last week about Australia actually falling below Ireland in the rankings. (The Aussies have since moved back in front.) Although I pointed out why it was overblown, it is true that Australia have had a pretty dismal time in T20s recently. The West Indies have done a bit better though and split a two match series against Australia earlier this year. Ireland have played very little major opposition and were whitewashed in three matches at home by Bangladesh in the last series that they played. I think the West Indies will probably be the safest leaving Australia and Ireland. Ireland actually look like the better team on paper, but that is almost entirely against other Associate nations. They will be keen and if Australia have any sort of off day Ireland can definitely win. This might actually be a group where all three teams manage one win and run rate becomes the decider. I’m going to spring for the upset and have Ireland go through.

Group C comprises Sri Lanka, South Africa and Zimbabwe. South Africa have had a solid if unspectacular year. Zimbabwe have lost all six official T20s they played in the last twelve months and only two of them were even close. Sri Lanka have hardly played any matches so it’s quite hard to judge them. Presumably South Africa will top the group comfortably with Sri Lanka quite likely finishing runners-up. It might be interesting to see if Zimbabwe can pull off something remarkable against them though.

And in Group D there is Pakistan, New Zealand and Bangladesh. Pakistan have been a fairly strong T20 outfit recently and just technically beat Australia 2-1 in the UAE. (Though it should go down as 1-1 with one tie.) New Zealand did just manage to beat India, but had a poor time against the West Indies before that and are still far too mercurial. Bangladesh are Bangladesh. They may pull off a surprise against a better team on paper, but it would be a surprise. The Pakistan v New Zealand battle for the top of the group might be interesting, but unfortunately the tournament structure is such that the group winners are not rewarded over runners up. As with so many T20s, the result of that contest won’t matter.

So I suspect it will be England, the West Indies, Sri Lanka and New Zealand in Group 1 of the second round and India, Ireland, South Africa and Pakistan in Group 2. The top two teams of those two groups will meet in the semi-finals. Assuming the groups finish as I suggest (which isn’t going to happen, but never mind) then I would guess the semi-finals to be England v Pakistan and South Africa v West Indies and probably South Africa topping off a good year by beating Pakistan in the final. Maybe.