Same Old Aussies
The Yellow Fever have done much for NZ sports fans.
I particularly love the chant whenever one of the visiting teams fouls a Phoenix player: “Same old Aussies, always cheating!”. Love it!
And I’ve got to love the way I can digress before I even get started.
The real issue here is the Aussies and cricket. It’s Hadlee-Chappell time and we know that means allegations of cheating and underarm Aussies. Brad Haddin springs to mind!
The game itself had two controversial moments (at least from this side of the pond) – the McCullum LBW decision (appropriate grounds for a Tui ad) and the Broom “bowled” decision.
There was of course a third – McCullum’s doubtful catch of Hussey the Younger.
There was undoubtedly doubt (if you excuse the double up) around the Hussey decision. Reasonably, regardless of the decision, someone could have disputed it.
However, by comparison, with the two controversial NZ decisions, there should have been no doubt. These were decisions the umpires simply got wrong.
I’m not going to call Haddin a cheat for what was an umpiring mistake. Haddin is definitely an idiot (based on his own comments and if he ever did murder someone, I’d happily suggest to him to leave his defence to a lawyer).
What’s really interesting about this is that there is a clear trend when you look at umpiring decisions in Australia.
Let’s consider the context – over the last 10 years or so, the technology has improved out of site both in terms of the technology available to analyse the decisions and sites like Cricinfo that allow dispassionate analysis of the stats.
So let’s see what the stats have to say:
Ricky Ponting
- Ricky Ponting has been dismissed 25 times LBW in one day games
- Only 8 of those have happened in Australia
- Admitedly, he’s played more games away than at home (the World Cup would contribute to this) – 129 out of 302 games.
Adam Gilchrist
- Out of 285 ODI’s, Gilchrist was LBW only 21 times, with only 6 of those being at home.
Brendon McCullum
- In his ODI career, McCullum has been dismissed a total of 16 times out of 119 innings
- Taking the Oz stats out, he’s been out 11 out of 101 innings – 11%
- In Australia, McCullum has been LBW 5 times out of 18 bats – 28%
Shaun “Of The Dead” Tait
Seeing McCullum’s stats might be because of Tait’s express pace, let’s see how Tait’s figures as a bowler stack up. Admittedly, he’s only played 22 games but:
- in 8 games at home, he’s taken 13 wickets, 2 LBW’s – 15%
- in away games, 6 our of 25 – 24%
Perhaps the bouncy pitches don’t help at home but it should also be remembered, it’s a relatively small number of games.
Shane Warne
Conversely, Mr Textit has played a vast number of games and it is interesting to see how the stats come out:
- in home games, Warne took 134 wickets, of which 21 were LBW (16%)
- in away games, he took 159 wickets, 27 Leg Before (17%)
To be fair, as the Mad Butcher would say, the bowling figures don’t tend to support a decent conspiracy theory.
Having said that, if I was a batsman tho, I sure as hell wouldn’t want to leave it up to the umpires if I was batting in Oz, while the reverse would apply if I was an Australian cricketer.
