MLC Group Stage Analysis

Some thoughts on the new tournament...

Following the conclusion of the group stages of the first season of Major League Cricket, I thought it would be interesting to run through some basic numbers for the tournament ahead of the knockout stages, which start tonight.

First of all, some overall thoughts. There was a wide discrepancy between team performance in the group stages, with LA Knight Riders in particular looking predictably poor. Their batting line-up, regularly featuring 3 domestic players in the top 5, and several feast-or-famine batters such as Roy, Guptill and Rossouw as their overseas, was always likely to be inconsistent and require several players to do some very heavy lifting, and so it proved.

Following the Knight Riders group’s dreadful performances in the ILT20 in the Emirates as well (also predictably, based on their recruitment) and struggles in the last couple of years in the IPL as well (they’ve only qualified once in the last five seasons), it would be fair to suggest that questions should be asked about their recruitment processes.

Secondly, and on a related point, it’s interesting to see that four of six teams qualify for the knockout stages. So, like some other leagues such as the PSL, a team has to perform pretty badly not to qualify. As I go into a season in The Hundred next week with only three from eight teams qualifying for the knockout stages, it’s clear to me that qualification dynamics for knockout stages in short-format franchise cricket are far from equal. My hope for the MLC is that they expand teams and in the short-term, get to a four from eight team qualification set-up, which would be much fairer in terms of rewarding high performance and introducing more of an element of jeopardy.

Moving on to analysis, first up, player performances. A look at the run production for batters who faced 50+ balls in the tournament is interesting, and produces some interesting topics for discussion (non-overseas players highlighted in red):-

Situated in the ideal top-right corner, Heinrich Klaasen’s performances were simply stunning. He combined the rare ability to optimise boundary percentage with non-boundary run production, and clearly was the best batter in the group stages. Honorable mention goes to Tim David, who without Klaasen’s stratospheric performances, looked the next best with a performance level which would have been around the best in many other leagues.

Conversely, some major contributors to teams (in terms of balls faced) left their team-mates with heavy lifting to do. Aaron Finch, in particular, struggled with both boundary and non-boundary run production, while Moises Henriques’ boundary percentage left a lot to be desired. David Miller continued this weird dynamic of his of having a pretty mediocre overall boundary percentage but with this ability to play an ultra-aggressive innings at times.

With the likes of Faf du Plessis, Jason Roy and Martin Guptill among the players not to face even 50 balls, and joining the likes of Finch and Henriques as underperforming veterans, it seems evident that a recruitment strategy focusing on big-names as opposed to expected performance levels may not be a particularly good idea. I’m prepared to cut Du Plessis far more slack than the others, given how he’s reinvented himself against spin and had real success over the last year or two but the others were perhaps less of a surprise.

However, for the league to evolve, I do feel that more merit-based recruitment is required - and any team adopting such an approach should be able to yield an extremely nice competitive advantage. For example, now the first season is almost done, I can build expected run production/prevention models to take into account the difference in standard/conditions between the MLC and other major short-format leagues.

From a non-overseas batter perspective, there’s plenty to discuss also. With only Andries Gous hitting above 20% boundaries of these 50+ balls faced batters, and many situated far left of the chart, it would appear that upskilling domestic players boundary-hitting will be another key element towards how this league evolves. For the good of the league, what they don’t want is teams strategizing to minimise the match involvement of non-overseas players, but at the moment it’s probably a really good strategy - more on this later.

Further, only Obus Pienaar of the non-overseas players had a strong non-boundary strike rate, so a degree of upskilling strike rotation and turning ones into twos looks viable. Examples of questions I’d be asking the batters to improve with their non-boundary run production would be:-

• Where are your strike rotation options for your bad match-ups - how can you get off strike against bowlers who you as an individual is not aggressively targeting?

• Where are the pockets in the field where you can look hit low-risk twos?

• Can you improve your fitness and sprint speed to ensure you can consistently aggressively run the first run and put the fielder under pressure to try to turn ones into twos? Which fielders can you target specifically for this purpose?

• Can you work on more unconventional, 360 degree shot options - such as reverse sweeps and ramps to allow you to manipulate opposition field positions? Can you improve your cut shot so that the opposition bowlers don’t frequently bowl an outside off-stump line to you? Many batters (worldwide, not just in MLC) who ‘chew up balls’ often have weaknesses in these areas.

It’s easy for a coach or an analyst to say to a batter things like ‘reduce your dot percentage’ or say to a batting group ‘we need to run more two’s’ but the above questions actually try to formulate a solution to those problems, as opposed to just saying ‘we need to do it!’.

A batter doesn’t simply have to hit more boundaries to be able to improve their strike rate. Of course, it helps, and strong boundary-hitting is a major driver for both strike rate and winning matches, but improving those areas above could easily add 10+ to a batter’s strike rate without even working on boundary-hitting. Throw in boundary-hitting into the mix too, and you can see how a player’s strike rate in any league can be absolutely transformed with a different mentality.

Moving on to bowler run prevention, here’s a look at the boundary conceded percentages and dot percentages for bowlers bowling 14+ overs in the group stages (again, non-overseas players highlighted in red):-

Sunil Narine bossed the group stages in terms of boundary prevention, with an absurd sub-7% boundary concession, while the likes of Imad Wasim, Akeal Hosein and Anrich Nortje were able to push towards the ideal top-left corner, with low boundary percentage conceded and high dot percentage.

While overseas batters did a lot of the work for their franchises, some domestic bowlers will be pleased with their work in the group stages - notably Cameron Gannon, Harmeet Singh and Saurabh Netravalkar. Also, ex-England World Cup winner Liam Plunkett also has had a solid group stage, with strong boundary prevention.

Such strong domestic performances will also be a key driver for evolving this league. If some of these non-overseas players can get deals in franchises in other country, it will really show a pathway for development for aspiring young players - and that has to be a key goal for any cricket league.

At the moment, though, there probably is short-term value for MLC teams to ensure that their overseas players have high match involvement at the expense of non-overseas players, and this will be a continuing issue for development in franchise leagues in associate-nations - we’ve seen it consistently already in the Abu Dhabi T10, for example, where many teams have used their mandatory UAE players as not much more than a specialist fielder.

Balancing the short-term needs for a team owner or coach (e.g. maximizing their chances of winning) and the longer-term needs for a league is often tough, and probably not far from a somewhat conflicting objective, but ultimately it wouldn’t be a surprise if teams took that short-term approach, because coaches jobs often depend on results, and their desire will focus on paying for their mortgage and lifestyle, as opposed to the development of a league. As said, it’s a tricky scenario to balance.

A look at how teams approached this decision is fascinating:-

Ultimately, there wasn’t really a big relationship between the match involvement percentage of non-overseas players and results. Top of the table Seattle Orcas actually had the highest non-overseas match involvement. Interestingly, MI New York look to have taken a clear position on prioritizing overseas bowling - a decision which pre-tournament certainly would have made sense in terms of expected value - while Texas Super Kings look like they wanted their overseas batters to face as many balls as possible.

Interestingly, though, while MI New York relied on their overseas players the most, no team appeared to take the out and out decision to try and maximize overseas player output - for example, recruiting overseas batters who can bowl match-up spin, and overseas bowlers who can hit a high boundary percentage cameo innings, or some semi-genuine all-rounders (very few genuine all-rounders actually exist in T20 cricket). Again, such a strategy could yield a competitive advantage if a team recruited in this way, although it possibly runs counter to the development of the league.

However, with non-overseas players getting decent exposure, what this does do - as alluded to previously - is provide a pathway for young domestic talent (or indeed, overseas players willing to try and qualify as a domestic player) to franchise tournaments. Once this becomes closer to reality, I expect format-specific coaching to become far more mainstream in the USA, and teams who can establish high quality coaching and scouting programs could well be rewarded.

Related, from a recruitment and player market perspective, it seems obvious but I’ll say it anyway - as with most short-format franchise leagues, high quality domestic players are extremely valuable. In MLC, this effect is probably further exacerbated by the current scarcity of this resource - so there should be an attractive salary commanded by the best non-overseas players in the league. Again, this gives a great pathway to player development, knowing that this carrot will exist once the market dynamics correct themselves.

I’ll move forward to looking at net boundary percentages for teams now. It’s going to be very brief because this is getting very long, and of course, this is just a snapshot of some basic information I provide for the teams I work for, but I wanted to cover something quickly - my long-time favourite, net boundary percentage:-

As is often the case, the team with the best net boundary percentage won the group, and the team with the worst came bottom. There’s a bit of noise around the San Francisco/Texas Super Kings positions, but that’s probably to be expected in a five-match group season. San Francisco were probably a little unlucky not to qualify.

Interestingly though, a Super Kings franchise outperformed their net boundary percentage again. It’s fairly commonplace for this to happen in the IPL as well - could it be the Stephen Fleming effect?

LA Knight Riders’ main issue was boundary prevention, with their team boundary percentage scored being flattered by some high strike rate innings from Andre Russell and Rilee Rossouw, but their batting group overall looks like needing an overhaul already.

Ultimately, though, there continues to be a strong relationship between having a high boundary percentage in a short-format league and qualifying (if a team is +1 or better, they’re very unlucky if they don’t qualify, and it will basically never happen in a league such as this where 4/6 teams qualify), and if a team is -1 or worse, they have a very low chance of qualification.

If they have a net boundary percentage worse than -2, like LA Knight Riders were this season, it’s not far from impossible.