Cricket commentators often talk of changes in batting quality through the ages. Or they say that batting order matters to averages (or vice-versa). But is there anything in these questions?
animation
sport
Published
October 9, 2016
A couple of years ago, I downloaded the top 200 averages for each batting order from the wonderful stats engine at espnCricinfo, before:
Ignoring averages from players with fewer than twenty innings
Considering only results against Australia, England, India, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa, Sri Lanka and the West Indies
For reference, here are the first six rows of the resulting data.
We can then analyse the data by batting order, using the splendid gganimate.
Code
batOrder |>ggplot(aes(x = Decade,y = Ave,color = Country, size = Innings ) ) +geom_point(alpha =1) +labs(x ="Last decade of the batsman's career",y ="" ) +ggtitle('The best players who have ever batted at {closest_state} in the order',subtitle ='Average when batting at that position' ) +transition_states(states = Bat,transition_length =2,state_length =1 ) +ease_aes('cubic-in-out')