Last
night in the IPL 7 final W Saha of Punjab Kings XI scored an unbeaten 115 for
his losing team; M Pandey of Kolkata Knight Riders got out after scoring a near
century – 94. His team, on the strength of his knock, won the title. This gave
me the context I needed to post this piece that has been in the making for
years.
I
have felt that a number of centuries a batsman scores is a wonderful
statistics, of course, but it should not be made a career defining one. I will
explain.
But
before going into that discussion let us look at the screen shot (given below)
of a successful Minesweeper attempt.
.PNG)
[Insert
image]
Look
at the number on the right side of the top bar and you see the number “999” (my normal time for a
successful attempt is about 4 minutes). This indicates the time I had taken to finish the board? Does it mean I took exactly 16 minutes
and 39 seconds? No. It means that I took an indeterminate time beyond 999
seconds. The space has only three digits and if you go beyond that, the
algorithm stops counting, or at least stops showing the result of its continued
counting, if it does continue. Beyond 999, your performance is beyond the pale.
It is like negative IQ!
Coming
back to century in cricket, one must understand how it must have gained
prominence. When I was growing up, all the scoreboards were manually operated
with a man (no woman) changing the numbers on wooden/cardboard showing through
the slots at appropriate places. And, there were only two slots. That is the
crux.
If
you scored 100 the scoreboard will show 00. You are expected to keep track of
the hundred place. It is on such boards we learnt of Len Hutton scoring 364
(3*100+64; before my time) and Gary Sobers going one better. Scoring a century
was not so common place and to save space and also the workload on the score keeper, the score board digits were limited to
two, I surmise.
But
now, with everything going electronic and digital, there really is no space
constraint (of course, you still have to leave space for advertisements!). With
this in mind, I think scoring a century should not carry as much premium as in
the olden days; but the reverse is true. When a batsman scores a century he
shows a tendency to look up in a gesture of thanks to whomever it is up there.
He discounts his own accomplishment, howsoever a marginal one it might be.
Why
did I call scoring a century a marginal accomplishment? Ask Pandey. He scored
94. What if he had scored 100? Would it have changed the outcome? As much
against building up contrafactual scenarios as I am, in this case I tend to
believe that KKR would have won with Pandey still batting. Ask Saha. His 115, a
century plus, did not come to his team’s rescue. This is why his century gets
degraded to something lower than Pandey’s near century.
All
said, we must remember that 100 is just one more than 99, just like the latter
is one more than 98.
My
999 on Minesweeper is a different kind of animal - a time and a half of the
number of the Beast (Read Revelations). Having a negative IQ is
meaningless! But, scoring a century is not meaningless. My argument is simply
that it does not deserve such an exalted statistical space as it does now.
Raghuram
Ekambaram
2 comments:
The effect of the contribution is more important the quantum of contribution.
That is precisely the point! A century by itself does not carry much weight. What it does to the team is mor important. Pander scoring 94 is better than Saha scoring 115.
If you downgrade the importance of a century as a yardstick of performance, it is likely the players will not feel the added pressure and score more centuries, ironically!
Raghu
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