Bowlpocalypse 2: The theoretical limit of scoring
What is the ceiling of T20 scoring rates? And have we even found it yet?
Sanju Samson is plumb. The ball has yorked him so perfectly that it’s like the bowler was splitting an atom in a lab. Samson moves back in the crease to give himself potential leverage and instead, he’s just more stuffed. A mouse jumping into the trap to see what wood it’s made from. The only way this is missing the stumps is if it burrows under them subterraneously.
The bowler turns to the umpire and raises his own finger. Because this is a free hit, and Jasprit Bumrah has just wasted a perfect LBW on a dot ball.
This moment kind of illustrates the genius of Bumrah. He has made a rare mistake (although his no ball count is high, please see the Oval, 2017) and now he is essentially erasing it from existence. A no ball gives one run, and the free hit is currently going at 2.16 runs per delivery. That means a combined 3.16.
But, even though Bumrah overstepped, his combined two balls cost one run. Meaning even with the free hit, his result was a net positive.
And so I assumed, this is what Bumrah did.
Especially, as when I checked, he had bowled the second most free hits on record. It is only 43. So in some ways, no one is a specialist, but surely he is more than most. On top of that, he is the world’s best death bowler. If anyone is good at free hit bowling, it should be Jasprit Bumrah.
And he is not. He has the fourth-highest economy among the bowlers with 24 free hits. There are few lists in bowling on which he is at the wrong end of. But here he is, with a big runs per ball on what is the one delivery in the game where he should be king.
What does it mean though? Why is the hardest to hit player in the world suddenly not that when wickets are turned off? The reason might be simply that with free hits you are just trying to hit the ball hard. And off Bumrah, without the fear of wickets, you can.
Because he has a really weird pattern, no other free hit bowler gets hit for four more often. It is happening every three balls. People are smashing him, along the ground.
Ofcourse, he still doesn’t get hit for six. Compared to Oshane Thomas, Luke Wood and Sean Abbott who constantly travel over the ropes. Yet, Shaheen Shah Afridi who is often seen as a punchline now, gets hit for six less than Bumrah, and no one ever finds fours from him either.
What this really shows though is how different batting is when you can’t get out, and you have ultimate freedom in hitting. Wild things occur. Bumrah goes from mega GOAT cyborg to just another dude.
But free hit data tells us something far more interesting; it gives us a theoretical limit of scoring.
***
This year in the IPL, things have been wild. For years, the general pattern of scoring has stayed more or less exactly the same. This year, there are so many differences from Pre-Impact Sub era.
For instance, the sixth over has always been almost identical in strike rates to overs four and five. This year, it’s way down. Yet. the eighth over has had a massive spike. The twelfth over is an entire piece I need to make on its own. And then teams are running out of steam at the end all the time.
But what is clear is that this is the fastest scoring season in franchise cricket history. Bowlers are being drowned by runs. Except, at the end.
That’s odd, right? An extra batter in every team, bowlers being destroyed in record fashion until the 15th over, followed by bang ordinary cricket from then on in. Why, when we get to the end, are batters not kicking on?
Isn’t that the point of death batting? Or the slog overs, as they were once called.
