Reading The Kalu myth Prompted me this question.
Why a batsman, whose strike rate is very ordinary is considered an explosive and exciting batsman, who can score quick runs (contrary to stats) by experts and fans alike? Is statistics is just a big lie?
So for an explanation I took the case in the title.
Without looking at statistics, I would have said, Gayle scores quicker and excites much more than Tendulkar does. Given that Tendulkars career started more than two decades ago, his strike rate must have been a lot lower than Gayle. But that's not the case.
Tendulkar:
Runs:18179
strike rate : 86.2%,
4s'+6's :: 2181
Balls Faced:21085
Boundary Strike Rate: 9.66
Gayle:
Runs:18179
strike rate : 83.95
4s'+6's :: 1115
Balls Faced:9633
Boundary Strike Rate: 8.63
His strike rate is about 2% less than Tendulkar, but his boundary hits rate is about 8% better than Tendulkar.
If they faced about 50 overs, Gayle would have scored exactly 252 runs, clearing fence 34 times. But Tendulkar would have scored 259 runs clearing boundary only 31 times. Tendulkar scores at a faster rate, although a bit less forceful way of rotating strikes with lots of singles and twos. where as Gayle would have scored lots of runs in boundaries/sixes.
When you watch TV, boundaries and sixes are replayed on TV a lot of times, rarely a single ran gets re-played a second time (except when that results in a run out). So you will get to watch Gayle's strokes about 10% (actually a lot) more than Tendulkar and you would think Gayle is exciting and Tendulkar is boring.
This case is again obvious with Dravid and Ganguly.
Dravid, 15284 balls, 10889 runs, strike rate: 71.24, boundaries+6s 992 times.
Ganguly 15416 balls, 11363 runs, strike rate: 73.70, boundaries+6s 1312 times.
There isnt much that diffrentiates in terms of strike rate from these two, even though Ganguly is better (he is an opening batsman, who is bound to get the benefit of fiedling restrictions). But Ganguly has had about 30% better boundary rate (infact about 400% better sixes rate than Dravid) and hence we all came to the conclusion that Ganguly scores faster than dravid.
We all believe that Dravid is boring and Ganguly is exciting, dont we?
