🏏 Jasprit Bumrah is better than ever — but that’s not enough for India
My Week in Sport(s) 🏏 🏈 🏀 🏒 ⚽️
Welcome to My Week in Sport(s) — a regular newsletter from Plot the Ball.
Covered in this week’s edition: 🏏 Jasprit Bumrah, 🏈 Patrick Mahomes, ⚽️ Aitana Bonmatí, 🏀 JuJu Watkins and 🏒 Gavin McKenna.
🏏 Jasprit Bumrah is better than ever — but that’s not enough for India
The 2024-25 Border-Gavaskar Trophy ended in sad but revealing fashion: because of a back injury, Indian fast bowler Jasprit Bumrah — the player of the series — was unable to take any part in the fourth innings of the final test.
The touring team asked him to carry their bowling attack on his back for five consecutive matches — and he did so, claiming 32 Australian wickets in total. This hasn’t always been India’s approach to winning tests, though. The transformation of their fast bowling stocks since the early 2010s has been one of the major themes of test cricket over the last decade — and has made the Indian team competitive in all conditions. But that transformation wasn’t simply down to the arrival of Bumrah.
In the matches he played during the first World Test Championship cycle — between 2019 and 2021 — his bowling was a valuable but not crucial part of India’s success. Comparing his returns to other fast bowlers’ in those tests over that period, we can see that each wicket he claimed cost his team slightly more than expected: 25.1 runs on average, compared to 23.6 for other quicks. In each cycle since, however, Bumrah has taken on a heavier overall workload while simultaneously improving his efficiency.
That has culminated in this cycle, where he’s put together one of the best bowling campaigns of the WTC era. Since June 2023, Bumrah has bowled 393 overs and taken 77 wickets at a cost of 15.1 runs each — while other fast bowlers in the games he’s played have taken theirs at 27.1 runs per wicket, on average. As the chart above shows, no seamer has ever bowled both as much and as well in a single World Test Championship cycle as Bumrah has over the last few years.
This injury was a particular shame because his body has generally been carefully managed. Resting their premier quick is less costly for India in spinning home conditions than on away tours, though, and the team will begin another five-match series in England in June. An obvious solution is to select fast bowlers in the slots they’ve favoured bowling-light all-rounders for on this tour; this move would improve their chances of winning that series — and of prolonging Bumrah’s current peak.
🏈 This version of Patrick Mahomes is a very different NFL quarterback
In the last edition of this newsletter published in 2024, I looked at how the space on the field available to NFL teams has changed over time. One of the major conclusions was that attempted passes aren’t travelling as far downfield as they used to.
And these changes seem to have affected Patrick Mahomes more than any other quarterback in the league — at least from a stylistic perspective. Across the NFL, completed passes are gaining about 7% fewer air yards this season than in 2018, and incomplete passes are 5% shorter. For Mahomes, though, the drop has been much bigger: his completions this year have gained 4.2 air yards on average — down from 6.5 in 2018 — and his incompletions are down to 10.4 intended air yards from 14.2.
The Chiefs QB’s game used to be defined by the deep ball, but that’s no longer the case: the air yardage he gained on complete passes and attempted on incomplete passes once comfortably exceeded league average, but he’s now below-average on both metrics. One of the hallmarks of great athletes, however, is adapting their approach as circumstances change — and Mahomes is still rated as one of the league’s top passers, even if he’s not quite as explosive as he used to be.
What else I learned last week
⚽️ Aitana Bonmatí is doing more of everything for Barça
Barça Femení have kept motoring along since the departure of Jonatan Giráldez: under new head coach Pere Romeu, their expected goal difference in Liga F so far this season is roughly in line with the level they hit last year.
Aitana Bonmatí is still playing a crucial role on the right of Barça’s midfield three, but her role in their attack has evolved this year. Romeu’s team has more of the ball — and that’s translated into around 13 more touches and almost three more progressive actions per 90 minutes for Bonmatí, as well as increases in both the quantity and quality of her shots. The two-time Ballon d’Or winner continues to do almost everything on the ball for the best team in the world.
🏀 JuJu Watkins is thriving at USC with a lighter workload
Last season, no one in college basketball carried a heavier load than JuJu Watkins. In her sophomore year at USC — with some talented reinforcements having joined the program via the transfer portal — she’s being asked to do a little less, and is thriving.
A clear trend so far this NBA season has been younger players ‘trading in’ two-point jump shots for three-pointers. And Watkins is getting on the bandwagon: threes make up 34% of her shot attempts this year, up from 28% as a freshman. This has greatly helped her efficiency: her effective FG% is up more than five percentage points to 50%. (She’s also getting to the free-throw line much more often.) All in all, Watkins looks even more like a future WNBA star than she did at the end of year one.
🏒 McKenna aside, Canada got their team selection wrong at the WJC
There are a number of defensible selection strategies you can implement in age-grade sport: prioritising high-ceiling players to accelerate their development, for instance, or simply focusing on giving yourself the best chance of winning right now.
At the World Juniors, losing quarter-finalist Canada implemented neither. They left many of their best players — per analyst Daniel Weinberger’s ‘Boxscore Impact’ model — at home, as well as several top prospects for the upcoming 2025 NHL Draft. One high-ceiling player they did bring was Gavin McKenna, who won’t be drafted until 2026. Only four of their forwards played more minutes than him, and with good reason: according to Weinberger, he’s already putting up “Bedard-like numbers”.
The next edition of My Week in Sport(s) will be published on Friday January 17th.
One thought: My guess is that in the "runs conceded per wicket vs expectation" metric, you're effectively just subtracting the bowler's average from the total average of all the other bowlers who played in the match. Empirically, I've seen taking a ratio proves to be a much better indicator of how a bowler has performed. Ratios prove to be better predictors of match outcomes than differentials.
For e.g. — a bowler who averages 15 when the others average 30 has generally done just as well as a bowler who averages 20 when the others average 40. But in your calculations — the latter bowler will be privileged by 5 runs lower than the former. It would be more accurate to say that both bowlers have performed twice as well as the rest.