🏏 Two recent revolutions in English cricket, visualised

Teeing off

Welcome to the fourth edition of Plot the Ball for 2023.

Earlier this week, Eoin Morgan — England’s World-Cup-winning captain in 2019 — announced his retirement from all forms of cricket. Early tomorrow morning, the nation’s test team begins another series in New Zealand — and Morgan, despite not having played a test match in over a decade, may have had more of an influence on their recent strategic overhaul than you think.

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Two recent revolutions in English cricket, visualised

Judging the legacy of a captain or coach by the performance of their team in a knockout tournament is foolish — and, for all that England’s one-day World Cup win in 2019 will ultimately define Eoin Morgan’s, this is a principle that applies to him as much as it does to anyone else.

England were lucky to win an enthralling final against New Zealand at Lord’s that summer — and many things happened en route to victory which were outside of Morgan’s direct control¹.

What was within the scope of Morgan’s influence after his appointment at the end of 2014 was the moulding of England into a formidable side — one who went into that tournament on home soil as clear favourites.

This would have been the case even if events hadn’t fallen in the home team’s favour on that July day — and it’s that which we should give Morgan credit for.

In assigning that credit, we should be also try and be as specific as possible.

Talk of ‘mindset shifts’ or ‘cultural changes’ in sporting conversations is almost always imprecise and insubstantial; in Morgan’s case, the change of playing strategy the team implemented under his leadership² is so clear in the data that to lead with discussion of anything else is negligent.

In limited-overs cricket, the defined number of deliveries you face as the batting side is ultimately the scarce resource which you have to get the most out of.

Under Morgan, England realised that they weren’t making best use of these deliveries. Between 2000 and 2014, they lost all 10 wickets in only 35% of their 50-over games in which they batted first — they were, in other words, being too risk-averse in their approach to each delivery, and consequently leaving runs on the table.

The change was swift and devastating: England’s batters almost immediately took on more risk, and between 2015 and 2019 the team’s batting run rate spiked from just above five runs per over to comfortably over six.

If this all sounds a bit familiar, you’ve probably been watching England play test cricket since Brendon McCullum — himself a former international captain known for “relentless attack” — took over as red-ball head coach last May.

And, indeed, if you plot England’s batting run rate in tests over the last couple of decades on a similar chart to the one above, you actually see even more striking evidence of an abrupt strategic change.

What is fascinating about McCullum’s approach is that — if you reason things out from the first principles of test cricket — it’s not at all clear that, in a vacuum, this strategy is the optimal one.

Test cricket is not about per-ball maximisation in the same way that the shorter formats of the sport are, as there is no scarcity of deliveries to contend with; it is a game that is about iteration and accumulation, with time basically no object.

But McCullum isn’t coaching in a vacuum, of course — and England’s surfeit of batting talent comfortable with playing in an ultra-aggressive fashion³ means it may well be England’s optimal strategy.

For this, he has Morgan⁴ to thank. As Tim Wigmore put it in a good piece for The Telegraph this week, “the changes since 2015 have given England an extraordinary supply of white-ball batting prowess, and it makes sense to harness these gifts to the Test game”.

Regardless of whether it’s optimal, ultra-aggressive cricket is also just entertaining to watch — and followers of the English game will likely look back on this period and be thankful for the influence of both Morgan and McCullum.

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You can find the code for this piece on GitHub here

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1. Some things happened which were also outside the direct control of any of his players.

2. And that of head coach Trevor Bayliss, who was appointed in mid-2015.

3. And, on the evidence of the couple of years of test cricket prior to his appointment, their lack of batters comfortable playing effectively in a more traditional attritional fashion.

4. And — again — Bayliss.