Are you an unlucky bowler?

You can't do much about dropped catches as a bowler. Yet they happen, and it costs you a wicket. You do all the work and the fielder does the drop. So, in the words of King Cricket:

"it makes more sense to gauge a bowler’s worth by how many chances they create rather than how many wickets they take. Everything beyond that is out of their hands (and quite often out of the fielder’s hands too)."

This is all well and good for professional teams with analysts, but can you do it with the cricket you play?

Yes.

I know this because I ran an experiment on the team I coach to find out how costly drops were. You can do the same to prove how lucky (or unlucky) you are as a bowler.

Counting chances

Throughout the 2017 UK summer, I kept a record of dropped catches for the team I coach. Every time we dropped a catch I recorded where, who and which bowler suffered.

Overall the team caught 60% of all chances, including "Grade 2" or very difficult ones:

But we are interested in individual stats to see who had the most drops from their bowling. Here is the table:

In this table "chances" is dropped catches plus wickets taken. The overall numbers stack up without anyone being out of order compared to wickets taken.

However, you can also see that some bowlers were luckier than others. The top bowler by wickets also had the most dropped chances; one every 57 balls.

He was not the worst for luck though, as the second spinner had a drop every 54 balls. Looks like the spinners in the team got the rough end of the stick. It shows the value of needing good fielders if you bowl spin.

The take away here for the team is that you can give the spinners a bit more leeway as they tends to have less luck.

The bowler with the most luck was also joint third wicket taker. He had a drop every 169 balls. The other main wicket taking seamer had a drop every 126 balls. That is a significant difference over the spinners.

Take home points

• Counting chances is a fairer way to measure bowling skill
• Spinners tend to have less luck than seamers
• If you can prove you have been unlucky as a bowler, it can help you make a case for selection and tactical changes in the team.