Published: Feb 12, 2015, 10:48 AM (IST)
Edited: Feb 12, 2015, 11:56 AM (IST)
As reported by India Today, a new research suggests that batsmen who were at the brink of reaching personal milestones were likely to modify their strategy in a way that harms the team’s purpose.
Queensland University of Technology (QUT) professor Lionel Page, who collected data on more than 3,500 One-Day matches between 1971 and 2014 said, “We found clear evidence that the behaviour of batsmen is affected by their personal rewards in the game.”
According to the research, players tend to bat more unadventurously when they come close to a half-century or century in order to increase their chances of achieving it.
“We found players react to individual-specific incentives in ways which can be detrimental to the team as a whole. For example, if a batsman is close to making 50 or 100, he will play more conservatively and hence score at a slower rate,” Page said.
“That is because in ODIs, batsmen should adopt a relatively high strike rate, taking the risk of losing their wicket to score more quickly,” Page added.
The researchers found take on a conservative approach to their game at that stage to reduce their chances of losing their wicket.
“We observed that while batsmen are conservative on their way to a milestone, they switch to a more aggressive strategy straight after reaching it, possibly to catch up with lost time,” they noted.
“This leads to a sharp increase in the rate of dismissals,” they wrote on the data that suggested that the batsmen’s strike rate raced to more than 40 percent after reaching a century compared to the time they spend on the crease trying to achieve the milestone.
After careful evaluation of more than 2,000 Test matches between 1880 and 2014, professor Page came to the conclusion that captains were far more likely to declare an innings only after a batsman reaches a landmark.
“One of the most interesting finding from this study shows that team captains also react to individual-specific incentives by accommodating them,” Page pointed out.
The research will appear in the forthcoming edition of the American Economic Review.
