Stats: How Virat Kohli fares with the most destructive batsmen in T20 cricket

The World T20 2016 is closing in towards a very exciting culmination. Over the last few weeks, cricket lovers all over the world must have had their appetite full with so many interesting matches and some great performances by their favorite players.

We saw how Chris Gayle pulverized the English team with his swagger and deadly strokes, a heart thumping, nail-biting end to the India-Bangladesh game, Virat Kohli's maturity and histrionics on seeing India through in their group encounters with their arch rivals Pakistan, blistering performances by Andre Fletcher, Steve Smith, Shane Watson, Tamim Iqbal, Mohammad Shahzad, Joe Root to name a few.

I am sure many of the fans were disappointed to see AB de Villiers not firing up to the expectations (his only meaningful contribution has been against Afghanistan, where he scored a quick fire 64 runs).

When T20 first came into the picture, many critics were skeptical about its longevity and popularity, but over the years, the skeptics have been silenced by the soaring popularity of the shortest format of the game. Even India probably started to look into the T20 format seriously after their famous victory in the inaugural World T20 in 2007.

The IPL followed pretty soon, and now almost every major country has their version of the domestic T20 competition, where almost every other player participates and enjoys the popularity for themselves as well as the sponsors. This T20 World Cup has seen a fair bit of competition between bowlers and batsmen, although we usually prefer to see the batsmen basking in all the glory by ripping the bowlers apart in all parts of the ground.

Still, even at this juncture, it is probably safe to say that T20 is still predominantly a batsman's game.

During the Asia Cup 2016 as well as in the T20 World Cup, one name that is doing the round is Virat Kohli. He has shown immense maturity and calmness in pacing his innings and carrying India towards the gate of victory.

Not only he scores heavily, but also makes sure that the patch to victory becomes smoother by his judicious stroke-making backed with a strong sense of maturity and calmness. Kohli's achievements within a short span of his career get more accolades because of the fact that he performs supremely well while India is chasing, which makes his enviable record, even more pricey.

Being a statistician and a lover of numbers, I thought that, why not compare Kohli with the most destructive batsmen in T20 cricket, Chris Gayle, AB Devilliers as well the current number one T20 batsman in the ICC rankings, Aaron Finch. The analysis was conducted using R (www.r-project.org), a language and environment for statistical computing and graphics.

It is a GNU project, which is similar to the S language and environment which was developed at Bell Laboratories (formerly AT&T, now Lucent Technologies) by John Chambers and colleagues. R provides a wide variety of statistical (linear and nonlinear modelling, classical statistical tests, time-series analysis, classification, clustering, …) and graphical techniques, and is highly extensible.

The S language is often the vehicle of choice for research in statistical methodology, and R provides an Open Source route to participation in that activity. The analysis was conducted using the R package “cricketr” developed by Tinniam V Ganesh. This package uses the statistics info available in ESPN Cricinfo Statsguru.

The current version of this package can handle all formats of the game including Test, ODI and Twenty20 cricket. The ‘cricketr’ package has several functions that perform several different analyses on both batsmen and bowlers.

The package has functions that plot percentage frequency runs or wickets, runs likelihood for a batsman, relative run/strike rates of batsman and relative performance/economy rate for bowlers. Other interesting functions include batting performance moving average, forecast and a function to check whether the batsman/bowler is in in-form or out-of-form.

So let's take a look at how Kohli performs against the very best in the world of T20.

The first part of the analyses involved at looking for the number of 6’s, numbers of 4’s versus the runs scores and the scoring rate of each individual batsman.

The above graphical display conveys the information that Kohli hits approximately five boundaries on an average to reach a score of 50 in a match. This trend seems to be very similar in all the other batsmen compared with him in this analysis.

I don't think anyone would say at this juncture that Virat is a very destructive batsman in terms of pulverizing the opposition bowlers by hitting massive sixes. This is also evident from the above picture, which shows that he has hit only one six when he has scored between 30 to 60 runs in majority of the innings

When he went beyond the score of 60, there has been instances where he has hit two sixes. Interestingly, in few matches, where he scored some 40 odd and 80 odd runs, he scored those runs by hitting three to four sixes. So here is some evidence that may be given, a scenario where Virat scores a 100 or close to 100 in a game, he may hit more sixes than his usual average.

Now in a comparative scenario, we see that ABD hits, at least, three sixes when he scores between 30-70 runs in an inning. But given the similar scenario, if Virat Kohli hits two sixes, chances are that he will be ending up with a bigger score than ABD.

Finch, the number 1 batsman, shows a very interesting feature. Even when he scores below 60 in an inning, he hits three to four sixes to reach that score, displaying the destructive nature of this Aussie batsman. Obviously, the 14 sixes seem to be an anomaly in this case for Finch, which goes back to 2013 when he scored a massive 156 runs against England in Southampton.

Chris Gayle, on the other hand, seems to be a delight for us, as he is pretty consistent in terms of hitting sixes. The general trend in his innings is pretty clear from the graph that as he goes on to score higher, the number of sixes increases.

Thus, Virat Kohli probably needs to catch up with these stalwarts as far as T20 hitting is concerned, but again we never associated him with massive hits which are synonymous with someone like an ABD or Gayle who uses either weird improvisation, 360-degree hitting or brute raw power.

But apart from power, technique, consistency and match winning performances under tense pressure situations also matters equally and given the scenario that we have been encountering over the last few months, Virat is pretty much there in terms of providing those winning moments.

Relative mean strike-rate:

Let’s see how these batsmen compare in terms of relative mean strike rate:

Again, there is no big surprise as Finch has better strike rates than Kohli. However, one sees Kohli with almost same strike rate as that of ABD between scores of 40 to 50. ABD clearly beats his opponents in a massive way in scores between 60 to 80, where his strike rate is closing the 250 mark.

Between Gayle and Finch, Gayle has a better strike rate in scores near 100. However, one must salute Finch for that superhuman inning of 156 where he scored at a strike rate of 248. So it seems like Kohli may not be scoring runs as quickly as the very best in the world, also, his strike rate takes a steep dip when he tends to score more runs in an inning, but given his age and a long career ahead of him, we can always be hopeful.

Relative runs frequency vs Runs

Now here comes the analysis which will definitely put a smile on every Kohli fans’ face:

As you can see from the above plot that Virat Kohli has a better run-frequency % as compared to others. This can also be backed by the fact that at this very moment, Kohli has the highest average of 55.4 and beats the next one in the list, Finch (average is 38.79).

One may argue that average also depends on the number of not-outs, as a greater number of not outs increase the average, but at the same time, we should always remember that there have been numerous instances where Kohli has remained unbeaten until the end and has seen India through. Also, the level of consistency shown by the Delhi lad has been top-notch.

On their day, Gayle and ABD will murder any opposition down to dust, no questions on that, but such instances don't occur too often. How many times have we seen ABD and Gayle really winning the game on behalf of their team in knockouts?

Also, they have not been consistent in terms of their average in the shortest format. Thus, the future seems to hold a lot of glory for Kohli if he continues with his magical form.

Runs(1’s, 2’s, 3’s), 4’s and 6’s as % of Total Runs:

The above plot again provides evidence that Kohli has it in him to be the very best and be at par with other destructive batsmen in the world of T20. He overshadows the stalwarts like ABD and Gayle in terms of hitting 4’s. Thus, Kohli's % of runs scored by boundaries is much higher than Gayle, ABD and Finch.

Also, in terms of singles, 2’s and 3’s, he beats Gayle and Finch and is at par with ABD, who like Kohli, is a wonderful sprinter between the wickets. Thus, it reveals an interesting picture. On a given day, if the boundaries are hard to come by (due to bowler friendly pitch, strong bowling opposition), my money would be more on Kohli or ABD than on Gayle, as the West Indian hardly makes an effort to run between the wickets on most of the occasions and relies on his raw power to hit those sixes.

There are high chances of that tactic getting failed if the opposition plans well and bowls in the right areas, thus strangulating the opportunities for Gayle to score freely. Kohli exhibits the traits of a classical batsman, with his ability to run between the wickets and hitting 4’s, making him a consistent performer in all the versions of the game, and probably it gets easier for him to make that transition in an easier way than the rest.

Runs likelihood vs Balls Faced vs Minutes on crease:

Next, let's see how these batsmen fair in terms of runs likelihood:

Summary of Kohli 's runs scoring likelihood:There is a 24.32% likelihood that Kohli will make 48 Runs in 34 balls over 52 Minutes.There is a 48.65% likelihood that Kohli will make 19 Runs in 16 balls over 22 Minutes.There is a 27.03% likelihood that Kohli will make 68 Runs in 50 balls over 68 Minutes.

Summary of De Villiers 's runs scoring likelihood:There is a 40% likelihood that De Villiers will make 6 Runs in 6 balls over 7 Minutes.There is a 16.92% likelihood that De Villiers will make 57 Runs in 36 balls over 47 Minutes.There is a 43.08% likelihood that De Villiers will make 20 Runs in 16 balls over 23 Minutes.

Summary of Finch 's runs scoring likelihood:There is a 28% likelihood that Finch will make 64 Runs in 42 balls over 58 Minutes.There is a 68% likelihood that Finch will make 15 Runs in 12 balls over 18 Minutes.There is a 4% likelihood that Finch will make 156 Runs in 63 balls over 70 Minutes.

Summary of Gayle 's runs scoring likelihood:There is a 55.81% likelihood that Gayle will make 7 Runs in 8 balls over 13 Minutes.There is a 25.58% likelihood that Gayle will make 53 Runs in 36 balls over 53 Minutes.There is an 18.6% likelihood that Gayle will make 90 Runs in 51 balls over 84 Minutes.

Thus, the above summary again backs our belief on why Kohli is emerging as the next best thing in Indian, or rather world cricket at this moment. There is a 27% likelihood of him scoring 68 runs in 50 balls faced. Even on his “bad day at the office”, Kohli has a 49% likelihood of scoring 19 runs.

If you look at ABD or Gayle, there is a shocking revelation. ABD has a 40% likelihood of scoring six runs and Gayle has an alarming 56% likelihood of scoring seven runs. Finch, on the other hand, performs at par with Kohli (justifying his number one ranking maybe!). Thus, there are higher likelihoods of ABD and Gayle to bow out quickly in an inning rather than them scoring high, whereas Kohli, on the other hand, has a 24.32% likelihood of scoring 48 runs (match winning in most T20 scenarios).

Although in terms of scoring above 50, both Kohli and Finch display similar likelihoods, Kohli beats Finch comprehensively when their individual scores are low (48.65% likelihood that Kohli will make 19 Runs in 16 balls, compared to 68% likelihood that Finch will make 15 Runs in 12 balls). Thus, Kohli has a lower likelihood of scoring fairly low in an inning as compared to Finch.

We can conclude by saying that Kohli seems to be performing at par with the most destructive batsmen in T20, and in many scenarios, Kohli is indeed overshadowing his counterparts. Given the worldwide popularity of T20, and the packing of the international cricket calendar with more T20 matches, it would be safe to say that Kohli has, in him, all the potentials to rule over the opponents consistently, without losing his classical flair for a very long time.

Finally, wholehearted thanks to ESPNCRICINFO for meticulously collecting, processing and cleaning the data used and Mr. Ganesh for the ‘r package’ and the functions used, which made my life easier.