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Inside a pre-match prep sheet

The match preparation I build for a club side, shown with everything identifying removed.

Anish Ranade · Certified cricket performance analyst

The BCL report I published looks at a whole season and asks what champions do differently. This is the other half of the job: one match, one opposition, and a set of instructions a captain can actually use on the day.

It was a 25-over game. Everything below came from publicly available scorecards, assembled by hand.

What the venue tells you before anyone arrives

Across 23 completed games at this ground that season:

• Average winning score batting first: 253
• Average first-innings score when the side batting second won: 145
• Toss winners chose to bat first 74% of the time

That gap is the whole story. Chasing here is hard. If you bat first and get to 253, you are in a commanding position; if you are chasing anything near it, you are already behind.

The opposition had won the toss three times in six games — batting twice, bowling once. Too small a sample to predict what they would do. Worth noting only that they chose to bowl in their most recent game and won it.

Opposition: how they bat

The clearest pattern in their season was the powerplay. Batting first or second, they outscored the opposition by about 15 runs in the first six overs in every game but one — and that exception was the only game they lost.

Their powerplay average was 59. Ours was 66. So the target was straightforward: restrict them to around 54 for one or two, and we would have taken away the thing they rely on.

They had used four different opening pairs in six games:

Batter A was a new signing, and in form: 240 runs in three innings at a strike rate of 171. He was almost certainly opening. Who partnered him was anyone's guess — the numbers gave no obvious answer, and pretending otherwise would have been worse than admitting it.

Their scoring shape mattered too. On average they took 66% of their runs in boundaries, with a dot ball rate of 49.2% in games they won. In the one game they lost, they faced 150 deliveries and 90 of them were dots — 60% — and their boundary percentage dropped with it.

Opposition: how they bowl

Their opening bowler, Bowler P, had taken a wicket in his first spell in every game, and was their second-highest wicket taker. Their leading wicket taker, Bowler Q, usually came on as first change. The instruction that follows is not complicated: see both of them off without taking risks.

The overs to attack belonged to three others:

• Bowler R — left-arm orthodox. If first change was not Bowler Q, it was usually him. Anyone in our side who plays spin well should be looking for his overs.
• Bowler S — left-arm fast. Sometimes opened, sometimes came on after the tenth over. Left-arm over at this ground, with its shorter leg side, was worth targeting.
• Bowler T — left-arm medium. Used in several different positions, same principle.

One discipline note. They had bowled around 127 overs that season for 2 no balls and 44 wides. We had bowled 117 overs for 1 no ball and 49 wides. Proportionally we were the less disciplined side, which was a useful thing to put in front of our own bowlers.

How we bat, and why not to change it

We took slightly fewer of our runs in boundaries than they did, but our dot ball percentage was significantly lower. That is a real edge and it needed no adjustment. Part of a good prep sheet is telling a team what not to change.

What the captain actually got

All of the above compresses into four instructions.

• Win the toss, bat first. Target 253 off 25 overs — a run rate of 10.12.
• In the powerplay, aim for our usual 66, at no loss or one down. If Bowler P does not strike in his first spell, the first battle is won.
• If we bowl first, keeping Batter A off strike is priority one. Get the other batsman on strike and bowl dots.
• Judge the powerplay by two numbers, not one. If they are 54 for one or two after the powerplay and Batter A has faced only around 35% of the deliveries — 15 or 16 out of 48 — that is the second battle won, even with him still there. Starved of strike, he tends to give his wicket away.

That last one is the part I am most pleased with. A scoreboard alone would say they were doing fine. Pairing the score with how much of the strike their danger player had seen gives the captain something to read the game by while it is still happening, rather than afterwards.