Blog Posts by Impact Index

By Jaideep Varma & Jatin Thakkar

Part 2 of 2 | Read Part 1

Continuing the story of the great contemporary Indian batsmen through the five phases of their glorious careers, through the singular prism of Impact Index.

PHASE 4 - September 2005 to October 2008

India P 35 W 11 L 9 D 15.

Notably beat West Indies and England away and Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Australia at home. Lost to Australia, Sri Lanka, South Africa and Pakistan away. Drew with England and South Africa at home.

Ganguly’s angst-ridden exit as captain and the strange period of cloak-and-dagger politics that followed (with Greg Chappell as coach) saw India dip somewhat from their previous highs. Despite overseas series victories under Dravid in England and West Indies, this side did not have the all-conquering air the previous phase had seen. Dravid’s decline as a player began in 2007, and he gave up the captaincy later that year. Under Kumble (who perhaps got the captaincy too late), the team was effective but not a

- Jaideep Varma & Jatin Thakkar

A thrashing once more - India's Team IMPACT on the game was a meagre 1.23 while Australia's touched 2.64 - an embarrassing difference for India.

* In a career context, these figures will be restricted between 0 and 5, with 5 as the highest on the IMPACT Index scale. In a match context though, the unrestricted figures tell their own stories.

Observations:

Jaideep Varma & Jatin Thakkar

Here are the scorecards of the matches in the series.

South Africa won the series 2-1. Overall, South Africa had a Team IMPACT of 2.20 in the series as compared to Sri Lanka’s 1.48, the big margin reflecting the huge defeats that Sri Lanka had in two of the matches, rather than the ostensible narrowness of the series result.
 
Here is the list of players with their IMPACT in the series (players with 2 or more matches) with the highest impact players at the top.

The IMPACT scorecard for the match. All figures between 0 to 5.

Yesterday, we had put up India's 5 highest impact batting performances in a match context against Australia. Here, we put up the highest impact 10 innings performances. Impact Index calculates the impact of an innings within the context of its match, so how a player's own team-mates perform and how the opposition players fare in the same match all determine a player's impact on the match. Given that, losing causes usually will not figure easily on any Impact list for obvious reasons. When they do (as in 7, 9 and 10 here), invariably the match goes close. Therefore, classic innings like Tiger Pataudi's 75 in Melbourne (1966) or Vijay Hazare's 148 in Adelaide (1948) don't make it as high on the Impact list as some other performances do.

Those that tend to make it here are feats against the odds (the tough fourth innings chase, for example) - and some high-profile classic performances (like Tendulkar's 155 in Chennai 1998 or Sehwag's 155 in Chennai 2004, or most prominently, Dravid's 233

By Jaideep Varma & Jatin Thakkar

Even though the match lasted just 4 days, Test cricket was well-served by this match. It was riveting for the first three days, as it seemed an equal battle between bat and ball for most of the match. Till the fourth day, when India went completely flat; first while trying to wait for Pattinson and Hilfenhaus to make a mistake (as opposed to attacking them) during which period they added a demoralising 43 runs. Then, the hallowed Indian batsmen, displaying a painfully familiar pusillanimity in the deciding innings, made it a one-sided game very quickly.

 The IMPACT scorecard for the match. All figures between 0 to 5.

- Jaideep Varma & Jatin Thakkar

Did a new generation of Australian world-beaters just get established in this series? Have India lost all the gains of their recent conquests? Does this series give us cues?

Impact Index presents its series report on the India-Australia Test series at the end of the 3rd Test as the series is not open any more and the fourth Test reduced to a formality that will be played out with different levels of motivation and intensity than what has unfolded so far (and clearly, somewhat different personnel too). We felt incorporating the numbers from that match in the overall series report will not provide the truest story of the series.

In any case, impressionistic viewing and conventional statistics hide some of the compelling stories of this series. Impact Index tries to bring out a few of these.

Here is an overview of the 25 players who have played in the series from both sides, arranged in descending order of impact made in the series.

IMPACT numbers in the