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2019 World Cup Preview: Jos Buttler is England's Most Impactful Player

5/26/2019

2 Comments

 
By: Chinmay Vaidya

​In horror or mystery movies, the famous line is usually: "The Butler did it". We may be experiencing a similar situation unfold at the 2019 World Cup and it'll only be a horror movie for the opposition. Jos Buttler, England's explosive finisher, will be expected to deliver big-time results at the end of innings. England is already one of the best run-scoring teams in the tournament, but Buttler's impact goes beyond runs on the board. He's usually the difference in wins and losses.

Most good players play well regardless of the final outcome. This isn't to say they don't impact the game, but they usually don't sway the result singlehandedly. Buttler, on the other hand, is volatile. As a hitter, he either clicks and produces runs in a hurry or gets out quickly trying to. This often determines what England finishes with on the board or how successful a chase is, depending on whether the team batted or bowled first. Here are Buttler's splits in wins and losses. The graphs below show his average and strike rate in wins and losses, with the blue bars representing his numbers in wins and the red bars showcasing the losses. Average is on the left, strike rate is on the right.
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We're talking a 40+ run difference on average in wins versus losses for Buttler. Those runs come at significantly faster rate in wins. The conclusion here is simple: if Buttler clicks at the end of an innings, it's curtains for the opposition. This is further supporter by Buttler's century and half-century conversion rates in wins and losses. The blue bars are his conversion rates in wins and the red bars highlight the numbers in losses. The left graph is century rates and the right graph is half-century rates.
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Buttler converts centuries and half-centuries at a ridiculously better margin in wins than in losses. But wouldn't these rules hold for every player? Surely everyone plays better in wins.

This is where we get to impact. I looked at the win-loss difference in averages for Jason Roy, Joe Root, Eoin Morgan, Jonny Bairstow and Ben Stokes, the rest of England's true batting lineup. Here are those numbers.

Root W-L: 64.67 vs. 36.44
Stokes W-L: 51.75 vs. 25.36
Morgan W-L: 51.24 vs. 28.1
Roy W-L: 46.81 vs. 29.14
Bairstow W-L: 58.2 vs. 32.11

We've already got Buttler's win-loss splits above and simple math says his differential will be the highest. But how much higher is it?
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Oddly enough, the aggressive Roy has the least difference between wins and losses. Root is so brilliant in wins he has a high differential, but the rest of the group is fairly similar. Buttler is in a different conversation entirely with a differential at nearly double of Morgan. This further cements Buttler as England's most impactful player.

Note: All statistics as of May 25, 2019
2 Comments
Michael Jones
5/27/2019 07:25:56 pm

By interpreting the difference between Buttler's stats in wins and losses as "impact", you're effectively (and incorrectly) assuming that correlation necessarily implies causation. A plausible alternative explanation would be that when conditions are more difficult, Buttler is more likely to fail and England more likely to lose, but his failure does not cause the defeat: a third factor causes both of them. The difference is less pronounced in a batsman who doesn't take the same "all or bust" approach because he won't cash in as heavily when conditions are favourable, but will still grind out runs when things are tougher.

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Chinmay Vaidya
5/27/2019 10:39:50 pm

Appreciate the comment Michael and yes, you're right in the sense that it's more correlation and not causation as is the case with most statistics. Impact is naturally a qualitative stat which is going to take into account somewhat subjective factors. In your example, "likeliness" is what I've tried to highlight with numbers based on Buttler's wins and losses. This doesn't necessarily mean a win or loss is guaranteed (Buttler can score a 100 and England can lose, he can score a duck and England can win), but usually when England wins, Buttler does well. As I stated, this type of split is true for all of England's batsmen but Buttler is a more pronounced case. His performance is more likely to determine the outcome for England than any other batsman. That doesn't mean it always will.

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