Re: Fantasy Cricket for World Cup 2015
Does Samiullah Shenwari gets more than a hundred points from this match because he bowled 1.1 overs at economy of 1.71? He got more points (111) than Muhammad Nabi (67) even though Nabi got two more wickets than him and scored same runs with much better run rate.
It seems more balanced you try to make things, more imbalanced they become. :D
Well, what happened was odd realities that do not happen in normal circumstance. What happened with Shanwari was very unfortunate but in cricket that do happen a lot and we cannot take all into account. For instance, a catch dropped, someone is given out wrongly, runs scored due to miss-field, four or six that was fluke, and so on.
We cannot say that points scored due to abnormalities or luck (bad or good) is wrong points. One can only take into account points that should not happen under normal circumstances (not due to good or bad luck of player or team). One cannot complain for everything that seems wrong. Have to give credit to person making rules taking into all aspect of game as much as possible and make points fair.
For instance. In BD team, there was two situation where if Afghan team had made appeal for review they would have got the player out. We cannot say that since the player got away, his runs should not be counted. Similarly, in India match, Kholi was dropped early by Yasir and we cannot say that since he could have got out, his rums after that chance should not be included.
Shanwari incident was unique and I do not think we can take that into account. We do not know, it was possible that if he had bowled more, he could have taken 5 wickets or may have given 100 runs. If his first over would have conceded 15 runs than we would have had -27 points to his name.
Anyhow, only wicket points and penalty for ER to wicket takers could change many thing, giving no negative points for bowling bad (as it is for batsmen). But that is decision of decision makers, and I think decision makers believe that ER should get positive as well as negative points regardless of wickets taken and one can respect that. :)
Just consider that if Shanwari was not part of your team, you missed out on cricket freak chances. :) ...
On long run, this should make no difference as on some occasions freak chances may help your points and on some occasions such freak chances may not. I selected ABD as my man in SA team, but Miller did better. Normally that do not happen (it could have happened that Miller got out duck and ABD would have made a century), but that did happen. Miller made fast century and ABD got out low (though this was quite unexpected). Just imagine, if Miller was out first ball and empire missed it, and suppose Zimbabwe also missed it (or their review has expired), then we could not have said that Miller points are wrong. I think, in cricket, we have to accept such incidents, be that fortunate or unfortunate.
You can say that Shanwari points was points due to predicting that he would only bowl 7 balls and would give 2 runs. If one can predict such incidences and is gambler, than one would become millionaire :)