Hitting Against the Spin: How Cricket Really Works

Description

In an era of big-data, how are leaders in sport, business, politics and education supposed to use the power of this new tool productively? Hitting Against the Spin is an object lesson in how to use data and analytics to elucidate the science and structure of cricket. Easy to read and packed with illustrative diagrams, it manages to be both enjoyable and accessible to the newcomer who wants to understand the game better, and also shocking and absorbing to the expert. In the tradition of MONEYBALL, SOCCERNOMICS and INVERTING THE PYRAMID, it entertains whilst challenging preconceptions about cricket and lifting the lid on a wealth of ideas and details you never knew existed. HITTING AGAINST THE SPIN brings our understanding of how cricket works into the twenty-first century, showing which traditional ideas still hold in the cauldron of the IPL, and which need updating. O How valuable is winning the toss? (And how should captains use it to their advantage?) O Why does a cricket ball swing? O Why are there so many left-handed batsmen in England and Australia, but not in India? O What is a good length and why? How does it change by player and pitch? O Why do all Test bowlers bowl at roughly 55 or 85 mph? And none bowl at 60-75mph? From one of the world's foremost cricket thinkers - the man who first introduced modern data analysis to cricket, and has spent nearly a decade working in international cricket alongside some of the best players and coaches in the world - Nathan Leamon has written the book that no one else could write.

Nathan Leamon has a decade of experience working in elite sport. He read mathematics at Cambridge and is currently England Cricket's Lead for Research and Innovation, and the Lead Analyst with the England One-Day team. His first book The Test was long-listed for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year. When not on the road he lives in Berkshire with his wife and two daughters. Ben Jones is an analyst at CricViz, the world's leading cricket analytics provider. He read English Literature at Cambridge and now lives in Oxford. He has written for, amongst others, Wisden Cricket Monthly, Hindustan Times and Daily Telegraph.

"He held degrees in both English and Economics, and the ability to to articulate the world of one, with the words of the other." The writer here is Nathan Leamon and the subject is baseball pioneer Bill James. But Leamon (both a novelist and a data analyst) could just as easily be writing about himself. Leamon has a rare kind of high intelligence: he is open to all kinds of knowledge, not just scientific knowledge, and he understands which method is appropriate in which circumstance. Put differently, he is not only clever and original, but also wise * Ed Smith, National Selector for England cricket & author of What Sport Tells Us About Life * Fascinating and insightful . . . lifts the curtain to reveal the inner workings of international cricket. A must-read for any cricketer, coach or fan * Eoin Morgan * Sport has been revolutionized by data. In their path-breaking book, Nathan Leamon and Ben Jones use data to show that many of our preconceptions are false and reveal astonishing new insights into international cricket. Compulsory reading for fans, commentators, captains and players * Mervyn King * Deeply thoughtful, clever and open-minded . . . One way of viewing this book is as cricket's A Brief History of Time, a layman's guide to deep complexity, an act of communication as much as one of science. On that level it works beautifully well, engaging with concepts in attention-grabbing ways -- Jon Hotten * Wisden Cricket Monthly * Fascinating -- Steve James * The Times *