Sometimes It Really is Trott’s Fault
by Devanshu Mehta
Hypothesis: Jonathan Trott’s game is not suited to the 50 over game. His good batting in certain types of matches skews his figures, specifically matches where England bats first. England are setting themselves up failure when it will matter.
The above statement is my intuition. I proceeded to dig through the facts to confirm my claim. Or invalidate it.
Of course, Trott can disprove all of this in tomorrow’s match. So it goes.
The Data
The strike rates are generally not too interesting. He’s always around 80. Except when batting second and England lose.
Trott Strike Rate in ODIs
The averages tell a better story: 67 when batting first 37 when batting second. And most astonishingly, when he bats first and plays a long innings, England loses. He has an average of 87 when batting first in matches that England lost. Think about that.
Trott Average in ODIs
Theory
Jonathan Trott is a good batsman, on his way to possible Test greatness. In the 50 over game, he is suited to playing the anchor role. This role requires other batsmen to keep the scoring rate up. If he runs out of other batsmen, the jig is up, he needs to increase his scoring rate and he gets out sooner.
This mode of operation is especially well-suited to batting first, when there is no specific target total. When chasing a large total, the anchor role is fine a stop-gap but a strike rate in the 70s will not get the job done.
In fact, when England bats first and he makes a large score, they are more likely to lose the match. This may be because he takes up the bulk of the overs at a slower strike rate. Overs that in the hands of a better ODI batsman would have resulted in a higher score.
Conclusion, for now
This is not the last word. The broad data seems to confirm my hypothesis, but I’m open to change my mind. I am going through every match Trott has played to see which ones fit my theory and which don’t. Especially if Trott helps England chase down 350 in the next match.
Source
Deep Backward Point 
You should be careful not to confuse cause and effect. When England bats second and they lose, it is likely that everyone in the batting order has a lower strike rate – that is why they lost! It is also likely that everyone also has a lower average than their usual. A similar comparison would be the batting averages for batsmen when their team lost. Especially the 4th innings.
I would suggest a better analysis, if you have the time. Look at the matches that England chased and lost when Trott batted. At the point when Trott was out, how well placed were England with respect to the run rate? If it was considerably worse, then your theory is right. On the other hand, if the team was well placed and then the rest of the team members did not perform, then you cannot blame Trott except for the fact that he didn’t make it count.
Agreed– there’s much work to be done. Mostly in going match by match. But I do find it interesting that he does better batting first in matches that England ultimately lose. The strike rate is probably a red-herring.
Very interesting. In each of the categories there are hardly 10 innings or less and so the statistics are likely to be skewed by a single knock. I think this is what happens with Trott with respect to batting first & losing. There is one century and a 92 (the Kevin OB match) at 100+ SR which are tilting the SR. But equally what can be said is that, those freakish results & poor bowling are skewing loss statistics against him. For a more meaningful statistical analysis, we need more samples but the question is whether England is ready to give us the required number of samples ? 🙂
I rather think the problem with Trott is not his scoring rate but rather his ability to step up a gear or two in the death overs. The same problem as Dravid in his early years. Given his determination, i expect him to do a Dravid as regards his ODI career.
In terms of looking at IJLT’s performance while chasing, it might be interesting to look at (especially when he has a longer innings) his contribution to the team score (in %) and the balls played by him (in %) and the then, the SR comparison and then, link them to the team result.
Good call.
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[…] And once you’re back, read through the Trott dossier compiled below. This is what I used to come to my conclusions in the other article: the facts of every Trott ODI inning. These are subjective, but so is everything about #TrottsFault. [previously, here on DBP, I wrote about Trott's fault from another point of view] […]