Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cricket

Batting Graphs

I just had a nice idea for something I can contribute. For a while now I've been using Microsoft Excel to create batting graphs, the kind that show a batsman's scores and average over time (the sort of graph that HowStat gives). I was just doing this because I wanted to (and because I didn't know HowStat did the graphs when I started), but I just thought that they would make a nice addition to Wikipedia. They are all just generated from lists of figures in Excel, nothing fancy, but I think they are a suitably encyclopaedic sort of diagram, quite interesting and informative, plus a good way to put my interest in cricket stats to some sort of use. Technically I could produce them for every single test player, but I like to do the interesting ones like Bradman, Tendulkar etc.

I've uploaded some example graphs of Don Bradman and Steve Waugh for people to comment on. Image:Bradman Graph 1.JPG is the way that all of mine already are. Image:Bradman Graph 2.JPG has a different line style as the first can get messy for a player with lots of innings as the points all blur together. Image:Bradman Graph 3.JPG has the innings labelled by year, which looks a little messy I guess as the innings aren't evenly distributed by year. Image:Waugh Graph 1.JPG shows a player with lots of innings. Notice that it's on the same scale as the Bradman graphs. This allows comparison but can cause a lot of empty space at the top in some cases. Image:Waugh Graph 2.JPG has the automatic scale which fixes this problem.

These are just some of the things I can do with them. Does anyone think putting these in articles is a good idea, and does anyone have any more suggestions or points for improvement? Raven4x4x 10:36, 6 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

What I think would be really interesting is some sort of moving average — for example, the average of the last 20 innings, although there are more sophisticated and possibly better versions that gradually fade out older innings. The problem with the career average is that it wobbles around a lot at the beginning and then pretty much settles down however well or badly the player does. A moving average would show how well he was performing at various stages of his career. Stephen Turner 11:06, 6 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

a great idea and a few suggestions:

graphs need a meaningful title eg. "Steve Waugh career batting average"
I agree a moving average trend line would be good - suggest 5 point
I'd remove markers from lines
x-axis labelled with years means heaps more than 1,11,21,31 etc. Otherwise you really need an x-axis title
y-axis should auto-scale like Image:Waugh Graph 2.JPG

-- Ian ≡ talk 13:01, 6 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestions:

Please save it as png format. jpeg is meant for photographs only. (Ideally the graphs should be svg).
the extension should be in small case (png and not PNG)
Would prefer you use more bright and colourful graphs. Background=white, bars=red, average=bright blue.

User:Nichalp/sg 17:04, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments and suggestions. Most of them are very easy changes to make, and now I think of it they probably would look better that way. One question though on the file extention: I know .png is prefered for diagrams and that isn't a problem at all, but may I ask why this is so? I assume it's some sort of quality thing that I don't know much about. I don't think I have anything on my computer that can save in SVG format, I've certainly never used it before anyway.

Oh, and a point on the moving average suggestion. If I just take the average of the last 5 innings (or 20 or whatever) the line will pretty much just follow the scores. It's doesn't seem to tell you a lot that can't be got from looking at the individual innings. Raven4x4x 11:17, 7 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

JPEG is a "lossy" format — that means it compresses the image well, but it loses information. You can't recover the exact original image from a JPEG. PNG is "lossless" — the image is exactly the same afterwards. Diagrams are small enough not to need lots of compression. Furthermore, the information which JPEG loses is designed to be details you won't notice missing on a photograph. It makes the image a bit smudgier, which is fine for a photo, but a disaster for a chart.

As for the moving average. I think if you take enough innings it will be informative. That's why I suggested 20 not 5. Of course, maybe I'd be proved wrong if I saw one. But the career average doesn't tell you much more than what the player's final average is. You could almost replace it by a single point on the chart.

Stephen Turner 12:22, 7 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

You can publish SVG with openoffice, and I believe there is a plugin for excel and word. SVG enables you to scale to any resolution without losing quality as it is a vector image not raster. User:Nichalp/sg 18:59, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

I took all your suggestions on board, and came up with Image:Bradman Graph Modified.png. I found that 10 innings seemed pretty good for the moving average. Raven4x4x 09:27, 8 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

If you could remove those black borders from those bars, it would look brighter and redder. User:Nichalp/sg 09:48, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

It's definitely improving, but I think the moving average still isn't right. Bradman had 11 consecutive innings below 80 in 1933-34, none of them were not out, and yet your moving average only drops to 100. (This also makes me think that out and not out innings should somehow be distinguished on the graph). Stephen Turner 10:43, 8 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I see why the moving average wasn't right: I was taking the average of his last 10 career average figures, rather than his last 10 scores. Damn. I've uploaded a better version with the correct average. I think this is pretty much what they should look like. Raven4x4x 07:07, 9 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the moving average line is just what I was hoping for. But I'm afraid the calculation still isn't completely right :) You just divided by 10 without ignoring not out innings. For example, in his last 10 innings, Bradman scored 565 but three of them were not outs, so his average should be 80.7 not 56.5.

I would still like to see the not out innings distinguished on the graph somehow. For example, I remember Andrew Strauss getting a 0 not out near the beginning of his career, when England had to get 1 to win in the fourth innings. It would be unfair to make him look as if he got a duck.

Stephen Turner 07:47, 9 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that indicating not outs would be a good idea, but the problem is how to do this. A different coloured bar seems the obvious choice, and would be very easy to do, but of course I can hardly do that to Strauss' zero not out can I? I suppose you can tell that he didn't get out for a duck because his average didn't go down. Still I'd appreciate any other suggestions. Raven4x4x 11:18, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I've decided to start making the graphs and adding them to player's articles. This might be a slow process until Uni finishes for me, but I'm eager to start. I've added the Don Bradman one to start (I fixed the moving average to include not-out innings, but I still couldn't think of a good way to indicate not out innings). I'll list the draft example graphs above for deletion, as we won't be needing them anymore. Raven4x4x 08:15, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Well done! It looks good now, and a worthwhile addition to the Bradman article.

Sorry, I missed your message of 2005-10-13. The only idea I have for the not outs is some sort of blob on top of the bar. A little yellow circle or yellow star maybe, or perhaps an upward-pointing arrow of some sort. I'm not sure what any of these would look like though. They would increase clutter a bit, but I still think it's necessary information. (The moving average could go still down after a 0* if the innings 10 ago was very a large one, and has now dropped out of the reckoning).

Stephen Turner 08:44, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The innings that comes after the 299* in 1932/3 is the duck in the first innings of the Bodyline series. In the graph, the running average goes up a bit after this duck. None of his seven ducks seems to have caused a significant dip in the running average. Shall I hazard a guess that the ducks somehow got ignored while calculating it ? Tintin 09:44, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Style again (sorry!)

At the moment, someone going to 1971-72 South African cricket season will see a blank page, although the summary has been written, because it's at 1971/2 South African cricket season. There's also Gillette Cup in 1971/2 rather than 1971-72 Gillette Cup, 1971/2 Gillette Cup etc, though I think this is less of a problem since readers are somewhat more likely to look directly for the season than competitions within it.

As more non-English season summaries are written, this problem will become more severe, so we really do need to resolve it quickly. Putting aside my own personal preferences, I think the pragmatic view would be to ensure that someone looking for the page will find it; that seems to me to be more important than rigid consistency. That being so, wouldn't the easiest thing to do simply to leave season summaries wherever they're written at first, and create redirects from the most obvious other styles? It would mean a lot of redirects, but redirects are cheap and it would avoid another James-style argument! Loganberry (Talk) 15:45, 6 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Further to this... regarding the 1990 ICC Trophy (yes, I am still working on those things!), should I include a Category:1990 Dutch cricket season or would that be excessive given that there was no men's first-class or List A cricket in the Netherlands that year? (The Women's European Championship, which is List-A standard, was also held there in 1990.) Loganberry (Talk) 23:21, 6 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

In the absence of any comments on this, I probably will unilaterally add those redirects at some point, while I probably won't bother with the Dutch cricket season cat. Loganberry (Talk) 23:36, 8 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The Invincibles

I made a request to move the article Invincibles to The Invincibles. You can vote at Talk:Invincibles. -- Ian ≡ talk 09:42, 10 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

That's fixed. -- Ian ≡ talk 01:07, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2011 Cricket World Cup

Unfortunately my article, 2011 Cricket World Cup, has been nominated for deletion. Since this row has just erupted, and the venue will be selected next year, I think it's fair that we already have an article on it. I'd be grateful for supportive comments on the AfD. Thanks, jguk 21:57, 13 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I looked for this article when I wrote Major League Cricket, so I could link to it, and was surprised it didn't already exist at that time. I'm glad it's up now. -dmmaus 04:25, 14 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Featured list candidates

I've add three more featured list candidates. Unfortunately, at present they haven't generated much comment. Any votes (either support or object) and constructive comments would be welcome. The nominees are as follows:

Thanks, jguk 11:46, 15 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

A few suggestions...

I think the pending tasks list on the top of this talk page should really be on the main project page. There are other things that's qualify as 'pending tasks' on there and I'm sure that more of them would get done from there than being hidden away on the talk page.

Also is there a 'List of Cricket Articles' that we could make into a cricket-specific recent changes page? Wikipedia:WikiProject_Cryptography has one of these. I imagine a cricket one would be significantly busier, but it would still be useful for keeping vandals out of the cricket topics.

--Cherry blossom tree 13:35, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think cricket articles get vandalised much. The cricket page ofcourse does; there are always some crackpots who think that cricket is boring, but other than that, I've hardly come across vandalism. But there's no harm in doing what you say. User:Nichalp/sg 13:41, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Shane Warne has been getting vandalised a lot recently. I must have reverted it a dozen times in the past few weeks. -dmmaus 23:25, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

West Indian cricket pictures

If anyone has freely licensed pictures of anything to do with the West Indian cricket team - players, grounds, crowdshots, whatever - could they let me know. I'm trying to get West Indian cricket team up to FA status and the lack of pictures is a big hindrance. Any help would be much appreciated, jguk 14:07, 16 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Here's some:

I'll keep an eye out for more. If you browse the Don Bradman collection [1] there's heaps of photos which are out of copyright. Anything taken in Australia pre 1955 can be tagged {{PD-Australia}}. -- Ian ≡ talk 00:37, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Seems like I'll have to search the net for Aussie pictures, jguk 05:54, 17 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]