Category: Sport (Page 6 of 24)

The FA Terry verdict – “Mr” to you

October 5, 2012 / rob

The FA’s disciplinary proceedings against John Terry is worth a read in full. There are wonderful passages of prose such as this:

Mr. Ferdinand started to move up the pitch in the direction of the half-way line and shouted out at Mr Terry, “how can you call me a cunt, you shagged your team mate’s missus, you’re the cunt.” Mr. Ferdinand also made a slow fist pump gesture with his right hand, suggesting sex (a reference accompanying what he said).

Ah, the slow fist pump gesture. Textbook.

And this:

On his evidence, Mr. Ferdinand offered to shake hands with Ashley Cole, but the latter refused, saying “nah, you can‟t talk to JT like that.” Mr. Ferdinand said “what do you mean, if he‟s willing to give it out, he has got to take it.”

Quite. I’m with Ferdinand on that one.

Anyway. It’s an excuse to put the full 63 page report through a word cloud, via Wordle. Here it is:

Murray’s US Open victory: in numbers

September 11, 2012 / rob

2: number of players other than Federer, Djokovic or Nadal to win a slam since Marat Safin in 2005. (Murray and Del Potro)

4: different winners of the tennis majors in 2012. The last time that happened was 2003.

5: Murray won a major in his 5th final, the same as coach Ivan Lendl.

25: winners minus unforced errors deficit for Murray in the final. In all previous rounds he was in credit.

35: break points in the match, with 17 breaks of serve

54: shots in the longest rally of the match.

286: majors since last British winner in 1936. h/t Andy Murray website

294: minutes, the longest US Open final, along with Lendl-Wilander in 1988. h/t Guardian. The only longer final in history is the 2012 Australian Open final.

Plus killer fact to give Murray complete credit, h/t John Crace of the Guardian:

When [Federer, Nadal and Djokovic] won their first major they did so against opponents who had never won a major as well. Murray did so against a man who has won five grand slams and was the defending US Open champion.

The problem with Ashe

September 9, 2012 / rob

Poor old Arthur Ashe. The stadium that bears his name is not a fitting legacy. Every year there is the same problem at the US Open – rain, a Monday final (the 5th in a row) and the debate over building a roof.

The US Open has always put TV interests over those of the players, and the latest final weekend delay will only fuel the debate. But here’s the issue. Ashe is simply too big to put a roof on, without being completely rebuilt. There are bigger stadiums with roofs, of course. But to adapt what’s in place is really hard, given the way the tied stands slope upwards.

Compare Rod Laver arena in Australia, the main court of the Australian Open. I’ve overlaid the Google maps images of both stadiums. You can see how Ashe swallows it up easily.

Source: Google Maps

The US Open needs to get it’s act together, and scrap the plan announced this year that had no roof.

Otherwise, this is what the US Open will be known for:

Djokovic vs Federer vs chance: is the draw fixed?

July 5, 2012 / rob

On Friday, Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic line up in the semi-final at Wimbledon. Although they have never played each other on grass before, a semi-final meeting has a very familiar ring to it.

Well, that’s because it is familiar – and a bit too frequent, when you look at the odds.

In fact, since Djokovic broke into the top 4, it is amazing how many times he and Federer have been placed in the same half of the draw. For those unfamiliar with how it should work, here it is:

The number 1 and 2 seeds are placed at opposite ends of the draw. Then, the 3rd and 4th seeds are picked at random and placed in one half or the other, away from the top 2 seeds so that they can only meet at the semi-final stage.
For many years, Federer was #1 in the world, with Nadal #2 and Djokovic #3 or #4. Now, Djokovic is #1, with Federer #3. Never in a slam have Federer and Djokovic been 1 and 2 seeds.

So, to recap: for since half way through 2007, for each of the four slams in a year, it has been a 50:50 chance that Federer and Djokovic should end up in the same half of the draw.

In fact, since Djokovic has broken into the top 4, (which has coincided with an ever-present Federer in the top 3), they have been in the same half of a grand slam draw 16 times out of 21.

To get 16 heads flipping a coin 21 times is not good odds. For what should be a 50 per cent chance, it is running at over 76 per cent. That looks suspicious.

And in 2009 and 2011, they were in the same half for EVERY slam. That’s a 1 in 16 chance for the year, repeated.

Overall, unless my statistics is letting me down, the chance of 16 out of 21 coin tosses coming up heads is 0.0097 – that’s the binomial probability. Here’s the calculator I used – enter 0.5, 21 and 16 to see the results. That’s not very likely.

[Aside: They are such good players, that out of the 16 times they have been in the top 4 seedings and drawn in the same half, they have managed to get to play each other 9 times, with one or both players going out before the semi stage 7 times.]

Why would you want to play Federer and Djokovic in the same half? To get Nadal in the final, that would be one possibility, to try and engineer more Nadal-Federer finals. Or, more likely, it’s just chance. But a few more Federer-Djokovic semis, and perhaps the players should be hiring statisticians as well as dieticians.

Here’s the data in a Google spreadsheet.

John Terry vs Chris Huhne, Fred Goodwin vs Johann Hari: why it pays to wait

February 9, 2012 / rob

I can’t help thinking about four recent falls from grace. In essence, two are about awards, the other two about pre-emptive punishment. In all cases, we could benefit from being less hasty. I’ll explain why.

Let’s start with pre-emptive punishment. John Terry was stripped of the England captaincy while pending an investigation over racist abuse. Chris Huhne quit the cabinet following charges over his wife taking speeding points for him.

In these cases, the alleged crimes are totally different, but the principle is the same. Should someone step down from high office (the cabinet, the captain of English football) before their case is heard? And in both instances, the MP and player can remain just that. Why not go further – if they are not acceptable to lead the team, should they even be in it? If Huhne is not fit for cabinet, should he represent his constituents in Parliament?

Yet it was over the Terry case, the more morally worrisome and noxious case, and over an individual with prior bad behaviour (violence, infidelity), that Fabio Capello, England manager resigned. Capello said it was unfair to pre-judge the case. And surely, he has a point? If Terry is innocent, will the FA give him back the captaincy? About as likely as Capello managing England again.

Terry may be an odious person, certainly. But this is all the more reason to not give him the captaincy in the first place.

Which brings me neatly to getting things right in the first place.

Fred Goodwin was stripped of his knighthood. Johann Hari was forced to give back his Orwell prize for journalism.

In both cases, it seems the witch-hunt was hugely enjoyable for the press and public alike. Goodwin is an unrepentant, apparently unpleasant banker. Hari is a delusional journalist, protected by the Independent who should have sacked him when his dishonesty came to light.

In both cases, their prizes inflated their egos and should not have been given. Neither man can be blamed for accepting. If you are a multi-millionaire banker dealmaker, or a fêted journalist, darling of the left, a gong is exactly what you think you should be getting.

And yes, in both cases, a few checks would have made all the difference. Did Hari’s article stand up to scrutiny? It fell over pretty fast, as soon as a light was shone on his sources. Why give knighthoods to sitting CEOs? Why not wait and see if their deals work out, or if they bring a bank (and the country) to its knees?

In all four cases, it pays to wait, check and not jump in. Should Huhne still be a minister? If Terry was a good choice for captain before (he wasn’t), he still would be now. Hari should not have been awarded the Orwell prize; Goodwin should never have got close to a knighthood in the first place.

A banker, a footballer, a politician, a journalist. Very different crimes or charges. These men are problematic, certainly, but our eagerness to award or judge makes the problem far worse.

What if cricket counted centuries differently?

August 12, 2011 / rob

Alistair Cook’s 294 against India got me thinking today – why does 200 not count for 2 in the 100s column in a batsman’s career stats? And if it did? How would the stats look then?

Going from 99 to 100 may just be one run, but it’s the milestone. So why not 199 to 200? It’s the same achievement, 100 consecutive runs in one innings. So the chart below shows how the century list would look if scores over 200 counted as 2 centuries, over 300 as 3, and Lara’s 400 as 4.

In this chart, the accepted number of centuries is in orange, and the compound counting of 200s, 300s and 400 is in blue.

The first thing you notice is that although Tendulkar is still in top spot, his lead is cut, and he hasn’t got too many “big” scores compared to others.

Second – the big beneficiaries are Lara, who leapfrogs Ponting, and Bradman, who gets a huge boost. Sehwag and Hammond also move ahead of rivals, as do Sangakkara and Jayawardene.

Here’s the best list for data: Cricinfo – double hundreds, triple hundreds. And here’s my big100s spreadsheet.

As ever, it just confirms that Bradman is the best of all time. But it also would reward the effort of getting from 100 to 200. Time to change the counting system, I think.

The perils of comparing the greatest at different sports

August 5, 2011 / rob

It could almost be a sport itself – debating who is the greatest sportsman of their sport / generation / all time. The great names are easy to think of – Pele, Federer, Bradman, Woods. Or is it Maradona, Laver, Tendulkar, Nicklaus?

The arguments will rumble on, but a few statistical caveats should always be kept in mind. One is: You can’t compare between sports very easily.

Here’s an example which has made me furious. In a recent issue of Prospect magazine, Jay Elwes tries to make the case for Indian cricketer Sachin Tendulkar being the best sportsman in the world. Fair enough, a good candidate I’d agree. But just read the following paragraph:

At which point, a question arises: can Federer, perhaps the greatest ever tennis player, be measured alongside Tendulkar? One instructive comparison is the distance by which each leads the trailing pack. Federer has won 16 Grand Slam tennis titles. In second place is Pete Sampras on 14, which makes Federer 14 per cent more successful than his nearest competitor. Tendulkar has scored a total of 32,803 runs for India in Test and one-day internationals combined. Ponting, in second place, has scored 25,769, meaning that Tendulkar has scored 27.3 per cent more again than his nearest rival. His lead is nearly twice that of Federer.

I’d like to say this is a small blip, but it’s not. It seems to be the main data to buttress his argument. What’s wrong with this? In no particular order:

Why are total runs so important? Tendulkar is great, but he’s played more matches than anyone else too in both tests and one-day internationals.
How on earth can you make sense of a “percentage lead” when the range is 0 to 16? And compare it to a measurement system with range 0 to 30,000 plus? Idiotic.
If Federer wins the US Open next month, that puts him 21 per cent more successful than Sampras, up from 14 per cent. And the point is?
Comparing grand slams to runs is just bonkers. You accumulate runs, win or lose. You can’t do that with grand slams.
Why not compare total tennis match victories to runs? Or test match wins to tournament wins? It would be a more like-for-like comparison, although similarly meaningless.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

Cricket and tennis lend themselves to some fascinating statistical analyses. But this is not an “instructive comparison”. It’s grossly misleading, shows little thought, and does the debate about great sportsman no favours. Prospect magazine is a superb publication, but this is not one of their better articles.

Secret winning formula: high fives

July 11, 2011 / rob

Apparently giving high fives makes you a winning team! High Five!

You don’t have to be sport’s answer to Ben Goldacre to realise that it might be something to do with winning in the first place that makes people high five, rather than the other way about.

Why fist-pumps make you a tennis champion
Why a propensity to stand on podiums and spray people with Champagne makes you a winning race driver
Gatorade: tip it over your manager for best results
Why that weird running-hands-together-and-dive-on-the-pitch celebration will win you football silverware

The crazy world of Wimbledon’s prize money

July 3, 2011 / rob

In a good but not great Wimbledon final, Novak Dkokovic beat Rafael Nadal today. I was supporting Nadal (actually I am quite a big Nadal fan). So I did what you might call an “emotional hedge” and put a bet on Djokovic to win.

Some people see this as heresy. I’m not sure why. For no moment did I stop supporting Nadal. But after the match had finished, I thought – hey ho, cheer up, you made a few bob.

So my mood was altered. Here’s the e-ticket from BlueSquare:

Selection 1	Novak Djokovic @ 5/4 To Win – Win
Market	Match Winner
Event	Wimbledon Rafael Nadal v Novak Djokovic 14:05 03/07/2011

Bet Type	Single
Unit Stake	£40.00
Returns	£90.00

Very nice. Not bad odds either, for a 2-horse race, where the outsider had only lost one match all year. So a £50 return improved my mood. Not a fortune, but a decent sum for a small wager.

And then I thought – what about Nadal? Is he happy? I doubt it. He has lost the title, and the number one ranking to Djokovic. I’m sure he’s not having a crisis, but he certainly won’t be happy. Yet he’s just earned £550,000 today as runner up.

That’s 11 thousand times my winnings today. He’s definitely not 11,000 times happier than me, that’s for sure. Yes, it’s all relative. But I think Nadal would be unhappy today if he got £2 million of even £20 million. His game is now measured in titles, not money. He’s already earned over $41m in prize money alone, let alone sponsorship, so he’s set for life.

Which leads me to two thoughts. Money doesn’t make us happy – we all knew that really, so let’s move on to… why are sportspeople paid so much? And so much more than inflation? Nadal as runner up has just won more money than Lleyton Hewitt did in 2002 – less than 10 years ago. (Hewitt got £525,000 for winning, Djokovic just got £1.1m today).

Wimbledon has increased prize money this year by 10 per cent for most stages of the tournament (including winner and runner up), and by 8.5 per cent overall. This is much higher than inflation. Why do they need to do it?

Is there a prize money race with other events? Does prize money equal prestige? Hardly. Other tournaments offer a lot, but you would have thought the grand slams – which have a joint committee – would conspire not to push up prize money too high.

It also seems horribly similar to the corporate world, where CEO pay is many multiples of average workers. The winner earns eight times a losing quarter-finalist. I see the logic in halving the money as you go down the field, but a quarter-finalist has won four matches, compared to the winner’s seven – more than half the entertainment and effort for 1/8th of the money.

Is this fair? No. Would the winner be happy with a fraction of the winnings? Yes, I’m sure. So why don’t we change? Why isn’t the money more evenly spread around. It would be interesting to see which players kicked up a fuss.

But then again, I’m quietly chuffed with my £50 winnings. It’s funny what a little money can do.

The Wimbledon roof myth

June 22, 2011 / rob

There’s been quite a lot of rain already at Wimbledon this year, and that new roof has been wheeled out a few times. Which is great – for TV, and the 15,000 Centre Court spectators.

However, I keep hearing the people say that the tennis is “sorted out” and the roof will keep things on track so there aren’t delays.

Not really. It all depends when it rains. There are 13 days to Wimbledon, with an exponentially decreasing number of matches to be played. The men and women singles are both a field of 128 – which means you need 127 matches to work out the winner for each event. Centre Court can host two men’s matches a day – three if they started very early (between 9 and 15 total sets), and four women’s matches (8 to 12 sets).

So – here’s the tournament plan, the matches required, and whether the roof keeps the whole thing on schedule.

Weekday	Day	Round	Total matches required	Will a roof keep the tournament on schedule?
Mon	1	1st round, m&w	64	No
Tues	2	1st round, m&w	64	No
Weds	3	2nd round, m&w	32	No
Ths	4	2nd round, m&w	32	No
Fri	5	3rd round, m&w	16	No
Sat	6	3rd round, m&w	16	No
Mon	7	4th round, m&w	16	No
Tues	8	women qtr	4	Maybe
Weds	9	men qtr	4	Almost certainly not
Ths	10	women semi	2	Yes
Fri	11	men semi	2	Yes
Sat	12	women final	1	Yes
Sun	13	men final	1	Yes

Answer: the roof is great for the last four days, and maybe the second Tuesday. Anything on days one to seven and it’s all about show. The TV audience is happy; the centre court crowd (which is less than half the gate during the first week) is happy; but not the players or the organisers. Or the people with tickets to court one or ground passes.