Nice idea from Italy

I got a lovely e-mail from Marco in Rome the other day. Christmas Eve it was, and Marco revealed that he is a mad-keen Derbyshire fan, though he has never lived in the area. It illustrates again the pulling power of the county and how many people follow their fortunes.

Marco suggested that one method that Derbyshire could try to improve their fortunes was the Moneyball method, used with great success in baseball. Now I have to admit that baseball has never been a sport I have followed, though I went to a game in Memphis a few years back and enjoyed the family experience of the game.

Anyway, Marco highlighted that the Oakland Athletic baseball team, with a playing budget of 'only' $41 million, became competitive with bigger clubs who spent three times as much. As explained in Wikipedia:

"The central premise of Moneyball is that the collected wisdom of baseball insiders (including players, managers, coaches, scouts, and the front office) over the past century is subjective and often flawed. Statistics such as stolen bases, runs batted in, and batting average, typically used to gauge players, are relics of a 19th century view of the game and the statistics that were available at the time. The book argues that the Oakland A's' front office took advantage of more empirical gauges of player performance to field a team that could compete successfully against richer competitors in Major League Baseball."

In cricket terms, it essentially means that you pay less attention (though naturally some) to batting and bowling averages and more to the other things that people bring to the side, like fielding, team spirit and attitude. It was used successfully in the first year of IPL by the Rajasthan Royals in selecting a team. Players could win matches with brilliant fielding and a quick thirty as much as those who  scored more runs but were less interested in the team ethic.

It is, of course, what Eddie Barlow brought to Derbyshire cricket in the 1970s and Dean Jones in a later period. You get people playing as a unit and the unit is an unstoppable force. When everyone realises that eleven performances are essential to win matches (unless you have a couple of outstanding individuals) success is generally a consequence. It has been done in other sports too - Ipswich under Alf Ramsey and Nottingham Forest under Brian Clough had few outstanding players, but they worked for one another and it brought dividends. Leicestershire won the T20 with an average team that never knew when they were beaten.

If John Morris and Luke Sutton can fashion a strong team spirit for 2011 then Derbyshire can also be competitive. Whether they formalise an interest in the Moneyball system I can't say, but the principles are sound ones and I expect to see our teams work under a captain that I trust to lead from the front.

Thanks for your mail Marco and for your kind comments about the blog - and do keep in touch!

On a different tack, I can only assume that another correspondent the other night isn't a regular reader when he said that I never criticise Derbyshire. I do, but I try to make it constructive and don't do it for the sake of it, like some. When we play badly I say so, when I think things could be done better (eg membership rates, querying why we built a stand when we can't fill the ground) I say so. At the end of the day though, as I've said before ad nauseam, I am a fan. I could probably support a team that won more trophies quite easily, maybe Nottinghamshire as my folks live inside that border, but that's not going to happen...

And that next trophy, whenever it happens, will be all the sweeter because of that.