Moral Victories: Re-Thinking the Draw

As the Nissar Trophy game moves into its third day, Delhi have more or less overcome the advantage of having a conceded a 132 run first innings deficit to the visitors SNGPL. Virat Kohli continued his good form to reach 91 not out to add to his 52 in the first innings as Delhi reached 1/242 (Akash Chopra 93*, Sehwag 37) after having dismissed the SNGPL lineup for 266 in their first innings.

The highlight of Day One was a lower middle-order hat trick by 27-year-old Imran Ali. He took 6/52 in the Delhi first innings, and was aided by his opening partner Asad Ali who took 3/32. Delhi were bowled out for 134. Ashish Nehra was amongst the wickets when Delhi bowled, but Ishant Sharma had an expensive opening spell.

It is interesting to see that the Delhi pacemen go for about four runs per over in the SNGPL first innings. Delhi have since responded by scoring at nearly five an over in the third innings of the match.

The game seems to be evenly poised at the moment. We have little to go on in this, the first game of the season. Early season wickets can be a tad unreliable. Even though SNGPL have to bat fourth, Delhi will feel more comfortable if they are able to declare and set a target for SNGPL, rather than being bowled out.

If you look at the history of Test Cricket, sides which declare and set fourth innings targets have almost never lost Test matches—not unless the targets were set by a desperate side which was behind in the series. In the first innings, Delhi collapsed from 2/90 to 10/134. It remains unclear whether this was merely a one-off or whether it indicates a clear gulf in quality between the first four, and the other seven (all of whom are regular Delhi players but have never seriously threatened the Indian batting line up).

SNGPL have to bat last, and while that may not matter as much on Day Three and Day Four as it does in a Test match (on the fifth afternoon say), Delhi have a fairly good pace attack.  Time is also a factor in this game. With six sessions of play left, and given the fact that 74 overs were possible on Day One, while the full 90 overs were played on Day Two, Delhi will have to account for possible stoppages due to bad weather in assessing their declaration and/or scoring rate.

The rules of the Nissar Trophy are not clear, but if it is awarded on first innings basis, then Delhi will have to force an outright win from here. The fact that they didn't lose a wicket just before the end of play on Day Two may prove to be more important than we might think if they go on to win.

A word about the coverage. It is striking to me that Cricinfo is providing live commentary of the One Day triangular series between India A, New Zealand A and Australia A, but not of this Nissar Trophy game featuring Sehwag and Misbah and Ishant Sharma.

Do you seriously think that viewers in India are more interested in Australia A v New Zealand A? I suspect that it is indicative of the almost reflexive judgement that four day games are boring, while limited overs games are not. The Nissar Trophy certainly did not suffer from a lack of star power.

The usual reason for this is that four day games last four days, and there is still no guarantee of a result. This argument is a stupid one (thats the best and most appropriate way of putting it), obviously there is the guarantee of a result, it is just much more intelligent and sophisticated than mere winning and losing.

The Draw is the most interesting result in all of sport, precisely because it does not suggest that both teams were equally good in the game. It says that the one side was better than the other, just not sufficiently better to be declared a winner. So a four day game between teams A and B can actually have six possible results:

1. Team A wins

2. Team A better than team B, but not enough to win

3. Team A and Team B both equally placed

4. Team B better than team A, but not enough to win

5. Team B wins

6. Team A and Team B tie.

The third result and the sixth result in that list is the rarest of the six possible results, and not surprisingly, these two results are the ones which indicate equality.

This is also why I disagree with artificial agreements about declaring the winner on the first innings to be the winner. Apart from reducing the incentive for the side with the first innings lead to play for the outright win (especially in knock out games like semi-finals, or in this Nissar Trophy game), it also renders all the cricket that is played after the first innings are completed to be irrelevant, as long as the side leading on the first innings does not go on to lose the game.

A better way would be to measure the state of the game after every delivery and offer points in league games like the Ranji Trophy super-league based on the six possible results listed above.

The points system could still be suitably biased in favor of outright wins. This will ensure that there will be no nonsense spouted about moral victories. A possible points distribution could be

1. Outright win - W:5, L:0

2. Being ahead in the game at the end W - 3, L: 1

3. Being dead even (draw) - W: 3, L: 3

4. Tie - both sides get 4 points.

In most games, distributions (1) or (2) would apply. This is probably how most games end. I wonder how Test Cricketers may see this.