ODI Cricket: should you bat or field first?

After a series of articles about what you should do if you win the toss in test match cricket, I couldn’t resist turning some attention to the 50 over short format game. In One Day International (ODI) cricket if you win the toss, should you bat or field? Or to put it another way is it better to set the target or chase the target?

The short answer is: if you win the toss in a day game – send the opposition in to bat and you should chase down the target. Teams that chase in day games win 12% more of the time. For a day-nighter, use the opposite strategy and have a bat first in the daylight and let the opposition chase in the dark. Teams that bat first in day-nighters have won 5% more of the time.

ODI cricket encompases two different games. Firstly there is the ‘day game’ where the entire match is played under natural light. The second is the ‘day-nighter’ game where one team gets to bat under natural light, but the second team gets to bat through the twilight and into the dark (under lights).

Batting in the dark removes the 12% advantage of batting second and adds an additional 5% increased loss rate. So I’m calling that a 17% disadvantage when you have to bat in the dark. I can see a real lesson to be learned here in the advent of pink ball day-night test match cricket which is played partly in the dark. – Declare on Dusk!

	Day games	Day night games
Team batting first wins	42%	50%
Team batting second wins	54%	45%
Bat first advantage	-12%	5%

Overall records

For this analysis I have used all ODI matches from January 2000 until August 2015 from ESPN cricinfo . This is 3534 games (1664 Day games and 1870 day night games) considering just those games between the countries in Figure 1.

Overall Australia has a fantastic record having won 2.5 more times than lost. Although Australia clearly does better at day games (yellow column – win/loss=3) compared to day night games (black column win/loss=2.2).

South Africa has the second best Win/loss ratio, followed by India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

Figure 1: Win/Loss ratio for all ODI (day games and day-nighters) (2000-2015).

Day games

For day games the choice of batting or bowling is largely a question of whether you like to set the target or chase it. Within a day, the pitch conditions don’t really change that much. The benefit of batting first and setting the target is that you don’t have scoreboard pressure of trying to hit a target. The benefit of batting second is that you have seen how the pitch is playing and you have a target to shoot for. The general philosophy is that if you have a team of Michael Bevans with nerves of steel who like to chase down a total you should send the opposition in to bat so you can get a look at the pitch and structure your chase around the total.

The records show that there is clearly an advantage to batting second for day games (black bars in Figure 2). The overall Win/Loss ratio for batting second in day games is 1.3 (compared to 0.8 for batting first). Overall the team batting first has won 42% of the time and the team batting second has won 54% of the time (the extra 4% are those no result wash out games or occasional ties).

Figure 2: Win/loss ratio for ODI day games

Figure 2 shows that there is clearly an advantage in chasing (higher black bars) for all teams accept Pakistan. Pakistan are clearly made of sterner stuff and are just as comfortable chasing or setting a total (yellow and black columns are the same height).

Given that chasing teams win 12% more games, you would think that captains would almost always choose to chase. Since 2000, the toss winning captain has chosen to do just that 61% of the time (Figure 3). Ever the clever foxes, New Zealand, England and the West Indies are all over this strategy (choosing to chase 68%, 65%, and 72% of the time respectively). Australia is distinctly the odd one out, who stubbornly choose to bat first (66% of the time) despite having a better success rate when batting second.

Why does Australia choose to bat first in day games?

Australia seems to still think it is test cricket and are applying their ‘bat first’ mentality. Australia only chooses to chase 34% of the time that they win the toss in a day game. This is despite having a better winning record when chasing. Australia have won 78% of the matches in which they have chased (regardless of winning the toss) compared to 68% of matches where they batted first. This is really obvious from the different height of the black and yellow columns in Figure 2. So why does Australia choose to bat first? Are they a bit slow on the uptake or just giving the opposition a sporting chance!

Figure 3: What do captains do when they win the toss in an ODI day game?

Day-night games

Day-nighters are a different proposition to day games. In a day-nigher, the team chasing has to bat under lights. Across all 1870 day-nighters played since 2000, the team batting first has won 5% more games than the team chasing (Figure 4). Overall the team batting first has won 50% of all day games, the team batting second has won 45% of games (the remaining 5% are washouts or the occasional tied match).

South Africa clearly like to bat in the daylight. Their win/loss ratio for batting first is nearly double that for batting second in day-nighters (Figure 4). For other countries the batting first or second seems to follow the general trend of a 5% or less advantage to batting first.

We saw for the day games, that that under the same conditions (daylight batting for both teams), the benefits of getting a look at the pitch and having a target to chase gives you a huge overall advantage of 12%. However if you bat second in a day-nighter, you still get the benefit of seeing how the pitch plays and having a target to chase, yet, you will still lose 5% more often. That is a huge 17% turn around due to having to bat in the dark. In my mind this is a good thing for the game. The negative impact of batting in the dark negates the benefit of being able to chase and largely removes any advantage in winning the toss for day-nighters.

Figure 4: Win/loss ratio for day night games

Captains certainly prefer to bat in the daylight (Figure 5). Fully 73% of coin toss winners have chosen to bat in the daylight. Pakistan and Australia appear to be especially wary of batting in the dark, but the approach of batting first seems to be a pretty uniform choice for day night matches.

Figure 5: What do captains do when they win the toss in a day night game?

So here is the odd thing. There is a 5% advantage in batting first in day-nighter and the toss winning captain chooses to bat first 46% more of the time. This makes sense. Conversely, where there is much greater (12%) advantage in chasing in day games there is only a 22% increase in the toss winning captain choosing this option. Although the recent Australia-India one day series shows that captains might be wising up with toss winning captains choosing to chase rather than bat.

As pointed out earlier, Australia is certainly choosing their own path here by choosing to bat in day games 32% more often than chase. Maybe this is a just a hangover from the quote variously credited to Australian cricketing legends; Don Bradman, Greg Chappel and Shane Warne “If you win the toss, bat. If you are in doubt, think about it, then bat. If you have very big doubts, consult a colleague, then bat”.

You can get all the ODI data from ESPN cricinfo. I have also included the dataset I used here in Truii – just log in and join the ‘Example data’ library and look under ‘blog data’.

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