Cricket: Baseball the way to go in Twenty20 stats

Jacob Oram would like to see a more scientific approach to the compiling of Twenty20 statistics, believing the 'twin pillars' of average and strike rate are close to irrelevant in the shortened format.

"I'm a massive baseball fan and I look at the way they compile stats and that is the way cricket should go. They have stats for everything but we don't seem to be able to look past average and strike-rate," Oram said, at the same time acknowledging that batsmen need to be looking at a strike-rate of 150 at least.

Baseball's obsession with statistics is breath-taking in its scope and attention to detail.

More than any sport, it has quantified what other sports would call the 'intangibles'.

For example, a hitter with an amazing average might be regarded less highly than one with an inferior average but who hits better when there are men on base.

Baseball looks at a batter's ability to hit for power as opposed to singles, those who hit better in certain ballparks, against left-handers, against right.

They measure pitchers' abilities to hold runners on base, by the number of runs they concede and the number of pitches they throw. They measure velocity; they measure movement. Fielding, too, is quantified in myriad ways, including the faithful recording of every error a fielder makes, errors preserved for posterity.

Cricket is not even close to being as sophisticated. We know how many catches Stephen Fleming made in his test career but we would be guessing about how many he dropped.

Oram believes that middle order players could be made to look ordinary by their averages in Twenty20 cricket, whereas they might actually make crucial interventions that are not recognised by the bare numbers.

"But maybe I'm just saying that because my numbers are never going to look that great batting where I do," he said with a laugh.

Oram's figures are not too bad, actually, even if, before this morning's match against Pakistan at least, he had yet to set the tournament on fire.

But Oram said trying to "pad his stats" with a few cheap not outs was not something he was interested in.

ORAM'S NUMBERS
* T20 Internationals: 16
* Innings: 15
* Not outs: 4
* Runs: 340
* High score: 66*
* Average: 30.90
* Balls faced: 218
* Strike rate: 155.96
* Hundreds: 0
* Fifties: 2
* Fours: 28
* Sixes: 18
* Catches: 6
* Wickets: 3
* Balls bowled: 216
* Runs conceded: 337
* Economy rate: 9.36
* Best bowling: 1-14
* Average: 112.33