Although not as flawed as some batting statistics, bowling statistics are in desperate need of a revamp. Many players are rewarded with huge contracts because of their offensive prowess. This has lead to a slight attention deficit disorder when it comes to bowling and defending runs.

Father of sabermetrics Bill James is entitled to a disdain of rating systems which provide a better insight into a batsman’s ability. This is because there are so many ways to interpret the data from batting statistics, which is not the case when it comes to bowling.

Although a bowler’s number of wickets can be a telling statistic of their successes, it also goes hand-in-hand with the number of runs conceded, the number of boundaries conceded and the number of extras conceded.

We concede that you are starting to get the idea. It remains glaringly obvious, but perhaps not on the first look, that bowling statistics in their present form can only tell us which bowlers are conceding the least amount of runs and therefore, making fewer mistakes.

Using runs scored as part of the bowler’s statistics places a variety of components under the bowler’s responsibility, many of which he has no control over. When all is said and done, a bowler only has control over the line, length, velocity and ball movement (swing) on any given delivery. With the help of their captain they also have control over fielder placement but once the ball leaves their hand, the bowler really has no more control on the game.

A bowler’s direct influence on how runs are scored ends before anyone else’s, and yet they are still given responsibility for so many elements that can alter the outcome, virtually all of which are completely out of their control.

Take one of the most simple moments in a T20 match, for example. A batsman receives a well-directed yorker from a bowler late in a T20 game, and all he can do is bunt it down to long-on. The non-striker has bolted and decides to take a two, the long-on fielder is slow to react allowing the non-striker to make it back just before bowler takes the bails off. In traditional cricket that is two runs. Two runs against the bowler and two runs towards the batsman and total.

However, the reason the extra run was scored wasn’t the bowler’s fault, and it had little to do with the striking batsman. It was the non-striker and the fielder in conjunction which allowed a second run, and yet it goes against neither of their names. In a perfect world there would be a metric that allows us to work this out.

One of the new statistics we are using to combat this is ‘Bowler Control Index (BCI)’. This metric is used to estimate the number of times the bowler rather than the batsman influences the outcome of any delivery. The formula focuses on the number of bowler-controlled deliveries—those which the bowler has total control over the outcome—out of the total number of balls bowled.

In 1999, Voros McCracken identified the same flaw appearing in baseball’s earned run average statistic and introduced the idea of defence-independent pitching statistics which has since seen a vast development within the sabermetrics movement.

The proposed Defence-Independent Bowling Statistic (DIBS) includes only a count for measures that the bowler has complete or near sole responsibility for, dot balls, boundaries conceded, extras conceded and wickets taken.

Batsmen scoring runs off bowlers is unpreventable and some of the new metrics include calculating the percentage of scoring shots, percentage of boundaries, percentage of extras and run conceding potential of each bowler.

By combining already established metrics however, we can give each bowler an ‘X-Factor Rating’. X-Factor takes into account both the players’ bowling strike rate (average number of balls bowled per wicket taken) and their economy rate (average number of runs conceded for each over bowled). Therefore, the X-Factor gives a readout to demonstrate not just how effecient a bowler is at taking wickets, but also how effective they are at preventing runs being scored.

With the advent of Twenty20 cricket, it is becoming more and more important that bowlers are given credit where credit is due. A bowler’s ability to prevent run-scoring in addition to taking wickets is an increasingly important part of being able to bowl “at the death” and close out tight games.