Announcing a statistical study on wicketkeeping

With all this talk about Kamran Akmal's decline in recent months, I wanted to look at the statistics on offer and try and figure out if his glovework and batsmanship are truly in decline. I've been working on this for quite a while now, and in doing so, have managed to put together some interesting trends. I'll post them on this site routinely over the next couple of weeks, as we don't have too much live cricket going on. A direct link to the study can be found here.

I also wish I had access to Cricinfo's ball by ball statistics database. If I had access to "byes conceded" or "dropped chances", I'd be a happier man. On that note, does anyone know of other cricket databases, where I can access this information or does Cricinfo have the monopoly? As a result of this, I am a bit handicapped as to what I can work with. So instead of judging a keeper by his failures (which would probably be a more accurate technique), I will rank them by their contributions. This contribution consists of their batting and fielding averages. Some of the questions that I wish to address are:

• Can I rank the contribution of wicketkeepers against other keepers?
• Can I rank the batting and fielding contributions of wicketkeepers to their team?
• Is Kamran Akmal's contribution to the Pakistani side in decline?
• How does Kamran Akmal compare with past Pakistani keepers?
• Are exceptionally good wicket-keeping batsmen (Gilchrist, Sangakarra, Flower) an anomaly? Or is this a trend of the times?
• If so, can I show that the times indeed, are changing, in that, keepers are becoming better and better at batting?
• Who are the best keepers by year with regards to their contributions?
• Which keepers are most consistent in their performance?

Some questions may not be answered, while other queries may yet be added to this list. Stay tuned to this blog as results on this study are posted.