Having just watched Andrew Strauss' terrific effort today, I'm completely cheesed off with various people who decide to ignore the importance of an innings due to the batsman getting a let off at some point. Its utterly ridiculous.
I've had this argument with someone before, who keeps banging on about first chance averages (FCA) (ie. a batsman's average if you take them to be out after the first drop in their innings). They are useless. Firstly, are we to assume that cricket follows some strange system whereby random events such as drop catches and lucky breaks arn't following random patterns? The only way FCA's can have any use (i.e. arn't relative to normal averages) is if one batsman has more luck than another - and luck by definition is random and therefore will not give one batsman more chances than another over a good sample period.
It is completely logical to therefore ignore these chances in the context of evaluating a players career as long as:
a) Fielders dont have some sort of agreement to drop more catches of one batsman than another.
b) Umpires dont have a vendetta against a player.
I think its safe to assume this doesnt occur.
Ive also heard it said that some batsman are more likely to spurn chances than others being an argument for FCA's usefulness. This is negated by the fact that players giving more chances will be out more quickly anyway! FCA's are a complete waste of time.
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