Redcap's BRL

A bonus and a double whammy: Should Queensland be in the Sheffield Shield Final?

This is a little off the blog’s usual topic but Redcap’s interests are more than rugby league, and perverse outcomes caused by curious incentives and systems of performance measurement are a topic familiar to the old BRL (see the Challenger Rule generally, or the 1910 season specifically for examples).

As day three of the Sheffield Shield’s final round fixtures commenced earlier this week, the Queensland Bulls knew three things:

1. The match between Western Australia and Victoria in Perth was likely to result in an outright win one way or the other
2. If WA beat Victoria outright, the Bulls would be eliminated, and there was nothing they could do about that other than hope it didn’t happen (an outright win by NSW against Tasmania was a virtual impossibility and could be discounted)
3. If Victoria won outright, Queensland would need to: a) draw their match against South Australia; and b) accrue at least 1.7 bonus points to ensure they finished ahead of Victoria.

At this point, Queensland’s path to the final was somewhere between forbiddingly narrow and impassable. They were more than 500 runs behind South Australia with just five first-innings wickets in hand. If the league-leading Redbacks put their mind to it, they would surely finish off the Bulls and clear Victoria’s path.

Long-form cricket being the wonderfully peculiar and changeable feast that it is, and the Sheffield Shield’s competition rules being what they are, Queensland’s path gradually widened. By the end of day three, the required bonus points had been secured, while Victoria had batted themselves into a strong position out west. With a place in the final already guaranteed, South Australia were showing few signs of pushing for outright victory over Queensland.

At the conclusion of a gripping day four, Victoria had won by 34 runs in Perth, while Queensland secured the required draw in Adelaide to go along with their 1.96 bonus points. They will therefore play South Australia in the Sheffield Shield Final at Adelaide’s Karen Rolton Oval from 26 March.

It’s probably fair to say that Queensland’s 2024-25 vintage was not one of the state’s finest. They won three matches outright and had a couple of creditable draws – i.e draws that would in a bygone age have seen them collect points for leading on the first innings. Victoria, who they pipped to a place in the final by 0.27 points, won one more match but ultimately fell short – both in the final round and during the season as a whole – when it came to bonus points.

But this isn’t about whether Queensland is a good team, or a mediocre team, or even whether they are a worthy finalist compared to Victoria. From a narrow, rules-based perspective, the answer to the question I posed by way of a headline – should Queensland be in the Sheffield Shield Final? – is very simple: yes, they should be – they accrued just enough points to qualify.

From a broader, philosophical perspective the question becomes: should the competition’s points system have enabled Queensland to be in the Sheffield Shield Final (obviously that doesn’t quite work as a headline)?

For those not familiar, since 2014-15, Sheffield Shield teams have been allocated competition points based on outright wins, draws and performance-based bonus points. Per the Cricket Australia website:

Teams get six points for an outright win and one point for a draw… Teams can also earn points in the first innings of each match for wickets taken and runs scored in the first 100 overs, aimed at encouraging attacking play.

Each team will earn 0.01 of a bonus point for every run over 200 they score during the first 100 overs of their first innings (for example 350 after 100 overs nets you 1.5 bonus points), as well as 0.1 of a bonus point for every wicket a team takes during the first 100 overs of their opponent’s first innings (for example 10 wickets before 100 overs nets you one point).

While it’s far from perfect (what system isn’t?), there are elements of this system I quite like compared to the old format where points were allocated based on outright wins and, when applicable, first-innings leads.

As you’d expect, though, there have been quite a few grumbles in the aftermath of Queensland’s narrow, bonus-points-enabled escape in Adelaide. Some of these can and should be disregarded as post facto whingeing by supporters of other states, especially Victorians. Even so, there are some gripes worthy of further examination.

Of course, there’s the undeniable and much-invoked fact that Victoria won one more match than Queensland did. How is it fair that Victoria misses out?

Why should Queensland be able to accrue bonus points from the hopeless position, more than 400 runs behind by the time points became available, they had done much to inflict on themselves?

And, inevitably, isn’t this all unnecessarily complicated and confusing?

Well, for starters, it certainly isn’t entirely fair, but what are we comparing this to? It was entirely possible under previous systems, where first-innings points were allocated to teams who went on to draw or lose, for a team to win more matches but finish with fewer points than others.

Funnily enough, the last time this happened under the old system was when Queensland (4 wins) were pipped to a spot in the final by WA (3 wins) in 1995-96. That was also the season South Australia last won the Sheffield Shield. Is it a sign?

It should also be said that the ‘it’s not fair to Victoria’ argument glosses over the fact that Victoria lost two more matches than did Queensland over the course of the season.

The other two questions touch on the logic behind the bonus points system, and it begins with CA’s stated objective of “encouraging attacking play”. Queensland’s situation was a good example.

Whatever system was in place, Queensland had an incentive to occupy the crease, thereby decreasing the probability of defeat. The bonus points system added a potential reward to the existing risk: they could (and did) accrue points by using their time at the crease more productively than they might otherwise have done. In other words, they were incentivised to move the game along, and there are plenty of other scenarios in first-class cricket where the same principle could apply.

You could also argue that there’s a deeper logic here; an incentive for teams to think strategically, to pursue marginal gains where they can be had. This should be bread and butter stuff in the age of full-time professionalism. Any professional team who can’t realise marginal gains in a competition where they could aggregate into a significant difference probably isn’t a very good team.

Then we get into the main reasons I like the current allocation of bonus points, even if some do consider it complicated and confusing.

Beyond outright wins, the old system of Sheffield Shield points allocation rewarded a single outcome: a first innings lead. But this made no distinction between a lead of one run, a lead of 400 runs or anything in between.

The bonus points system targets points allocation to outputs, or as professional cricket folk like to put it ‘intent’, rather than that single, blunt outcome.

If the game is heavily skewed in one team’s favour and bonus points are a factor, it will be reflected in their allocation. After two days of the SA-Queensland match in Adelaide, the score was 2.65 to 0.4 in favour of the Redbacks. That Queensland clawed this back to 2.85 to 1.96 by the end of the first innings through some superb attacking batting from a perilous position surely reflects well on the incentives in play.

Over in Perth, WA and Victoria finished 11 runs apart on the first innings and their bonus scores reflected the quality of bowling from both sides to that point: 1:1.

However, the virtue of the bonus points system, at least as I behold it, has not prevented another question arising: should we scrap all that and go back to the old first-innings points allocations? I wouldn’t be radically opposed, and I’m sure a few Victorians have noted that their boys would be preparing for the Final right now if the old system was still in force. Perhaps that would be fairer, or at least perceived as fairer.

But maybe there’s another question related to this, one that more precisely targets the flaw in the current system: why did Queensland receive a point for the draw they secured in Adelaide?

The excellent rearguard of Jimmy Peirson and Jack Wildermuth notwithstanding, Queensland still finished 244 runs behind on the first innings. As noted, they had a couple of creditable draws during the season for which they deserved something, though I’m not sure Queensland (or Victoria) deserved the double whammy of a point from a 244-run first-innings deficit and bonus points.

Should Queensland be in the Sheffield Shield Final? Yes, but maybe we need to look at how the competition rewards draws moving forward.