Introducing the Cricket Web Ask the Spider Team:

Dave Wilson

I've always been a bit of a sad bastard when it comes to statistics, e.g. my legendary ability to list the track and field records as they stood in the Guinness Book of Records, 1981 edition (although my dad seemed to be impressed by that). Nice segue there, as it's from my dad, a useful bowler who took seven for four in a local league game, that I inherited my love of cricket. I'm constantly trying to re-write the record books, not from my cricketing exploits, but by looking at stats a little differently. In fact I'm so into cricket stats that I published a book - unfortunately, as it’s about rock music trivia my cricket-loving audience was not expanded as I’d hoped.

My dream is to definitively rank every player who ever played based on everything he ever did in the First Class game (batting, bowling, fielding), but for any ladies reading, my dream is to once more scale Mount Everest on a Harley.

Manan Shah

I am currently a software engineer living in US. I was born in India, but immigrated to the United States when young, but brought my love of cricket with me. Over the last five or six years, I have been using statistical methods to identify and help solve problems in academia and the health care industry. I believe that while statistics fall short when dealing with specific players, when properly used and taken in context, can illuminate many things about the game, especially at a macro level (trends in bowling, batting, pitches, etc). Aside from fulfilling a very geeky hobby, I hope to share my love and appreciation for a game that is rich in history and tradition.

Rich Dickinson

I have had cricket in my life from a very early age; I spent my early years in Yorkshire, often attending games which my father played in. I myself first picked-up bat and ball at the age of four. In 1998, when England triumphed over South Africa, my captivation into the game was complete, and since then I have put in much research into the many decades before those which I remember.

I have always believed that statistics are things which need to be treated with care; take them at face value, and they'll almost always deceive you. Look deeper, however, and there are many truths you can decipher about games, players, grounds which you have not had the opportunity to see with your own eyes. Cricket more than any other sport has a wealth of the statistically remarkable and absurd, and it has always provided me great enjoyment to dig-out such cases.