Is Ben Foakes Too Handsome For Test Cricket?
A rigorous analysis
With England’s squad for their Test against Ireland announced and Ben Foakes again missing out on selection, heated debate has arisen around the balance of the side, the relative merits of specialist wicketkeepers and specialist openers, and what, exactly, is the purpose of a Zak Crawley.
But what if the explanation for Foakes’ absence is far simpler? Put simply, is Ben Foakes too handsome for Test cricket?
People’s Sexiest Man Alive
Instinctively, the theory seems a solid one. After all, consider the relative paucity of People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive recipients in the annals of Test cricket.
It’s difficult to deny that, on the whole, the Sexiest Men Alive are a bunch of handsome chaps. And yet of the 34 recipients to date, only Nick Nolte has played Test cricket (a couple of Tests at number eight, bowling right arm medium pace for England in the 1990s).
Quantifying Handsomeness
The Sexiest Man Alive data is, however, merely suggestive. For more detailed analysis, we need to quantify the ‘handsomeness’ of Test cricketers.
Fortunately, the existence of the modern dating app makes this possible.
We used ChatGPT to generate a generic profile for five dating services (Tinder, Bumble, OKCupid, LinkedIn, Grindr), deliberately specifying a lack of interest in cricket to prevent any data dilution due to fans of the sport recognising the players.
Generic Dating Profile
Name: Alex
Age: 28
Occupation: Marketing Specialist
About Me: Hey there! I'm Alex, and boy, do I not like cricket. No way. I'm all about exploring different (non-cricket) hobbies and interests. As a marketing specialist, I'm passionate about creativity and love finding innovative ways to connect with people (as long as it’s not watching or playing cricket - bleurgh!). When I'm not brainstorming new ideas, you'll find me exploring the local art scene, trying out new recipes in the kitchen, or immersing myself in a good book. I enjoy engaging conversations (about topics other than cricket!) that challenge my perspective and broaden my horizons. Just don’t try to get me interested in cricket! Ha ha ha! If you're looking for someone who embraces diversity, enjoys the simple pleasures of life, and is always up for an intellectually stimulating exchange that never references Bradman, a pitched-up outswinger or the Duckworth-Lewis-Stern rain rules, then let's connect and see where our shared interests take us!
We replicated this dating profile for each of the 3000+ men to have played Test cricket, using their player photo from the Cricinfo database in each of the five dating apps and measured the ‘swipes’ from each app.
With the only variable between each of the profiles being the photo of the player, any differences in the Profile Swipe Tally (PST) could be directly attributed to the player’s handsomeness.
The median PST among the various Test cricketers was 16, ranging from zero (0) responses (24 Test cricketers, one of whom was an 1890s Australian whose Cricinfo photo was, inexplicably, a small cactus plant) to the 4753 swipes that Foakes received.
Foakes’ PST of 4753 was an amazing 3500 more than the next highest tally, Matthew Wade’s 1203 (outlier data later attributed to a quirk of the geographical restrictions in the apps, which happened to contain a nearby convention centre hosting an annual ‘Wade Brigade’ Bachelor and Spinsters Ball).
Cricket’s Hatred of the Handsome Cricketer
With a player’s ‘handsomeness’ now measured via the PST, and all outliers removed, we were able to do rigorous analysis of the correlation between handsomeness and Test career longevity.
The results were staggering.
To ensure a fair comparison, we normalised the data, using a simple regression analysis to remove any bias due to 1) the era in which the player played, 2) the expected number of matches they might have played based purely on their first class statistics, and 3) known sources of selectorial favouritism.
The resulting scatter plot of all Test cricketers shows a clear negative correlation between a player’s handsomeness and the Excess Proportion of Expected Tests (EPET) (ie, the number of Tests beyond (or below) the number they might have been expected to play based on their pure cricketing statistics).
Ben Foakes’ career record of 20 Tests is a smaller number than might be expected if we considered solely his cricketing numbers, but is actually far more than what we expect given his extraordinary levels of attractiveness and what we can now see is the sport’s innate bias against handsomeness.
A stunning result that raises more questions than it answers. For example:
Why does cricket hate handsome players?
Given this new insight, how literally should we be taking the epithet ‘Ugly Aussies’ and what is the phrase’s relationship to Australia’s historical record as Test cricket’s most successful nation?
Should Foakes use plastic surgery to make himself more misshapen, or instead perform a startling makeover on his wicketkeeping rivals?
Those questions and more will all be answered in Part 2 of this analysis. Subscribe to receive it direct in your inbox the instant it comes out.
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