Congrats to Um(a|e)r

Mr Gul, who can't seem to decide how to spell his name, just took 5 for 6 off of 3 overs, the first michelle in international T20s, and also the most economical figures in the format of the game (and probably ever, what with it being the shortest form too).

These figures are undeniably the best, I'm fairly sure no one would put anything else above those 3 overs, but at the same time, what really makes one set of figures better than another?

Classically I think that it's very rare that the more wickets the more valuable the performance when spread over a longer format, but not always, and even less so within the super mega short formats.

As a captain would you rather see wickets or maidens? Initially that's probably a reasonably equality to make, 1 wicket = 1 maiden. In T20, maidens are much rarer than wickets, but in terms of the impact, roughly the same maybe.

Of course, if the details outside of this go awry then either achievement is quickly forgotten... would a captain care about his favourite middle overs dobbler taking 3 wickets if he went at 16 an over? Or, to complete the analogy, bowled 2 maidens and then was slogged for 8 sixes and 3 fours in the other 2 overs?

So moving on from maidens, and dot balls along with them (as nice a stat as it can be in T20, props to Sky for adding them to the players summaries), the blindly obvious alternative is of course economy rate.

As it turns out, Um(a|e)r's economy was similarily amazing, going at 2rpo, BUT if he had also been slapped around, the "best ever" bowling analysis in T20i could well be 5-32, which compared to the newy relegated 4-7 (Mark Gillespire vs Keny, 2007 World T20) wouldn't be considered better. Yet there it would of been, sitting atop the table.

So using magic imaginary numbers, complete the equation -- 5 for 30 == 4 for X

20? 10? If there was an equation, I'm sure it'd be hated as much as D/L. If I crawled over statsguru long enough I could probably have a stab at a magic ratio, but that sounds like hard work for zero return.

The big arse pain about stats is always that they miss the realities of the match, who was the opposition, was it the openers falling, or a drab skittling of a sorry tail end? Those annoyances aside, there's surely a point, especially in the short game when all the commentators seem to talk about are dot balls being golddust, where "best" can't always mean "most wickets".