Mini-orders and how they do

A few days ago, I wrote to David Barry, cricket statistics hacker extraordinaire, asking him if he could help out on generating stats for mini-orders. A mini-order is a group of three batsmen batting in consecutive positions in a batting order. Why this curiosity? Well, we've always been interested in partnership pairings for particular positions (the most favored one being the opening partnership, for very good reasons). But I've also been interested in seeing which groups of batsmen worked together, flowing from one partner to another. A group of three batsmen generates three possible pairings, and thus the overall strength of the threesome is a reflection of how well these three pairs have done well together (a mini-order that includes Langer-Hayden for instance, will include their stellar contributions over the years). David has run the scripts, and the very interesting results are up now. Check 'em out.