Test cricketers score quickly during the ‘nervous nineties’: Evidence from a regression discontinuity design

Leo Roberts; Daniel R. Little; Mervyn Jackson; Matthew J. Spittal

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0287700

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionNovember 15, 2022
16 Feb 2023 Decision Letter - Jonathan Douglas Connor, Editor PONE-D-22-31412Test cricketers score quickly during the ‘nervous nineties’: Evidence from a regression discontinuity designPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Roberts, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. ============================== Please submit your revised manuscript by Apr 02 2023 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Jonathan Douglas Connor, Ph.D Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 2. In the ethics statement in the manuscript and in the online submission form, please provide additional information about the data records used in your retrospective study. Specifically, please ensure that you have discussed whether all data were fully anonymized before you accessed them. 3. We note that you have stated that you will provide repository information for your data at acceptance. Should your manuscript be accepted for publication, we will hold it until you provide the relevant accession numbers or DOIs necessary to access your data. If you wish to make changes to your Data Availability statement, please describe these changes in your cover letter and we will update your Data Availability statement to reflect the information you provide. Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. Additional Editor Comments (if provided): Thank you for your submission. Two reviewers have returned their assessment and provided some feedback on how to improve the manuscript. I invite you to address these reviewer comments and make any changes you believe appropriate to your manuscript. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: The sample size used for the analysis is extensive and provides noteworthy rigor to the analysis, although some minor questions over the inclusion of female data in the analysis and further explanation required on the analysis period chosen. I am aware of the statistical method used and it seems to me the appropriate analysis has been applied. I am no expert in this particular method though and may result in me overlooking the finer details. This manuscripts well written. Reviewer #2: - The introduction is quite clear and well-described. - Data, please explain how authors ensured the data validity, just downloading the data from the internet? - Does the RD model account/ control for the year-by-year performance? As a temporal series autocorrelation, regression to the mean and outliers should be included to improve the robustness of the model. Please clarify these issues. - Why conduct an RD with repeated measures? Probably a multilevel model with random factors and clustered variables would fit either for these repeated measures from the data. Please justify why this model was used and not the MLM, random forest, or neural network... - L235, please write 1,123 - L238, please write 1,394 - Results and discussion, my main concern about both sections is how the evolution of years (performance) is related to the model and presented to justify how it affects along the years where training methods, physical and technical training, as well as psychological training have evolved and can be affecting the identified trends. - Conclusions, L393-396, please avoid conclusions that were not obtained from your data. This suggestion can be included in the discussion but not in the conclusion. ****** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: No ******** [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Comments.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0287700.r001
Revision 1
4 Mar 2023 Author Response We thank both reviewers for taking the time to read and consider our work and offering their constructive suggestions. From these comments, we have made several adjustments to the paper that we believe will improve its broader acceptance and appeal. These changes include providing more detail about the ball-by-ball dataset used, reporting a validation exercise that we performed to verify the data used, enhancing the argument used to justify an examination of this topic in test cricket, and the removal of some of the more speculative sentences. Below we provide specific responses to each reviewer comment with some more detailed answers to the questions raised by reviewer 2 in relation to our chosen analyses. Reviewer 1: Is there a reason for choosing this time period? Maybe it is obvious in that this is all the data that was available in ball-by-ball format, if this is the case it might be good to tell the reader this. More information has been added about the ball-by-ball data available, including that we used everything that was accessible at the time. Is there a reason for including male and female data together? Would it not be worth examining the female data separately (or excluded) given a century is a much rarer event in this game? Also given the disproportionate number of female games compared to male games any effect in the female game would be washed out and the results likely the same as if you didn’t include them. We did out of curiosity try the analysis using men-only, and as suggested, this had no impact on the findings. Given this, we left the relatively small sample of women in the dataset because we couldn’t see a good reason for publishing a male-only analysis. Likewise, a female-only analysis wasn’t feasible with the numbers available. It is mentioned that previous work has analysed scoring in the nineties in ODI cricket, but test cricket might provide a better context to examine how batting is impacted by pressure due to its prestige. I question whether it is “better”, a century is extremely important to a batter regardless of the format. In fact, you could say it is easier to score a century in test cricket as the game dictates you don’t have to score as quickly. I would suggest restructuring this paragraph (line 141-146) to reference the task related constraints that dictate the game be played differently to ODI cricket. As suggested, we have rewritten this section to suggest that test cricket is a good context to explore the impact of a century on batting and performance – including that it is free of some constraints of 50 over cricket. There is now less insinuation that it is necessarily the best context. Line 71-75: Mentions numerous sport specific areas of retrospective studies that have analysed high-pressure moments, it might be good to reference these in this sentence. These references have been added. Line 316: “Sorting out” seems a little colloquial…rephrase. We have rephrased. Line 325-328: It is mentioned that less potent bowlers present the opportunities for batters reaching 100 runs to bat more conservatively in ODI cricket. This is quite speculative, and I think a good argument could also be made for the opposite occurring. We have removed the sentence about the ability to undertake low risk batting when less potent bowlers are operating. Line 332-333: In the below sentence, consider changing “are” to “it is possible that one-day batters…” “Consequently, one-day batters are better placed than test cricketers to manage the nineties as they would like (e.g., safely progressing to 100)” We have adopted this suggested wording. Reviewer 2: Data, please explain how authors ensured the data validity, just downloading the data from the internet? We have added information about a data validity exercise we undertook. While the data we used was the only ball-by-ball dataset we could find, we were able to completely verify the data at the innings level (i.e., by comparing individual innings run totals in the dataset we used with an alternative cricket database). Does the RD model account/ control for the year-by-year performance? As a temporal series autocorrelation, regression to the mean and outliers should be included to improve the robustness of the model. Please clarify these issues. The results presented in the manuscript do not control for time effects. However, to clarify this issue, we have re-run all our models controlling for time. Time trends were not significant for two of the outcomes (runs per over, p = 0.405 and probability of being dismissed, p = 0.620). Time was significant for the probability of getting a boundary (p = 0.017), and the direction of the relationship suggested that the odds of getting a boundary had declined very slightly per year (OR = 0.993). Nonetheless, when we looked at the values for the other coefficients, none had changed between models that adjusted for year and those that didn’t. Our interpretation is that time is not a confounder in this case. That makes sense. It is difficult to see what temporal changes may have changed the association at the discontinuity, which we note, is different to a more general question about how scoring rates and risk of dismissals have changed over time. Issues like regression to the mean are interesting but not directly relevant here as (a) we use a subset of all test data – the data of those who scored between 70 and 130 runs and (b) all models are fit as multilevel models with runs nested innings, innings nested within matches, and matches nested within players. Finally, we are of the school of thought that outliers should not be removed as this has the potential to introduce bias into the study, and the data are what they are. Why conduct an RD with repeated measures? Probably a multilevel model with random factors and clustered variables would fit either for these repeated measures from the data. Please justify why this model was used and not the MLM, random forest, or neural network... In fact, we did fit multilevel models with random factors/clustered variables, with RD assessed using (a) a term that captured whether or not the century had been reached (<100 = 0; >= 100 = 1) and (b) the interaction of the batter’s proximity to a century and the binary century variable. In effect, we ran a multilevel regression discontinuity model. Where useful, quadratic terms were also included. This method with justification is explained in the Analysis section. - L235, please write 1,123 - L238, please write 1,394 These have been changed. - Results and discussion, my main concern about both sections is how the evolution of years (performance) is related to the model and presented to justify how it affects along the years where training methods, physical and technical training, as well as psychological training have evolved and can be affecting the identified trends. We have covered this point above. - Conclusions, L393-396, please avoid conclusions that were not obtained from your data. This suggestion can be included in the discussion but not in the conclusion. This speculative sentence has been deleted. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0287700.r002
12 Jun 2023 Decision Letter - W. David Allen, Editor Test cricketers score quickly during the ‘nervous nineties’: Evidence from a regression discontinuity design PONE-D-22-31412R1 Dear Dr. Roberts, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, W. David Allen Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation. Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed ******** 2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #2: Yes ****** 6. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #2: Thanks for your revised version of the article and the justification of all reviewers' comments. Please incorporate into the analysis and results the values controlling for temporal series, this brief information is required for readers (or just add it as a supplementary table). ****** 7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #2: No ******** https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0287700.r003
Formally Accepted
16 Jun 2023 Acceptance Letter - W. David Allen, Editor PONE-D-22-31412R1 Test cricketers score quickly during the ‘nervous nineties’: Evidence from a regression discontinuity design Dear Dr. Roberts: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. W. David Allen Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0287700.r004

Open letter on the publication of peer review reports

PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process. Therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. Reviewers remain anonymous, unless they choose to reveal their names.

We encourage other journals to join us in this initiative. We hope that our action inspires the community, including researchers, research funders, and research institutions, to recognize the benefits of published peer review reports for all parts of the research system.

Learn more at ASAPbio .