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The Fastest,
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27 December 2012 Wagon Wheel History Lesson A recent
article by Ashley Mallett looked at some of the origins of the
now-familiar ‘wagon wheel’ cricket chart and Bill Ferguson’s role in making
them well known. However, it overstates Ferguson’s primacy in inventing the
wheels. There are a couple of earlier examples. As Mallett says, the first wagon wheel presented in Fergie’s
autobiography dates from 1912. Fergie doesn’t actually say exactly when he
first used them. It may have been in 1912, or in 1909, when he was apparently
already using linear scoring. Fergie first toured as a scorer in 1905, but I
don’t think, based on the style of that scorebook, that he had started using
the linear method then. (The 1909 book is the first to list balls faced for
batsmen.) Inventions can be tricky to fully track down. It is commonplace for
inventions to be made completely independently by two or more people who are
unaware of the other’s work. But the first real wagon wheel I have seen came
from the Daily Express in England
in 1907 (inventor not named). It was reproduced in Brodribb’s The Croucher, and shows Gilbert
Jessop’s hectic 93 off 63 balls at Lord’s. I have posted a scan here (sorry I can’t seem
to insert pictures on this blog). This is to all intents and purposes a wagon
wheel, although it does not show the exact distance that each shot travelled. A few months later something
similar appeared in the Melbourne Argus. There were a couple of these
charts, the first featuring an innings of 48 by Monty Noble at the MCG in
1907/08. These did not show every stroke but they did show how many runs were
made in each direction. Most noteworthy is the fact that the creator has
combined the two ends into one, so that the array of strokes is less visually
confusing. This was a feature that Fergie did not use, and I believe it only
came into use again in the Channel Nine TV era, with the assistance of
computers. Like the Jessop wheel, the creator the 1908 charts is
not named. I have only seen them reported in this one Test match (what a
shame it did not catch on!). Whoever made them, and the text that accompanied
them, must have been using advanced scoring of some type. Was it Fergie
himelf? Probably not: he lived in Sydney, and that Test is not listed among
the ones that he covered. Situation Vacant: Great Batsman Needed
for Prime Batting Position Batting at number three was traditionally regarded as the place for
the best batsman in the team. That was some time ago. It is now 30 innings
since the last century by a #3 batsman for Australia, and there has been only
one century in the last 50 innings. Australian Runs by Batting Positions from Aug 2010 to 20 Dec 2012
In the 1990s Australia’s #3 batsmen averaged 40.1. Here's some stuff, written for someone else, on #3 for Australia… · Ricky
Ponting scored 9912 runs at 56 at Number 3 for Australia, almost 20% of all
the runs scored for Australia from that position. · Historically,
Australian #3s average 45.2, but the last 50 innings by our #3s have averaged
only 25 with only one century (by Sean Marsh) · Rod
Quiney was only the fourth Australian to bag a pair of ducks batting #3; the
list includes Dean Jones in 1988. · Australians
who prospered at #3 include Bradman (avge 103.6), Ponting, Ian Chappell, and
Charlie Macartney. Their averages were higher at #3 than elsewhere in the
order. Greg Chappell, Greg Blewitt and Kim Hughes did not do so well. · Ian
Chappell scored 80% of his career runs at #3. He averaged 50 at #3 and only
25 elsewhere in the order. · Sean
Marsh is the only player of significance to score all his runs for Australia
batting at #3. Good trivia question: Who is the only batsman to score a Test
double-century the only time he batted at #3? A: Jason Gillespie. Interesting facts: in 317 Test innings, Sachin Tendulkar has never
batted at #3. Not even once. Only 92 of his 18,426 ODI runs, or 0.5%, have
come from the #3 position. At the Ground Stats: Boxing Day Enjoyed absolute prime seats at the Melbourne Test yesterday, courtesy
of tickets kindly provided by Ken Piesse. It was good to see over 67,000
people there, which I daresay was the biggest Test crowd that Sri Lanka have
ever played to (there were 72,000 for an ODI World Series Final in 1995/96 at
the MCG, and the 1996 World Cup semi-final at Eden Gardens was much bigger
again). One strange change from the old days is the number of people on the
ground at any one time: in addition to the players and umpires, I counted 52
people – all men, I think – hanging around, in various roles, between the rope
and the boundary fence. I don’t know if I have noted this down before, but during various days
of cricket I have estimated the effect of the boundary rope on scoring,
threes being turned into fours etc. One has to be at the ground to do this. I
have come up with an increase of 3-5 per cent of runs scored. Ricky Ponting
made his debut 96 in the last year before boundary ropes were widely used in
Australia – he may well have got his century on debut if he had made that
debut in the following year. A couple of years ago, during duller moments, I tried to estimate the
number of advertisements that were visible from my seat at the MCG. I stopped
counting at one thousand. |
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7 December 2012 Wobbly Batting I came across an extraordinary run of wickets in the Faisalabad Test
of 1990/91, Pakistan v West Indies. It was a low-scoring series in general,
but Pakistan’s second innings really stood out, with the last six wickets
falling in 25 deliveries. Make that 7 wickets in 26
deliveries, as Haynes was out from the first ball when West Indies batted
again. The Pakistan innings included a very unusual ‘team hat-trick’. In
consecutive deliveries, Imran was out to Marshall, Wasim Akram was run out,
and Javed Miandad was out to Ambrose. I set out to find cases of three wickets in three balls that did not
involve a hat-trick. (Many hat-tricks are carried out across two or even
three overs, and so do not represent three in three balls, but the majority
are within the same over.) There seem to be remarkably few of these team
hat-tricks. There is one case of four wickets in four balls at Headingley in 1957,
including a Peter Loader hat-trick, which appears to be unique. The cases of
three in three found so far are… Three wickets in three
balls, but no hat-trick
It is strange that none can be found in 600 Tests since 1998. Stranger
still is finding cases in two consecutive Tests in 1961/62. One bowler, GB Lawrence,
was involved in both, and GA Bartlett was the second man out on both
occasions. There was another massive collapse in that 1990/91 series, when Wasim
Akram took those four wickets in five balls at Lahore (see previous entry).
The scorebook also records that the single that interrupted Wasim’s sequence,
scored by Bishop, was a dropped catch (Wisden
says it was out of reach). Wasim’s final wicket ended the innings, and when
Pakistan batted again, Aamer Malik was out second ball (not first ball), making
it five wickets in 7 balls. Wasim Akram and Chris Old are the only bowlers to bowl to five
different batsmen in the same over. That Rare Adelaide Epic Much could be said about South Africa’s defensive epic in the Adelaide
Test where they played out five sessions to draw the Test. Personally I found
it more interesting, even exciting, than a century off 50 balls, which are a
dime a dozen in T20 cricket nowadays. AB de Villers scored 33 off 220 balls,
rivalling the extremes of Bailey and McGlew in the 1950s, but then scored 169
off 184 in the next Test. I wonder if a batsman has hit such contrasting
innings in consecutive matches. The experience of Nathan Lyon is emblematic
of the struggles for spinners nowadays. His 50 overs for 49 runs at Adelaide
showed that it was possible to match the economy of the spinners of the 50s
and 60s, but in the Perth second innings, Lyon conceded almost six runs per
over, and de Villiers went from 88 to
101 in three balls with reverse sweeps off the same bowler. It was the sort
of problem that earlier generations of spinners never had to face. One indication of the where the Adelaide epic ranks
is in this table of the longest partnerships that produced fewer than
100 runs… Longest Partnerships <
100 Runs
The Sardesai/Manjrekar stand of almost 100 overs remains on top. It
came during India’s unique innings of 187 off 185.3 overs. It was described
on my blog on 17 June 2008 and elsewhere. When it was finally broken, Lance
Gibbs took eight wickets for six runs. Shahzad informs me that South Africa reached 200 off 187 balls on the
way to 569 in the Perth Test. This is the fastest known first 200 for any
Test innings, and beats a long-standing record set by the West Indies on the
same ground in 1975/76. The relevant section of the
“Unusual Records” have been updated. ******** Following an idea on the Ask Steven blog, I thought it would be fun to
present the second innings scorecard from the Perth Test as it would appear
if scores followed the Australian penchant for diminutive forms of first
names.
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12 November 2012 Wobbly Figures Here’s an example of the troubles with some Test match scores. The
1000th Test match, played between Pakistan and New Zealand at
Hyderabad in 1984, is represented by two archived scores, one in New Zealand,
the other in Pakistan. (Having two surviving scores is in itself a bit
unusual.) Problems arose when I tried to re-score the New Zealand version; it
just did not seem to fit together. Shahzad Khan came to the rescue by
supplying the Pakistan score: this was a full linear score which was
completely consistent internally. Comparing the two scores was illuminating. In the first innings of the
match, there were 12 overs that varied between the two scores. Five of these
were substantive variations, in that the number of runs or the scoring
strokes within the over varied between the two versions; the other variations
involved placement of dot balls. More importantly, in addition to the 12
variations, ten overs by Azeem Hafeez are absent from the New Zealand score
altogether. It is clear that the New Zealand score is not an original as recorded
by scorers watching the match. It is surely a re-copy, and inaccuracies and
omissions have crept in. One feature of this is that there are large anomalies in the balls
faced recorded by the batsmen. According to the NZ score, John Reid (106)
faced 325 balls, a figure that made its way to the
‘official’ record, presumably via the New
Zealand Cricket Almanac. The Pakistan score gives Reid 272 balls, a
striking difference. Most of the balls faced figures in the NZ score are
questionable… Balls faced differences:
Hyderabad 1984, NZ 1st innings
* absent from NZ score, found in NZ Cricket Almanac.
Note that the NZ version adds up to 674 balls, whereas
there were only 652 balls in the innings (including no balls). The balls
faced figures for JJ Crowe, Gray, and Stirling are not given in the NZ score,
but they turn up in the NZCA, and
curiously these are the only figures therein that are correct. Most of the runs totals, however, are correct. The
exception is Boock, who appears to have scored 13 runs, not 12. Iqbal Qasim
conceded 81 not 80. Reid’s strokes add up to 107 in the NZ score, but the 106
appears to be the correct figure. This is more evidence that balls faced figures prior to
the computer scoring era contain uncertainties, sometimes significant
uncertainties. There are other problems with the scores for this series (at
least for the last two Tests), but the above examples are the most striking. ******** Here is a complete, if short, list of the bowlers who have taken four
wickets in an over in Test matches. The cases of four from five balls are in
the record book, but I have not seen a list in this form. Strange that five
of the six cases are by English bowlers. Four Wickets in an Over
Bowlers’ Droughts This year there have been three examples of batsmen dominating for an extraordinary
length of time. Australia did it at the ’Gabba, and against the South
Africans of all people. On the third day, the only wicket to fall was Ed
Cowan for 136, and that only came about through an accidental run out. South
Africa bowled through a seven-hour day without the bowlers taking a wicket,
something that has never happened on such an extended day before (I think).
Ultimately the South Africans toiled for over nine hours, and 487 runs,
without a bowling success. Here is a list of the most consecutive runs scored
without any bowler taking a wicket. Most Runs Without a Wicket
Falling to Bowlers
The Gabba Test was just the 9th occasion where
double-century partnerships were registered for consecutive wickets. The
strangest thing is that seven of those nine have occurred in the last five
years. |
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17 October 2012 A batting Record for Murali? Just for fun I searched the Test database for innings where batsmen
hit their first ball for six. I’m sure this is commonplace in T20, but a
fairly rare event in Tests, especially before superbats came to the fore in
about 2001. The list follows Innings where a batsman hit
his first ball for six (where known)
The list is drawn mostly from the database rather than other research.
Overall, this probably represents about three-quarters of all cases, perhaps
more. The database covers only 70% of Tests before 1998, with particular gaps
in the 1990s, so there may be some more to find (I do have 190 Tests from the
1990s complete, but there were no cases, apart from Chris Cairns, a few days
before the turn of the century). The search looked for sixes; it is possible
(just barely) that one or more of the above cases involved overthrows rather
than boundary hits*. Only one case was found of a batsman hitting a five off
his first ball (Ray Lindwall), although there is also George Ulyett, who
earned only five for his over-the-boundary hit in 1881/82. Remarkably, Ulyett remains (probably) the only player to do it in
Australia (the 1990s data is complete for Australia). There are only two
Australians on the list, so Mutiah Muralitharan’s record of three appearances
is quite remarkable. Only one of the above cases involved the first ball of a
team innings: Graeme Smith. [UPDATE: Reader Benedict informs me of a second
example: Aravinda de Silva at Colombo SSC in 1985/86. Sreeram pointed out the
Gus Logie case.] *Postscript: I was surprised to read in an Ask Steven Facebook entry
that Neil Harvey hit only one six in his Test career of over 6000 runs. I
checked the database and found two, but one of those turned out to include
overthrows, so the single six figure is correct. UPDATE: Chris Gayle’s latest has been added to the list. Sri Lanka’s role in the Decline of
Over Rates Currently surveying the Tests of the 1980s, I was struck by the time
taken to get through overs in many matches. Not all teams indulged in bowling
crawls, but until minimum overs were mandated for all Tests in about 1987,
there were some occasions when over rates dropped to extraordinarily low
levels. It is probably not well known that the ‘leading’ team in this regard
was Sri Lanka. In their very first Tests from 1981, Sri Lanka bowled at a
reasonable rate, 85-90 balls per hour, but in the mid-1980s, their bowling
rate plummeted whenever the situation turned defensive (which was quite
often), to rates not seen in Test cricket before. This was commented upon in
reports from the time, although the captain always denied a deliberate
policy. The tactic, if that is what it was, reached its ultimate expression at
Kandy in 1985/86 when India scored 325/6 declared in the second innings. It
took 474 minutes for Sri Lanka to bowl 84 overs (504 balls); the rate of 63.8
balls per hour remains the slowest for any Test innings of this size. One
report says that Sri Lanka bowled only 8.5 overs in the last hour, which may
be an all-time low. (UPDATE: West Indies reportedly bowled only eight overs
in an hour when England were chasing a target in the final session of the
Trinidad Test of 1990. There were only 57 balls per hour in England’s innings
of 120 for 5.) Some allowance should be made for the Sri Lankan climate, but even so,
it must have made for tiresome viewing. Over rates in the mid-80s were slower
for Sri Lanka than any other country… Team Over Rates from 1983/84
to 1986/87
The Sri Lankan bowling was dominated by medium to fast-medium bowling,
but there was more bowling by spinners (~30%) than the West Indies (<20%),
which of course was dominated by genuine pace bowlers with long run ups. When
over minimums were mandated, Sri Lanka’s rate rose immediately, and averaged
over 85 balls per hour from 1988 to 1992. This change coincided with the end
of the captaincy of LRD Mendis; on the other hand, few Tests were played in
Sri Lanka in this period, due to civil unrest, and that may have been a
factor. A New Look at the Longest Innings It only recently occurred to me that one way to dodge the old problem
of lack of balls faced for historic innings is use to number of overs as a
measure. Of course, this measure is often incomplete, too, but it turns out
that for the very longest innings, quite exact figures can be obtained. The
following list of the longest innings, by this measure, can be regarded as
complete… Longest Test innings by
number of overs batted
Eight-ball overs converted to six-ball equivalent. Incomplete overs
counted as one. There is come uncertainty over a few figures. I am confident about Hanif’s
figure, but it might be plus or minus one or two. Turner’s figure is a bit
more uncertain, but not so much that it would change his place in the list. A
striking feature is the range of scores represented,
Alec Bannerman’s unique 91 ranks above Lara’s
400. Only seven out of the 26 Test triple-centuries make it into this top 20.
It shows that the net must be cast wide when looking for records like these. One can see that some innings rank above others that may have had more
balls faced. This is indicative of variations in strike. |
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26 September 2012 Hot 100 Updated The latest tables of the fastest and slowest batsmen of Test history
have been posted here.
There is one change to the setup. The qualification for recent careers has
been raised from 1000 runs to 1500 runs. There seemed to be too many
second-string recent batsmen (Swann, Sammy, Umar Akmal) muscling in to the
top 10 or 20. It has been noted before that the rankings change only slowly.
However, Virender Sehwag has made another impressive gain, to 82.2 runs per
100 balls, and has passed Adam Gilchrist to claim second spot behind Shahid
Afridi. Sehwag has risen, incrementally, from fifth spot in 2005. Sehwag has done this in spite of an indifferent run of form. He has
not scored a century in his last 30 innings, nor has he reached 70 in his
last 26 outings. Yet he has scored at over 83 runs/100b
in those 30 innings, faster than his whole career speed. Perhaps it is time
to dial it back a little. There is a notable collection of current England middle/lower order
batsmen in the top 20: Prior (12), Broad (13) and Pietersen (16) are there,
and Graeme Swann (not yet qualified, as mentioned earlier), has hit his 1078
runs at 79.7 runs/100 balls. The fact that all of these have scored faster
than, say, Ian Botham, suggests that fast scoring is easier than ever. The Disappearing Threes Here is another
item I wrote for Australia: Story
of a Cricket Country last year. It did not actually appear in this form
in the book, but people might find it interesting as is. In spite of the
title, it is mainly about Bob Cowper’s strangely unique triple-century at the
MCG in 1966, and other big innings. |
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7 September 2012 A Brief History of the New Ball The use of new balls in Test matches has a somewhat confusing history.
In response to a question from Sreeram, here is an attempt to gather a few
facts. The very early Tests seem to have used a single ball for each innings
regardless of length. Brodribb in Next
Man In (1952) records that in Australia the idea of taking a new ball
when 200 runs had been scored was introduced in 1901. England followed in
1907. The 200-run trigger appears to have been kept in use until 1945. It wasn’t entirely satisfactory. Sometimes teams reduced scoring
before 200 runs were up, to avoid a new ball. In 1946, the MCC introduced an
over limit. Strangely, they settled on 55 overs, an extremely low number that
favoured pace bowlers. In Australia, the 200-run limit remained in place in
1946/47, but was switched to 42 (eight-ball) overs in 1947/48. This was of no
help to the touring Indian side facing Lindwall and Miller. In 1949 some common sense returned and the trigger was lifted to 65
six-ball overs or 50 eight-ball overs for the next few years. By 1954/55 this
had been abandoned in Australia and the 200-run trigger returned. All the
recorded new balls of the 1954 and 1955 series in England were taken over 200
runs, but an over limit seems to have been reintroduced soon after; 75 in
combination with 200 runs, whichever came first. By 1962 new balls in England
were being taken at 200 runs or 85 overs. There is also some confusion about
this period in other countries. In the West Indies, 75 overs seems to have been used when the MCC toured in 1960, but
200 runs when India toured in 1962. The known record for use of an old ball
is 185 overs at Bridgetown in 1962, but since India scored only 187 runs in
that innings, the use of the old ball was probably
not a matter of choice. Some other Tests may have used a combination of runs
or overs, whichever came first. In the Australian tour of West Indies in
1965, some new balls came at 200 runs and others at 75 overs, but when
England toured in 1968 no new balls were taken before 75 overs, even when the
score was over 200. In India, all the new balls I have recorded up to 1965 came after 200
runs. The switch, probably in 1965, was to 75 overs. In 1965, the runs scored standard in England and Australia fades away
and the MCC established a standard in England of 85 overs, or 65 eight-ball
overs in Australia. This remained in use for many years in these countries,
but again other countries had local variations. New Zealand and South Africa
followed the MCC standard, but 75 overs seems to
have been the norm in the West Indies and the subcontinent. Finally in 1995, all countries lined up with the same standard, with
the new ball available after 80 overs; this remains in place. |
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2 September 2012 Cricket’s First Mexican Wave? I came across an odd little note in Bill Frindall’s linear score of the
Headingley Test of 1986 (England v India). In over 14 of India’s second
innings, Frindall records a delay caused by “mass sectional crowd waving”.
Sounds a bit like a Mexican Wave, I thought, though Frindall would not have
known it by that name at the time. I recalled that the Mexican Wave had
become internationally known when it became popular at the 1986 football
World Cup in Mexico. I checked, and wouldn’t you know, that World Cup had
begun just three weeks before the Headingley Test. The unfamiliar event may have unsettled Mohammad Azharuddin, who was
batting, because he was out next ball. UPDATE: There is a note in the score for the subsequent Lord’s Test
reading “Attempted Mexico Wave” (sic). Kapil’s 99* in a Session I don’t know if this has been noted before, but there is an odd fact
about Kapil Dev’s 100 not out at Port-of-Spain
in 1983. Kapil put paid to any chance of a West Indies win when he went
to town on the West Indies pace bowlers after tea. In the 16th
over of the final 20, Kapil reached his century, and the match was
immediately called off as a draw. But the adjournment cost Kapil a rare
achievement. After being one not out at tea, he had scored 99 runs in the
session, and so the ending of the match had deprived him of that rare
century. (The match could have been called off earlier, but Clive Lloyd, in a
sporting gesture, allowed Kapil the chance of the 100). Kapil’s 100 off 95 balls was the fastest ton conceded by the mighty
Windies at home at their peak in the 1980s. Sunil Gavaskar did go one better
only a few months later, but his 100 off 94 balls was in India. I don’t know of anyone hitting a century in a session on the fifth day
of a Test match before Dwayne Smith did so on debut
at Cape Town in 2004. Stan McCabe famously hit 100 before lunch in his 189*
in the final innings at Johannesburg in 1935, but that was a four-day Test. A Keeper’s Unique Double Don Tallon was known in his time as a prince of wicketkeepers. Less
well known was his ability as a legspinner, which on occasion could net him
bags of wickets in minor matches. Tallon’s first match after returning from
the 1948 Invincible tour was a country match in his native Bundaberg (Queensland).
Playing against a Queensland Country XI in October 1948, Tallon left the
gloves in the dressing room and spun the opposition out by taking all ten
wickets for 30 runs, following this up with a score of 106 not out. The double of all ten plus a century has been done by others (I think
including WG in a first-class match) but I doubt if any other wicketkeeper
has done it. I came across this report, believe it or not, in an Indian
newspaper, but it is confirmed by report also in the Brisbane Courier Mail. On the subject of unusual doubles, reader Pradhip asked if Lindsay
Hassett’s scores of 122 and 122 for Vic v NSW in 1949/50 is the highest score
made twice by a batsman in a first-class match. I did find scores of 146 and
146 not out by John Langridge in a county match in 1949. Looking for batsmen
who were twice out, there is N Bredenkamp who scored 125 and 125 in a
relatively minor but “first-class” match in 2007. CD Cumming scored 127 not out
and 127 for Otago v Canterbury in 2011. Mark Waugh scored
121 not out and 121 for Essex v Derbyshire in 1995. An incredible coincidence occurred in 1972 when Glenn Turner was out
for 259 twice in consecutive first-class innings on the Bourda ground, in the
space of a week. Of course, that was in two different matches. |
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22 August 2012 First Helmet Penalties In the Kingston Test of 1984, a footnote in the score records that
five penalty runs were scored while Courtney Walsh was bowling, because the ball
hit a helmet on the field. I wondered when this was first recorded. Finding
other early cases is complicated by the fact that it was recorded as five
byes rather than penalty runs. It happened again in Australia the following
season, again involving New Zealand. But it had also happened at Lord’s in
1980, with David Gower batting. A Wicket First and Last A list of bowlers who took the winning wicket in a Test match with the
last ball they bowled was sent to me by reader ashru, from Dr A Siddiqui. I noticed
that it included Nathan Lyon, who finished off Australia’s last Test in the
West Indies, at Dominica. That may make Lyon the only bowler (currently) to
take wickets with both his first ball in Test cricket and his last (see 2
September 2011). Of course, this is very probably a temporary situation; Lyon
will almost certainly continue to bowl in Test cricket. Warne and McGrath: Off Days A recent
article at Cricinfo spoke of the batsmen who had hit the most runs in a
single innings off some major bowlers. The dates were restricted to
post-2001, so data for Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath were incomplete. For the
record, the most runs hit by one batsman off Shane Warne is 90 by Ravi
Shastri (206) at Brisbane in 1991/92, Warne’s debut (1 for 150). The most hit
off McGrath in one innings is 58 by Nasser Hussain (207) at Edgbaston in
1997. McGrath took 2 for 107. The most off Murali, in the article, was given
as 111 by Younis Khan. This is probably the most for Murali in all Tests,
although I don’t have complete data in this case. |
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8 August 2012 (Updated) Final Ball a Winner After some correspondence with reader Ashru, I made this interesting
list of batsmen hitting the winning run in their last Test. Or to put it
another way, they hit the winning run with their last ball in Test cricket. I
haven’t included recent Tests involving players who may yet play again. I
have noted before that both Moss and Siddiqui were playing in their only
Tests. Of course, there were others who were present for the winning stroke
(including Justin Langer) but whose partners delivered the coup de grace.
Up to 2008 only. Wickets with the First Ball and Last
Ball of an Innings For no particular reason, I made a list of bowlers who took wickets
with both the first ball and the last ball of an innings. It turns out to be
quite rare. A puzzling aspect is the absence of any cases before 1974. There
were almost 40 innings before then where a wicket fell
first ball of the innings, but I checked them all, and not one of the bowlers
involved later finished the innings off. One factor would be the greater
relative role played by spinners in earlier decades, especially when it came
to finishing innings off. The other curiosity is that one bowler, Pedro
Collins, turns up three times in what is quite a short list, each time
against the same country. Guess which country.
All Out innings only Longest without New Ball, and a Hadlee
Golden Spell. There are a couple of new entries in this record category. India went
without a new ball for 166 overs against England at Kanpur in 1984/85, while
Pakistan appear to have waited 173.2 overs on a
slow-turn wicket at Wellington just a couple weeks previously. New Zealand
batted right through the first two days in that Wellington Test without
facing a second new ball. These rank third and fourth all-time, if the data
are to be trusted, noting that in the case of the leader (185 overs at
Bridgetown 1961/62), the new ball could not be taken
under the rules at the time, due to fewer than 200 runs being scored. Also in 1984/85, I came across a remarkable bowling spell by Richard
Hadlee that has received little recognition. Against Pakistan
at Dunedin, Hadlee took five wickets in the space of 16 balls at the
close of the first day and the start of the second, conceding five runs.
Ignoring the special category of “Bangladesh”, only three bowlers have bagged
five in fewer balls. The leader is Monty Noble back in 1902, with a probable
13 balls, (though the exact number is not certain, range 12-15). See the Unusual
Records section. Two of Hadlee’s wickets came with the old ball, then two with the new
ball, taken in the last over of the day. The last of the five wickets
occurred immediately the
following morning, which may explain why the feat was
apparently little-noticed (with no mention in Wisden or New Zealand
Cricketers Almanack). I missed it in my own research until now, even
though the full score has been sitting in my files for about three years.
When one has three filing cabinets full of Test match scores, these things
can be missed. Another factor would be Hadlee’s unspectacular (though
excellent) final figures of 6 for 51. The discovery of such a spell does, of
course, open the possibility that other extreme cases remain undiscovered. Hadlee’s victims included Javed Miandad, Zaheer Abbas, and Salim
Malik. Quite a haul; no one above Hadlee in the list of “fast fives” has
included so many good batsmen. Another morsel from the 1984/85 series in New Zealand: in the first
Test in Wellington, Geoff Howarth was run out (by Azeem Hafeez) after running
a bye and while attempting a second. I haven’t encountered before a definite
case where byes or leg byes were scored and a batsman was run out. This is
rather curious. There must have been cases where run outs occurred while
attempting (leg) byes, but since only about 15% of run outs involve one or
more runs being completed, most of them would only have registered as run
outs off dot balls. UPDATE: I found an error in one of the other “fast fives”. Jim Laker,
in his 9 for 37 at Old Trafford in 1956, took his 3rd to 7th
wickets in the span of 13 balls. I previously had 14 balls, which was the span
for Laker’s last five wickets. |
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16 July 2012 Dropped Catches Report: 2011 I have gone through Cricinfo’s ball-by-ball accounts of Tests from Jan
2011 to end Jan 2012 (40 Tests), and extracted as many cases of dropped catches
and missed stumpings as I could. This is something I have done for every year
since 2002 (and some Tests in 2001). [A plea to Cricinfo: have your Test
recorders flag or catalogue dropped catches in commentary or attached to
scorecards; it would be a simple thing to do as they go.] As usual, I have
been broad in my interpretations, including extremely difficult and “half”
chances, and cases where the fieldsman failed to reach the ball but could
have. There is always a possibility that in some cases the judgement is too
harsh, but also there are some that may have been missed. Some 290 chances were logged. The miss rate was 26.3%. This rate has
been remarkably constant since I have been carrying out these analyses: the
average for 2002 to 2004 was 26.4%, the average for
2009 and 2010 was 26.9%. Rates do vary between teams. Australia, with a drop rate of 19.6%, has
snatched back the #1 spot from South Africa (now 21.2%), with New Zealand
sneaking into second at 21.0%. Australia’s rate stems partly from an
exceptional series against India, where they dropped only 15% of chances.
These are some of the best figures seen in the decade of analysis. One alarming stat showed up: Bangladesh had a drop rate of 45.6%, the
worst they have ever recorded. During the past decade, no team (including
Bangladesh) has previously recorded over 40% in a single year. There is a
clear gap between Bangladesh and other teams, and it is not getting any
narrower. Bangladesh’s misses are all over the field: they miss a much higher
proportion of outfield catches than other teams. If Bangladesh had the same
drop rate as leading teams, their combined bowling average might drop from
about 46 to a competitive 33. 2011 Dropped Catches
Looking at individuals, Taufeeq Umar of Pakistan had a wonderfully lucky
year as a batsman, being dropped 13 times, ahead of that hard-hitter Sehwag
on 10. In making 135 against West Indies, Tafeeq was dropped five times,
equalling the modern record set by Andy Blignaut in 2005. Taufeeq was also
dropped four times in making 130 against Bangladesh, as was HDRL Thirimanne
in making 68 against Pakistan. [The most extreme cases I know of from earlier
times are seven or eight off George Bonnor in making 87 in the 1880s, and six
off Bill Ponsford’s 266 at the Oval in 1934.] Leading bowler by a long shot was Saeed Ajmal of Pakistan, with 22
misses off his bowling. Saeed takes up the mantle of Danish Kaneria, who was
‘unluckiest’ bowler in previous years. Pakistan miss
a lot of chances behind the stumps and at short leg when spinners are
bowling. Perhaps the best record among fieldsmen was Martin Guptill of New
Zealand, who took seven catches and had no recorded misses, including a
unique run of four consecutive catches, “PJ Hughes, c Guptill b Martin”, that
cost Phil Hughes his Test place. Among fieldsmen who had ten or more chances,
the best rate was 13% (14 catches and two drops) by Jacques Kallis. Kallis
was also a major beneficiary of one missed chance; against Sri Lanka at Cape
Town he was missed on 2 and went on to make 224, the most expensive miss of
the year. Best keepers were Prior and Haddin with 9% each. Misbah-ul-Haq missed more chances than he took (8 and 7). Alastair Cook, consigned to that fielding graveyard at short leg,
missed 47%, most of them difficult. If you thought Rahul Dravid had a bad
year in slips, the stats support it: he also missed 47% (9 misses, 10
catches) About half of Test centuries during the year were chanceless in the
first 100 runs. Alastair Cook’s 294 at Edgbaston appears
to have been chanceless, the biggest chanceless innings since a 319 by
Virender Sehwag in 2008. Did Keith Miller Throw his Wicket
Away? Martin Williamson at Cricinfo
posted an interesting article about the day Australia scored 721 against Essex
in 1948. He mentioned the stories about Keith Miller allegedly throwing his
wicket away first ball as protest against Bradman’s scorched-earth tactics, a
story later promoted by Miller himself. As no conclusion was reached, I
decided to look at contemporary reports to see if there was any mention.
Nowadays, it is possible to look up some original newspaper reports online
using the Trove database and other sources. I saw maybe a dozen reports. Nearly all mentioned Miller being bowled
first ball by Trevor Bailey, but few described the dismissal in detail. Not
one said that Miller deliberately raised his bat to allow the ball to hit his
stumps, something that one might expect to attract a remark or two. On the
other hand, two of the reports said that Miller was beaten by a yorker. To
quote the Adelaide Advertiser:
“Miller was dismissed sensationally first ball. He played over a yorker from
Bailey and his off stump was flattened.” I guess that being bowled neck and crop first ball on a day when your
team scores 700 could be somewhat embarrassing. Perhaps Miller’s account was
a ‘cover’ story. More from “Story of a Cricket Country” Here is another
item I wrote for Australia: Story of
a Cricket Country in 2011, this time about Bruce Yardley, as something of
a bookend for the earlier posted article on ALick Bannerman. |
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1 July 2012 Rare Access I recently had the privilege of being allowed access to the file archive
at Cricket Australia at Jolimont, to search for old Test scorebooks. Rare is
the word; I had first enquired about such access more than ten years ago, and
in most years since. Once finally there, the people at CA were very helpful,
having sorted and retrieved quite a number of boxes from a storage facility. As it turned out, there was an extensive array of scores to be found,
including most Sheffield Shield matches for the last 30 years and most of
Australia’s Tests. Unfortunately, there was no material before 1981, the year
of the establishment of the Melbourne headquarters, but subsequent material
included some Tests that I had not found elsewhere. In the same week, I
received a number of Test scores from Queensland Cricket from the 1980s, and
1977. The upshot is that scores or ball-by-ball records for all Tests in
Australia since 1970 have now been found and copied, with the exception of
Adelaide 1973/74 (v New Zealand). Going further back, gaps arise, and there
eight Tests missing from the 1960s (including the Brisbane Tied Test) and
fourteen in all missing since 1945. For Australia’s Tests overseas, the gaps are larger. However, there
are now only two overseas Tests since 1980 unrepresented by scores – Lahore
1982 and the Madras Tied Test in 1986 (!). Three others, in the West Indies,
have only incomplete or inadequate scores. (The scores received have come
from a variety of sources, not just Cricket Australia). The prior record has
more significant gaps, including West Indies in 1973, New Zealand in 1974 and
India and Pakistan in 1979/80, which are missing in their entirety. (UPDATE:
NZ 1974 and Pakistan 1980 have turned up in the Cricket NSW Collection) It is hoped that once fully sorted, the score collection at CA will be
sent for safekeeping at the Melbourne CC library or the MCG Sports Museum,
which are both just across the road from CA. One series found at CA for which no other complete source is known was
the 1981/82 Australian tour of New Zealand. The third Test of this series, at
Christchurch, included a century before lunch by Greg Chappell, the only such
achievement in a two-hour session between 1976 and 2005. Statistically, it
was extraordinary, faster than most pre-lunch centuries, and dominating the
scoring more than most. I have drawn up a table of pre-lunch centuries,
according to the balls faced. Balls faced by
pre-lunch century-makers
@ = extended session. Chappell was dismissed with 13 minutes remaining in the session. His
100 runs came out of just 132 runs off the bat. He went from 83 to 103 in a single
Troup over. Only a few on the above list have so dominated the scoring before
lunch. [Note: a century before lunch was not uncommon in England from 1912 to
1939, thanks to very high over rates and frequent use of 150-minute
sessions.] Thanks to Shazad for corrected data on Majid Khan. Short Articles for “Story of a Cricket Country” I wrote a few
short items for Chris Ryan for Australia:
Story of a Cricket Country in 2011, most of which, I’m pleased to say,
appeared in the book. I will post these over the next little while. Here is one, The Old Stone Wall, about Alick
Bannerman and
his statistical uniqueness. This is as I submitted the article, which was
edited for the purposes of the book. A highly recommended publication, if I
do say so myself. |
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5 June 2012 Hiatus Blogging has been weak due to unusual levels of alternative activity.
One significant project is a new book. Tentatively titled “Encyclopedia of Australian
Cricketers”, my contribution has been basic biographical information and
statistics on every player who has played first-class or senior One-Day
cricket in Australia. That comes to more than 3,300 players; compiling it has
been both challenging and tedious. The hope is to appeal to dedicated fans
who like to have such information at their fingertips in one volume. Online
sources are invaluable of course, but looking up numerous players that way
has its drawbacks and can be time-consuming. To set the new volume apart from
those sources I will also offer a couple of stats that aren’t always
available online. The other main feature will be mini-biographies of all Australian
international players, written by Ken Piesse, giving the volume a unique flavour.
Publication is slated for September by New Holland Publishing. ******* There has been little activity on the basic research front.
Fortunately, Andrew Samson in South Africa has come up with some new
material, and has discovered, among other things, a couple of scorebooks for
Durban Tests in 1922/23. The re-score of the 3rd Test of that
series includes an interesting result, in spite of it being a dull draw.
Philip Mead made 181 in a manner so slow that it was the longest innings by
Englishman up to that time, at 567 balls. Mead also took 537 balls to reach
his 150; this ranks third among the slowest 150s
that I know of. The shortlist is
As is the case with many old scores, there is some uncertainty about some
balls faced figures. Both Cowdrey and Mead’s innings have uncertainties due
to the fact that byes and leg byes are not marked in the score. The Frank and
Hammond cases are adequately marked and so are reasonably solid. The eight slowest 150s, incidentally, include no double-centuries. The
slowest 150 to be converted to 200 was Sid Barnes’ 234 in 1946/47 (150 off
462 balls) which ranks ninth, and second or third among slow 200s (see 26
April 2010). ****** Re-scoring a 1984
Test recently, I came across an unusual (to put it mildly) match double
by Richard Hadlee. Hadlee top-scored with 99 and took eight wickets for 44 in
the match, including 5 for 28 in England’s second innings. As such, he scored
the only half-century in the match, and made the only five-wicket haul. It
turns out that this is unique in Test matches. Plenty of players have scored
a 50 and bagged a five in the same match, but no one else has made ALL the 50s
and fives in a match. Although it would not make the normal lists of great
match doubles, it was one of the most dominating all-round individual
performances in Test history. |
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20 April 2012 Martin’s Super Spells Chris Martin of New Zealand picked up three wickets in four balls in a
Test recently (at Dunedin). This is an exceptional though not especially rare
achievement: I count 63 instances in Tests. What was particularly noteworthy
about this was the calibre of the batsmen involved: Graeme Smith, Jacques
Kallis and AB de Villiers. Their combined batting averages come to 156. I
wondered how often such a threesome is dismissed like this. Not very often,
of course. I tallied up all the known cases and found only one where the combined
average of the victims was greater. Of course, anyone who nailed Don Bradman
in such a sequence would have an advantage, and indeed one bowler did so –
Bill Voce at the SCG in 1936/37. Voce also sank Leo O’Brien and Stan McCabe,
giving a combined average of 175. There are no other cases quite like it. A
fuller list is Three wickets in four balls:
Highest-Calibre Victims
Complete career averages were used in all cases except where careers
are ongoing. A few bowlers have taken 3 in 4 on two occasions, including Martin.
Martin actually did it twice in the space of seven overs that he bowled (but
in two different series). I haven’t checked but I am sure this must be
unique. When on song, Martin is one of the best bowlers in the world. He and
Dale Steyn are the only current bowlers who have taken five wickets before
lunch on the first day of a Test (see 25 Sep 2010). Clarke’s Gamble A reader, Stephen, pointed out that Australia had never declared its
first innings in deficit and gone on to win a Test until Michael Clarke did
so in the Barbados Test. Indeed as far as I can tell, Australia has only once
before declared when batting second and still behind on first innings, at the
WACA against the West Indies in 1988/89, and that was an unusual circumstance
when Geoff Lawson suffered a nasty injury and Allan Border decided to end the
innings with eight wickets down. There is only one direct precedent, when England
beat the West Indies by four wickets on a very dodgy surface in 1935.
Curiously, that was also at Bridgetown. Most cases of teams declaring in
deficit are in matches severely afflicted by bad weather, and most end in in
draws. One exception is Pakistan’s strange declaration at 4 for 272, chasing
331 against India in 1979/80. This match has been mentioned (by others) in
connection to match-fixing. It would certainly be a very early example if so. Clarke, I am sure, earned Ian Chappell’s approval. It was Chappell who
declared Australia’s first innings (batting first) at 5 for 441 at the MCG in
1972/73. Even though Pakistan replied with 574, there was enough time for
Australia to pile on more runs in the second innings and win the match. ********* I mentioned in the last entry that published balls faced figures for
some Tests do not tally with the number of balls bowled. Dave Barry has
produced a list (of remarkable length) of cases on
his blog and discusses some issues there. There are many cases from the
80s and 90s, and for many of these Tests there is only one published source
and no available original scorebook. The errors generally originate in these
sources and Cricket Archive and Cricinfo simply reproduce them. I have
corrected the problems myself for quite a number of Tests, but I have only
reached 1983 in my comprehensive survey and the results are not publicly
available yet – hopefully one day. Barry has commented on a few of the cases;
where I can check, his surmises of the problems are correct. The problems sometimes lie in the original scorebooks, which was the
case for the 1983/84 West Indies Tests. Problematic scores turn up as
recently as the late 1990s. I recently studied a couple of scores from Sri
Lanka (v Zimbabwe) in January 1998, and they were riddled with anomalies, even
though they superficially added up. In some innings the tallies for specific
scoring strokes (1s, 2s, 3s, 4s, 6s) differed
between the batting and bowling sections of the score, and in others
re-scoring produced a muddle of scoring strokes that seemed in the wrong
place. One innings I could not re-score at all, even with a generous
application of fudging. Oddly enough, a couple of scoresheets from two months
later (Pakistan/Sri Lanka March 1998), using the same sheet structure, were
in good order and fitted together perfectly. (They were written in a
different hand). But problems arise again in Sri Lanka’s Tests against New
Zealand in May 1998, which have significant anomalies. Whether these
anomalies are a sign of errors in the accepted scores (and player career
stats) is an open question; there are no independent sources to check
against. |
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31 March 2012 Philander’s Great Start Vernon Philander took his 50th Test wicket against New Zealand in his
7th Test, an extremely rare achievement. It was sufficiently rare for the
Cricinfo statisticians to write an article about it, although they did not
address the most interesting question this raised
(this happens quite a lot). However, the question occurred to a reader of
this blog (Tom) who asked: which bowler was fastest to 50 wickets in terms of
balls bowled? Tom correctly deduced that Philander has taken out this particular
record, and by a considerable margin. I was able to help him out with a few
exact figures. Philander took his 50th wicket with his 1240th ball – an
incredible strike rate of 24.8. The next best I can find is 1523 balls by
Johnny Briggs (helped by those farcical “Tests” of 1888/89, which
unfortunately seem to keep coming up in the annals of cricket statistics) and
1652 for George Lohmann. I don’t have an exact figure for CTB Turner; I
suspect that “The Terror” was similar to Lohmann. Next I get Brett Lee (1844) Frank Tyson (1881) followed by Spofforth
(1915) Not including no balls. It is quite remarkable to see a player beating one of those bowling
records set back in the 19th Century, when the game was rather different.
Those old bowling records often seem to be set in stone. Late Season Batting Blues In the last ten Sheffield Shield matches for the season, not one team
batting first scored over 300. The highest was 277 by Victoria at the WACA.
Five out of ten teams batting second scored over 300. WINNING RUNS: the list of batsmen who hit the winning run in Tests is
now complete, apart from one Test in 1936 (was it
Wally Hammond or Charles Barnett?). This finalises the summary list in the Unusual Records section. Ricky Ponting
leads with nine followed by Desmond Haynes with seven. Haynes was present at
the death on 18 occasions, more than any other batsman, but on most occasions
his partner or extras provided the final runs. Extras have finished 31 Tests. Balls Faced Blues I recently, belatedly, obtained copies of scores from Australia’s
blowtorch-to-the-belly tour of the West Indies in 1984. [I have mentioned
earlier that balls faced records for Allan Border’s career are complete
except for one Test (Barbados) from that series. Border was recently edged
out by Rahul Dravid as the batsmen who had faced most balls in Test cricket,
but exactly when that happened is unclear]. At last, I thought, we can find
the missing balls faced figures. Alas, the Bridgetown score that came back to
Australia is seriously incomplete (and this is an “official” score!). Many
balls faced figures are missing – there is nothing to add to the figures
posted on Cricket Archive – and there is no detail whatsoever in the bowling
sections of the score. The fourth Test score of the series is also incomplete
in the bowling section. There are other problems. Where they can be checked, there are
significant issues with balls faced figures in the second Test. This was the
match of Border’s epic rescue, scoring 98 not out and 100 not out against the
West Indies pace barrage at its peak, including a two-hour last-wicket stand
with Terry Alderman that saved the match. A full re-score confirms Border’s
runs and the sequence of strokes, yet the balls faced figures as
published seem to be quite wrong. Border is given 314 balls for his 98*
and 269 for the 100*. The figures I get are 283 and 285 balls, respectively.
Viv Richards’ figures for his 76 are also very doubtful: I get 130 balls not
188. There are other discrepancies. Using the revised figures, the balls
faced now reconcile with the bowling figures. Once again, solid evidence that balls faced figures published in the
pre-computer age can be questionable. Even if all figures are eventually
found, the total balls faced for Border’s career will be quite uncertain. The Border/Alderman stand, incidentally, lasted for 197 balls. The
first hour of the stand was the critical part; later on, Australia’s lead was
such that there was no time for the West Indies to win. Play was called off
13 overs into the final 20, when Border reached his century. A Lock on Scoring Speaking of late-order pressure partnerships, Sreeram recently asked
about the Georgetown
Test of 1968, when Tony Lock dominated a critical late-order stand with
Pat Pocock. I checked the scorebook. Lock scored 57 while Pocock remained on
0, and 59 including two runs he scored with Snow. There were about eight
sundries, not marked in the score. Lock did an amazing job of farming the strike in the early stages. At
one point Pocock faced only 4 balls in ten overs (half an hour) during which
Lock scored 39 off 56. Later on the strike was even. Pocock did not score
until his 62nd ball. The partnership lasted 258 balls. |
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19 March 2012 His Only Ball in First-Class Cricket Some recent correspondence alerted me to the unusual case of one JEP
(Emile) McMaster, who played his only Test and first-class cricket as part of
Major Wharton’s tour to South Africa in 1888/89, and was caught off the only
ball he faced in the series. Accepting, for the moment, the first-class and
(very dubious) Test status of these matches, McMaster is the only Test player
to be dismissed by the only ball he faced in first-class cricket. There are others who have been out to their only ball faced in Tests:
EJ Tyler, GE Bond, RL Park (a specialist batsman), WA Hunt, and M Ngam, who
played three Tests but only batted once. They may have been trumped by MA
Hanley of South Africa, who possibly made a diamond duck (run out without
facing a ball) in his only Test innings in 1949. It is not clear from the
scorebook whether Hanley faced the one ball bowled while he was at the
wicket, since the batsman preceding him (Begbie) was also run out on the
preceding ball. The Times says he “ran himself out like a schoolboy”, a hint
that he did in fact face the ball. The Other David Warner David Warner’s 100 off 140 balls for Australia, batting first at
Adelaide, was a puzzling innings. It was the slowest ODI century by an
Australian for 20 years, since David Boon made 100 off 147 balls in the days
before super bats and shortened boundaries. Boon was batting in 1991/92 at
the MCG against the mighty West Indians, and under difficult conditions
Australia won the match when West Indies was bowled out for 144. Since then,
some Australian players have batted slower than Warner without making a
century (Shane Watson once got 85* off 140 balls), but it is usually in a
successful chase of relatively low totals. An Impossible Partnership: Statistical
Notes on Atkinson and Depeiza. Dennis Atkinson and Clairmote Depeiza re-wrote the record book for
lower-order partnerships when they added 347 for the seventh wicket at
Bridgetown in 1955. The signs were not auspicious. The record seventh-wicket
stand for the West Indies stood at just 73. Depeiza was a wicketkeeper
whose top score in first-class cricket was 64, and who was playing only his
second Test. Atkinson was an all-rounder who was not a fixture in the team;
in 13 Tests since 1948 his highest score was 74. He had been dropped for the
second Test, but stepped into the captaincy at Bridgetown when Stollmeyer was
injured, a not uncontroversial appointment; at the time, pressure was
increasing to appoint a black captain. Unfortunately, an original score of the Test or series does not exist
as far as I know; the Australian team may not have even returned with one.
The following is from newspapers including Barbados Advocate. Australia had finally been dismissed for 668 on the third day of the
six-day Test. Depeiza (whose name is given as De Peiza in the newspaper, and
Depeiaza in Cricket Archive) came to the crease at 147/6* late in the day
when Miller dismissed Smith, about four minutes after Atkinson's innings had
begun. They added 41 in 29 minutes before stumps day 3, WI 187/6 off 55 overs
in 195 minutes, Depeiza 22, Atkinson 19. Lindwall 10-2-40-1, Miller 7-1-43-2.
Miller, who had taken two wickets in an over, was immediately taken off by
Johnson, a decision resented by Miller and sparking criticism in the press.
Lindwall and Benaud were mentioned as bowlers in that 29 minutes; there may
have been others. Lindwall opened the bowling on the fourth day with Miller. Both came
under attack from Atkinson, and the new ball was taken at 207. Archer was
brought on for Miller at 229, with Atkinson on 53 and Depeiza 31. Lindwall
was taken off after bowling six overs for 25 runs. Atkinson reached 50 in 63
minutes, the 50 partnership came in 39 minutes, 100 partnership
in 84 minutes, 61 added in first hour of the day. There were 26 overs in the
90-minute session, WI now 282/6, Depeiza 37, Atkinson 95. At one stage there
were six consecutive maidens (Hill and Johnson). Depeiza had adopted a fully
defensive supporting role; at one stage he added 2 runs while Atkinson added
50. Miller bowled after lunch and Atkinson hit him for four to reach his
first Test century in 130 minutes, 14x4, 1x6.
Depeiza suddenly came out of his shell to hit two fours and reach 50 in 138
minutes, 5x4. West Indies 300 had come up in 295 minutes. Miller came off and
spinners bowled most of the session, both batsmen scoring easily. Atkinson
reached 150 with a four off Hill, in 198 minutes, 19x4, 1x6, 1x5, and was
severe on Benaud before tea. Tea score (120-minute session) was 417/6, Atkinson 185, Depeiza 78. Another new ball was taken at 427, Lindwall and Miller. Depeiza
reached 100 (which would remain his only century in first-class cricket) with
a four off Miller, in 261 minutes, 12x4, which also brought up 300 stand. Scoring slowed considerably,
a catch was dropped, Lindwall bowling accurately. After some difficulties, a
single off Lindwall gave Atkinson 200 in 310 minutes, 26x4, 1x6. Stumps called at 494/6 off 146 overs, 495 minutes (90-minute session),
Atkinson 215 in 333 minutes and Depeiza 122 in 329 minutes. Lindwall
25-3-97-1, Miller 22-2-112-2. Depeiza was bowled by Benaud off the third ball of the fifth day
without addition to the score. He batted 330 minutes, 16x4. Atkinson was next
out at 504 for 219 in 351 minutes, 29x4, 1x6. The number of balls bowled in the partnership is not known, but is
quite close to 600. I once heard Colin McDonald say that he dropped a catch very early in
the partnership. There is no mention of this, but there is mention of
McDonald juggling and dropping an easy chance off Atkinson on 195, at cover
point off Lindwall. Perhaps McDonald misremembered which day it was! It is
the only dropped catch mentioned, although a clear run out chance had been
missed when Atkinson was on 147. Atkinson and Depeiza were only the second pair to bat unbeaten through
a complete day’s play, after Hobbs and Sutcliffe in 1924. No other
partnership for the sixth wicket or later has done it since. Only three such
partnerships have faced more than Atkinson and Depeiza’s 91 overs in a day.
The record is equivalent to 110 six-ball overs, by Hobbs and Sutcliffe. Mark
Taylor and Geoff Marsh faced 102 overs at Trent Bridge in 1989. Even after all this, West Indies failed to save the follow-on
(Australia 668, WI 510), but Johnson did not enforce it. Understandable
perhaps. *Curiously, newspaper
reports in both West Indies and Australia give the fall of wicket as 146/6
rather than 147;146 would be consistent with the
fact that the batsmen changed ends between the dismissals of Weekes and
Smith. By the next day, the fall of wicket had been revised to 147; the best
explanation is a no ball that initially had been overlooked. Here is the scorecard as it stood at the fall of the seventh wicket.
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29 February 2012 Defenders Wanted Azhar Ali took 319 balls to reach a century at Dubai a few weeks ago,
slowest century in a winning cause since TT Samaraweera against England in
2003. There have been only three 300-ball centuries in the last 230+ Test
matches. Compare that to thirty in the space of 200 Tests in the early 1960s.
Australians, in particular, have abandoned the stone wall: the last Aussie to
take over 300 balls to reach 100 was Graham Wood at the MCG in 1981/82. Yet the number of situations where such innings would be invaluable
has not decreased. No one seems to want to tough it out any more. It was once
said that attack was the best form of defence; now it seems to be the only
form. Those of us who saw the likes of Tavare batting (see next item) won’t be
mourning the passing of the stonewaller too much, but it does sometimes feel
that some of the variety of Test cricket has gone out of the game. A Tavare Special I have identified previously Chris Tavare’s record as the slowest
specialist batsman of all time (in runs per hour, see 9 Nov 2011). I recently
came across an innings where Tavare was instructed to “bat as long as
possible” by his captain. The result, at Chennai in 1982, was 35 runs in
three full sessions (5.5 hours batting time). India had declared at 481/3 at
lunch on the third day, after which Tavare opened the innings and scored 17
in the lunch/tea session. Graham Gooch reached 81 in the same session. Tavare
added just nine runs in the 90 minute final session (Gooch reached 117), and
another nine in a full two hours before lunch. I don’t know the record here,
but 18 runs in two full sessions would be hard to beat. Tavare was out to the
third ball after lunch, 35 off 238 balls in 332 minutes. He scored only 26
runs in the first 50 overs, but even then his scoring slowed even further. Slower innings of this size are hard to find. Robin Russell scored 29*
off 235 balls at Joburg in 1995/96, and Geoff Rabone scored a 29 of similar
ilk in Auckland in 1953 (but balls faced are not known). The only similar
innings that was clearly slower was WH Scotton’s 34 off about Tavare was outscored 127 to 26 by Gooch in the opening stand of 155.
This is the most one-sided large opening stand in all Tests. A Scoresheet Unlike Any Other Here is an unusual
one - an image of the scoresheet for AEJ Collins’ all-time record score
in 11-a-side cricket in 1899, 628 not out no less. Or as the scorer
supposedly put it “628 not plus or minus 20 shall we say” (a remark not found
on the actual sheet). The ground and circumstances had some strange features;
check out the entry in
Wikipedia. These included boundaries as short as 16 metres! (where boundaries only counted as two runs). In addition,
it was unusual to play to a finish at any level in England at the time. The image is a photograph of a museum exhibit in Wellington New
Zealand. |
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6
February 2012 Sudden
Demise England, in the
Abu Dhabi Test, lost their last five wickets off eleven balls. I’m told that
there is a claim out there that this is the fastest such collapse in all
Tests, and a couple of people asked me to check this. Not so easy, as such
detailed data is still unavailable for many Tests. However,
combining scorebook data with original match reports does produce an
interesting list. Fewest balls for last five wickets
The scorebook for
Leeds 1957 happens to be still missing, but the report in The Times is explicit, and adds that
four wickets fell in consecutive balls, perhaps the only such case in Test
cricket. There are a number of other candidates for the list where exact data
is lacking (e.g Auckland 1963/64), but very few of them are likely to be
under 20 balls. One Test for which I have no relevant information at all is Dhaka 1959. There is also Lord’s 1888, which
was just like Abu Dhabi; England lost by the same number of runs as they
scored, and the last five fell in a flash (but more than 20 balls, it
appears). |
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29
January 2012 Rich
Day for Bowlers Reader Mark pointed
out to me that 42 wickets fell in Test matches on Saturday 28 January, spread
across three matches. He asks is this the highest for any calendar day, and
indeed it is. The list is
Corrected 30 Jan Actually, it is
intriguing that so few additions to this list have been made in the last seven
years, given that cricketers’ workloads are allegedly increasing. Partly, it
can be put down to recent domination of bat over ball. The previous
record, in 2006, included a 20-wicket day at Johannesburg between South
Africa and India (10 wickets each). ******** Second
Helping It is very
unusual for players involved in a giant partnership to produce another
substantial partnership in the second innings; for one thing there are not a lot
of opportunities to do so, since one giant innings is often sufficient. Ricky
Ponting and Michael Clarke managed it at Adelaide, becoming only the second
pair to add more than 70 runs in the second innings
after a triple-century first innings. The most combination runs for partners
in a Test are as follows Most Runs in Partnership
(batting together twice)
The Oval Test of
1934 was a Timeless match, so Ponting and Clarke have secured the record for
this little category for time-limited Test matches. Dravid and Laxman
added 303 and 51 at Adelaide in 2003/04 – the good old days, it would seem. ******** David Warner’s
hectic century against India at Perth, 100 off 69 balls, set a number of
records, as well attested elsewhere. I don’t have much to add, except that
the century was also very fast in time batted, thanks to Warner grabbing a
majority of the strike. It used to be that minutes batted dominated reporting
of fast innings, with balls faced only gradually being accepted as the
superior measure, over a period of decades. Now it has turned 180 degrees,
and it is hard to find mention of minutes batted for milestones. I figure
that Warner reached 100 in 96 minutes, faster even than Gilchrist’s 57-ball,
100-minute century five years ago. This would equal the time for Brian Lara
at St John’s in 1999, and be the fastest by anyone since Viv Richard’s
record-breaker in 81 minutes (56 balls) in 1986. There is a case
for giving ongoing attention to time batted. While balls
faced is the better measure of innings quality, time batted can give a
better measure of an innings’ impact and its memorability. Warner scored a
century on the first day, even though his team batted second. I figure this
only the eighth time it has been done (Graeme Smith has done it twice, once
against Zimbabwe), or five times if you exclude Bangladesh and Zimbabwe
Tests. The most runs in such a situation is 151 by Marcus Trescothick,
against Bangladesh; the record for more authentic Tests is 123 by Everton
Weekes in Dunedin back 1955/56. The only other Australian to do it (Bradman
came close) was Jack Fingleton at Johannesburg in 1935/36. Warner may be the
first batsman to do this who started his innings after tea: Wally Hammond
probably did so at Old Trafford in 1936, but the tea break for that day is a
little uncertain. Warner played a
great innings by any measure, though I was pleased that Roy Fredericks’
fastest to 150, off 113 balls at the WACA in 1975/76, still stands. I have
vivid memories of Fredericks’ 169. Memory may have to suffice. I have heard
that most of the video of the 1975/76 series has been lost, destroyed in a
flood of some kind. There was no home video back then, so no other copies
apparently exist. |
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09
January 2012 I must admit sometimes
to a moment of regret when a long-standing cricket record falls. Another
little bit of cricket history edges towards obscurity. So it was when Michael
Clarke took out Reg Foster’s ground record score of 287 at the SCG, which had
stood since 1903. Still, Test cricket is a living game, and one of the
reassuring things about the game is that the old records are difficult but by
no means impossible to beat. And Foster (who only made two scores over 50 in
Test cricket) still has that highest score on debut, a record unapproached
and formidable. For a guy who
scored only 602 Test runs, Foster certainly made his
mark on the record books. The SCG was
overdue for a triple century, in a way. Triples occur about once in every 80
Tests, so with the SCG registering its 100th Test, it is not
surprising that someone knocked one up eventually. One reader
(David) wrote in with a few interesting observations that highlight the
occasional capriciousness of the game. In Australia’s innings, David Warner
was out to the first false shot he played. Clarke on the other hand, played
and missed perhaps eight times in his first 40 runs, and went on to 329 not
out. This is not to be too critical of Clarke: we have all seen big innings
that contained more false strokes. But spare a thought for Warner, who sat
there watching the scoreboard ratchet up to 659 for 4, with his eight runs at
the top. False strokes
might be an interesting area of study, and a new statistic. It would not be
possible to extend this far back in history, although Bill Frindall’s scores
(I have about 150 of these) might provide some historical basis. Vignettes On the first day
of a Test between Sri Lanka and India in 1985 (Colombo PSS Stadium), Sri
Lanka scored 168 runs for one wicket (off 89 overs), and the Indian bowlers
took no wickets at all, S Wettimuny (19 off 155 balls!) having been run out.
It wasn’t for lack of effort from the bowlers, since SEVEN catches were
dropped during the day’s play. The partnership of 288 between Michael Clarke and Ricky Ponting at the
SCG is the highest ever between a serving captain and his predecessor. The feat of
scoring a century before lunch in a Test match is well chronicled. But who
has scored the fewest runs in the first session of a match? At Kanpur in
1979, opener Chetan Chauhan batted right through the two-hour pre-lunch
session for eight runs, surprising given that India scored 69 runs overall in
the session. Other candidates may well turn up. Reader Mark
mentioned that the partnership of 207 between Jacques Kallis and Alviro
Petersen in the recent Cape Town Test contained no sundries at all. I don’t
know of a larger such partnership. There are partnerships with more runs
between extras, but not complete ones. The most I found was a period of 241
runs between extras by Nurse and Kanhai at Port-of-Spain in 1967/68.
Barrington and Dexter, in their epic at Old Trafford in 1964, put on 237
before the first extra. Comments
on First India Test The MCG Test was
the fourteenth consecutive Test at the ground to give a positive result.
Apart from one washout, there has been only one Test at the ground in the
last 23 years that has gone the distance and been drawn: South Africa in
1997/98. The victory ended
Australia’s (equal) longest streak without a win over India: eight matches. Rahul Dravid and
Sachin Tendulkar became the first pair of batsmen to score twenty century
partnerships in Tests. They are now well ahead of Greenidge/Haynes and
Hayden/Ponting, each with 16 century partnerships. The Dravid/Tendulkar firm
has produced 6884 runs in partnership at an average of 51.0. Those waiting
impatiently for the elusive 100th hundred from Tendulkar might
like to know that he has been involved in 158 century partnerships in Tests
and ODIs. Boxing Day saw
for the first time two Tasmanian top-order batsmen batting together in a
Test. The stand of 113 between Ricky Ponting and Ed Cowan was only the fifth
century partnership between a debutant and a 100-Test veteran. The record
here was set in 2010 by Tendulkar with Suresh Raina, 256 at Colombo. Eighteen batsmen
batted on the third day; only three of them (Ashwin, Ponting, Hussey) scored
more than eleven runs. 2011 has been a
year where bowlers have made a comeback. Test matches worldwide have seen
32.7 runs per wicket this year, more than ten per cent down on the figures
for 2010 and 2009, and the lowest since high-tech superbats came into
widespread use around 2002. There has been only one team score over 350 in Australia’s
last five Tests. The attendance of
70,027 on Boxing Day is the highest for India in Australia in a Test match,
and the second day of 52,000 was likewise a second-day record. Test cricket
is said to be in decline, but it still has its strongholds. Eleven batsmen
were out bowled in the match (more than half via the edge of the bat). This
equals the most in any Test since 2005, and the most in Australia since 1979. |
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22
December 2011 Comments
on Second New Zealand Test New Zealand’s seven-run
victory is the narrowest margin in a Test in Australia since South Africa won
by five runs at the SCG in 1993/94. It was New Zealand’s first win in
Australia since 1985. The match ends a
22-match streak without a win (since Auckland 1993) for New Zealand against
Australia. It was the longest streak involving any two teams since England
went winless for 29 Tests against West Indies from 1979 to 1988. Batting first,
the New Zealanders were out for 150. No visiting team has beaten Australia
after such a poor start since 1894 (when England won after scoring 75 at the
MCG). At the Adelaide Oval in 1951/52, the West Indies beat Australia after a
first innings of 105, but they were batting second. At the Gabba, the
missed run out of Ponting, Clarke’s belated no ball escape off Bracewell, and
the dropped catch off Mitchel Starc, cost New Zealand 226 runs. At Bellerive,
New Zealand missed no clear chances at all; the misses by Australia would
have been more than enough to reverse the result. James Pattinson
took 5 for 51 at Hobart to follow his 5 for 27 on debut. He is the first
Australian to nail five-fors in both his first and second Test matches since
Rodney Hogg in 1978/79. Clarrie Grimmett is the only other Australian to do
it in the last 100 years. Brad Haddin’s
stumping off a medium pacer (Mike Hussey) is actually a very rare dismissal.
It hadn’t happened in any Test for 20 years, and the last Australian keeper
to make a stumping off a non-spinner was Barry Jarman off Alan Connolly against
India in 1967/68. It was also a rare highlight for Hussey, who has suffered a
sudden form reversal. After batting averaging in the 90s with the bat in Sri
Lanka, he has averaged less than 12 in fours Tests since then. David Warner was
the first Australian opener to carry his bat in his second Test match; the only comparable Australian was Dr John Barrett,
on debut way back in 1890. Another batsman to carry his bat on debut was
another Warner, ‘Plum’ Warner of England, in 1899. David Warner was the first
batsman to carry his bat in the fourth innings of a Test since Mark Dekker of
Zimbabwe in 1993. Since 1980,
Australia has lost nine Tests by fewer than 20 runs, and won only one.
Australia has lost more Tests by fewer than 20 runs than all other countries
put together. A
Wicket with Two Consecutive Balls Yes, it has been
done countless times in Test matches, but never a case quite like Nazmul
Hossain of Bangladesh. In 2004, Nazmul finished off an innings by dismissing
Harbhajan Singh. Dropped from the team, he did not return until the latest
Test against Pakistan at Mirpur, and after seven years on the outer dismissed
Mohammad Hafeez with his first ball. Thanks to reader
Mark for the info. |
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12
December 2011 The
Leanest Sessions I came across
another case of extreme slow scoring from the 1950s. Pakistan hosted India
for the first time in 1954/55. Both teams were desperate to avoid defeat, and
all Tests were dull draws in spite of low scoring, but not helped by the
match limits of four days of 5.5 hours each. At Peshawar, defensiveness
climaxed on the last day when Pakistan added just 26 runs before lunch in a
full two-hour session. Hanif Mohammad was out late in the session for 21 in
195 minutes, having added eight runs in 105 minutes during the morning. The
26 runs equals the smallest return I have come across in a full two-hour
session, equalling the output an unusual session at the Gabba in 1931/32,
which comprised all the play on that day. It was the session that Bruce
Mitchell was unable to score for 95 balls. The list as it currently stands is Fewest Runs in a Full
Two-Hour Session
Does not include
interrupted sessions, including those with change of innings. Many
low-scoring sessions prior to the mid-1980s ran less than 120 minutes. Apart from the Pakistan
case, all the above batting teams were playing away from home. The Chennai
1963 case was discussed in the entry for 6 April 2010. This is probably
an incomplete list. Suggestions welcome. The table will be
posted in the Unusual
Records Section, along with some new tables of the fastest team 50s,
100s, and 200s. There is a
peculiar postscript to Pakistan’s 26-run session. A wicket (Wazir Mohammad)
had fallen on the stroke of lunch. Next in was Imtiaz Ahmed, who, it appears,
was of a different mindset to most of his colleagues. Imtiaz thrashed 28 runs
(maybe more) in the first 12 minutes after lunch, personally scoring at more
than 10 times the team’s pre-lunch rate. Maqsood Ahmed, who had batted over
an hour and a half, was overtaken by Imtiaz inside ten minutes. Note a
correction to the
‘official’ scorecard: Wazir Mohammad batted at #5, Maqsood Ahmed at #4. An
Over of No Balls The longest over
in Test cricket is believed to be 15 deliveries, including nine no balls, by
Curtley Ambrose at Perth in 1996/97. I haven’t seen a list of other contenders,
but I do know of two 13-delivery overs, one by ‘Gubby’ Allen in 1934, and one
by Joel Garner at the MCG in 1984/85. The Garner effort is unique, it
appears, in that there were no ‘legals’ in the first six deliveries (two of
them were scored from); in effect, a complete “over” of no balls. The over
reads 2n, n, n, n, n, 3n, 3, 0, n, 0, 0, 0, 0. Incidentally, I
recently obtained copies of three official scores for Tests at the Gabba in
the 1990s. This has allowed me to “complete the set” of Tests involving
Australia in the last 20 years. The most recent Test for Australia that now
does not have ball-by-ball record is St. Johns 1991, so there is now a full
ball-by-ball record of players such as Warne, McGrath and Ponting. The most
recent missing Test in Australia is the Gabba Test of 1989/90 (Sri Lanka). A
few off-the-cuff comments on the first Australia/New Zealand test. Australia has now
won 17 Tests at the Gabba since our last defeat there in 1988/89. This equals
the most victories between defeats at any ground, set by Pakistan at the
Karachi National Stadium (with some help from local umpires) prior to 2000.
Australia was now beaten New Zealand 16 times since the Kiwis last tasted
success at Auckland in 1993. New Zealand has beaten every other Test team
since then. During the second
innings, James Pattinson took five wickets in the space of 21 balls. No
bowler has done this on Test debut before. While more than 100 bowlers have
taken a five-for on debut before, only a handful have conceded fewer runs
than Pattinson’s 5 for 27. The only Australian was Charles Turner with six
for 15 on debut way back in 1887. Captaincy seems
to have boosted Michael Clarke’s batting. He has scored 563 runs at 47.0 in
seven Tests since his promotion, after scoring just 263 at 20.2 in his
previous seven Tests. In spite of three
centuries since he became Test captain, Michael Clarke has still not mastered
the art of making huge scores. In 17 Test centuries his top score is only
168. Only Mark Waugh has scored more centuries with a lower top score (20
centuries, HS of 153*). Debutants have
taken almost one-quarter of Australia’s wickets since the start of the Sri
Lanka series in August (22 out of 95). This is quite a change from the heyday
of Warne and McGrath, when Australia needed few new bowlers, and debutants
took less than 3 per cent of Australia’s wickets. The missed run
out of Ponting, Clarke’s belated no ball escape off Bracewell, and the
dropped catch off Mitchel Starc, cost New Zealand 226 runs. Phillip Hughes
has now been caught 26 times in his 28 dismissals by bowlers. He has been
caught twenty times in the arc between keeper and point. |
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9
November 2011 Fast
and Slow Update The HOT 100 list has been
updated. I only do this about once a year now since most players’ career
scoring rates change only slowly. Virender Sehwag’s
march up the leader board has paused. He is still just behind Gilchrist in
third place, and has slipped marginally in the last 12 months. Tillekeratne
Dilshan, also struggling for from, has slipped out of the Top 10, but Umar
Akmal has made his debut in the Top 10. With just 1003 runs he qualifies only
marginally for the list. Kallis (#21) has
passed Dravid (#24) as the most tenacious active batsman, although both have
improved on last year. A new feature is
the Fastest and Slowest lists measured in runs per hour. The Fastest list
heavily favours old-time batsmen in the days when over rates were much
higher. Nevertheless, the domination of the Golden Age batsmen gives us a
hint of how entertaining cricket must have been for spectators at the time,
and why the likes of Victor Trumper were so fondly remembered. I hope I never
have to read again that ‘statistics cannot capture the genius of Trumper’. He
is revealed as the fastest-scoring specialist batsman of all time (40 runs
per hour); enough said. The Slowest list
also has some interest, dominated by some who played in the 1970s and 80s,
after over rates dropped but before the modern resurgence in scoring. The
bottom of the list is Bob Taylor, a fine wicketkeeper, but who would be
unlikely to be selected today. Just above Taylor is Chris Tavare at 13.5 runs
per hour; anyone who saw him bat would be sure to consider him worthy of his
place on the list. Tavare, oddly enough, played plenty of One-Day cricket. Mike Brearley (14.4 rph) is revealed as being
considerably slower than his partner in crime Geoff Boycott (18.0). Boycott
is not among the 70 slowest batsmen; however, he benefits from playing so
many Tests in the 1960s, before over rates plummeted. |
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23
October 2011 The
One Millionth Test Run It is almost
exactly 25 years since Test cricket saw its one millionth run. I don’t know
if many people, or anyone at all, noticed at the
time – I only recall discussion of it some years later. Nowadays it is quite
straightforward to track down the millionth run to a particular match and a
particular partnership, but identifying the specific batsman is not so easy.
Batting at the time were Dean Jones and Allan Border, during the final overs
of the drawn Test at Wankede stadium in October 1986. Beyond this,
conventional published scores do not reveal enough detail. A bit of Googling
of the question turns up some references to the partnership,
and some of these specify Border as the man. The source for this is unclear:
one forum comment dates from 2001. Nor is it clear how the information was
obtained. The claim that
Border hit the run is in error. It was in fact Dean Jones. The source is a
surviving official scorebook (kindly supplied by Rajneesh), which I re-scored
to tease out the necessary info. The one millionth
run came in the 83rd over of the innings, the fifth ball of Raju
Kulkarni’s fifth over, when a single from Jones took Australia’s score to
201. Border hit the next ball for four. The match had reached a pointless
state by that time, and was abandoned as a draw five overs later with
Australia 216/3 in their second innings. The
identification does of course depend on complete accuracy in counting the
previous 999,999 runs. Confidence is boosted by the fact that my database is
aligned exactly with the Cricinfo/Cricket
Archive ‘received version’ (confirmed by an Ask Steven column by Steven Lynch at Cricinfo in July,
reporting 1,958,692 runs in Tests up to that point). On the other hand, there
is next to zero chance that every run has been counted perfectly since 1877,
but that really does not matter. We can never know the exact “real” total, so
we might as well go with the official version. Two million runs
is now approaching, and is about 25-30 Tests away. The second million will
come up in somewhat fewer Tests than the first, which took 1,054 matches. The
last 100 Tests have produced 1,125 runs per match, up from the 980 runs per
match for all Tests. UPDATE: ALL WRONG!!! Groan. There has been
a change in the “official” scores. An innings by South Africa in a Johannesburg
Test of 1906 has been changed from 34/1 to 33/1. The 34/1 is in the Wisden Book of Test Cricket but the
33/1 is supported by a surviving scorebook, which also give as different
total for Extras. This means that the frame is shifted by one run, making Allan
Border the scorer of the one millionth run. Of course, there could be other
errors of this type unrecorded, but there you go. Boundary
Droughts I recently came
across a century by Graham Wood at the MCG against Pakistan in 1981/82, where
at one stage he hit no fours for 221 balls spanning four and a half hours. I
wondered how many batsmen had faced more balls between boundaries, so I
consulted the database. I was surprised at how many there were. Most Balls Faced Between
Fours (during a single innings)
*Approximate FLH Mooney (New Zealand)
hit no fours off his last 430 balls faced in Test cricket, spread over six innings. In 1978/79, Geoff Boycott
faced 569 balls between boundaries, spanning six innings (including one
innings of 337 balls). There was one four, which included two overthrows. So Wood is not even
in the top 12. One report does note that one of Wood’s three fours was
all-run, so there is a possibility that he faced up to 264 balls without a
shot to the boundary, but I don’t know which of his fours it was. Also note
that most sources do not distinguish between boundaries and all-run fours, so
the table is based entirely on shots for four, not boundaries. Mitchell was
making his Test debut. His boundary drought spanned five and a half hours
batting. Rowan’s 250 balls was his entire innings. Boycott’s
sequence is one of the most extraordinary statistics in Test cricket. How on
Earth anyone could bat for twelve hours without hitting a boundary, not even
by accident, defies understanding. When he did finally break the drought,
with a single boundary in the second innings of the 1978/79 MCG Test, he then
did not hit another four for a further 215 balls, spanning four innings. Wood,
incidentally, took 302 balls to reach his century. No Australian in the 30
years since then has taken more than 300 balls to reach 100, itself a
remarkable stat, given how common slow centuries were in the decades prior.
More than 40 batsmen from other countries have done so since 1981. The table is
based almost entirely on a computer search, and there was little other research
involved. Other cases may well have gone undetected. There may not be many
others, however, because low boundary counts tend to cluster on a few large
grounds such as the MCG, and as it happens these
grounds are well covered in the database. |
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4
October 2011 That’s
Gotta Hurt When Virender
Sehwag recently bagged a “king pair” at Edgbaston, he also bagged the batting
equivalent of a hat trick; having been dismissed in his previous innings, Sehwag
had been out three balls in a row. How often has this happened? About half or
more of king pairs involve batting hat tricks, while (surprisingly, perhaps)
most batting hat tricks do not involve a king pair. Batting hat tricks
perforce cover multiple matches. Sehwag is the first batsman since Adam
Gilchrist to record both a king pair and a batting hat trick. Here is a list
of the batting hat tricks that I know about Batsmen out three times
in three balls in Tests
*Harbhajan and Asif were
out three times while facing three balls, but included ‘diamond ducks’. The Kotze and Gopal
Sharma cases (in italics) are uncertain. Gary Troup was out
five times in the space of seven balls, spread over several matches. Kotze’s
innings were five years apart; he may have faced as few as ten or twelve
balls in his whole career, while being dismissed five times and scoring just
two runs. But they all must tip their hats to Ajit Agarkar who was out to
five consecutive balls he faced against Australia in 1999/2000. Troup and Kapil
Dev completed their respective batting hat tricks in the same match, at
Wellington in 1981. Technically, a
few of these cases include run outs, in which the batsman may not actually
have faced the ball he was out. Asif Masood’s
three balls stretched over three matches and two years. The only batsmen
to twice record batting hat tricks are Mutiah Muralitharan, and (believe it or
not) David Boon. Also surprising is the fact that David Boon was the first
Australian to suffer a batting hat trick. I will post this
table in the Unusual Records sections. Fall
of Wicket Adjustments In the Fall of
Wicket sections of online Test match scores (Cricinfo, Cricket Archive), the names of all batsmen out are
identified at each fall of wicket. Traditionally, this data has usually been
absent from published scores; for example, Wisden did not include such data before 1988. So for many Tests,
the identifications would have been culled from match reports. There is a
suspicion that some guesswork has been involved. I say this because I did a
bit of a survey of the identified names, comparing them against the
scorebooks and other data that I have collected. The survey covered perhaps
two-thirds of Tests played between 1945-1978. I
found over one hundred cases where the identity of the batsman out required
correction. This is not as
bad as it sounds. In the great majority of cases, the problem occurred when
clusters of wickets fell, and adjustments were needed to the exact sequence
of batsmen falling. Such issues are generally minor. Errors always come in
multiples: one batsman misidentified means another batsman misidentified
elsewhere in the same innings. But even so, it
flags that secondary data like this should not be regarded as rock solid. |
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12
September 2011 Missed
by That Much Sean Marsh missed
out on the highest partnership by an Australian on Test debut – by one run. His
stand of 258 with Mike Hussey at Pallekele is shaded by the 259 by Wayne
Phillips with Graham Yallop at the WACA in 1983. You can also file this one
under the “I bet he didn’t know he was close to a record” category. Marsh (141) is
the sixth Australian to come within 25 runs of that most venerable Australian
record, the 165* by Charles Bannerman on debut in 1877, without beating
Bannerman’s mark. The others are Archie Jackson (164), Kepler Wessels (162),
Phillips (159), Doug Walters (155), and Michael Clarke (151). Here is a list of
the largest partnerships involving at least one player on Test debut.
The Rudolph
record, being against Bangladesh, should be accepted only reluctantly. Then
again, the 276 by Mills and Dempster was also against a non-Test strength
team. The 249 by Abdul Kadir and Billy Ibadulla was also discussed in the
entry of 20 July 2010. Yet
More on Scorelessness The area of
longest scoreless sequences by bowlers has been covered by record books and
other sources. Keith Walmsley in Most
Withouts in Test Cricket p233 waxes lyrical on the subject. It is a subject
that is unavoidably incomplete, but for now I will record the instances that
turn up in the database, or have otherwise some to light. The list has been
extended to allow comparison with the longest modern spells. Thank you to
reader Mark for the enquiry and suggestions. Most Consecutive Balls Bowled Without
Conceding a Run
“Runs scored” refers to
runs scored at the other end during the sequence. The recent
serendipitous discovery of the Collie Smith spell suggest
that there are almost certainly other cases out there to be found. Nothing
has been found between 1976 and 2004, a period
requiring further research (although 1998 to 2004 has been checked and has no
cases). Many of the above cases were recorded in multiple spells. The longest
sequences in continuous spells are 108 balls by Nadkarni (while 30 runs were
scored at the other end) and 104 by Tayfield (33 runs). It seems unlikely
that these records will ever be exceeded. Tayfield at
Durban had, as partner in crime, one of the most usual of ‘usual suspects’.
Trevor Bailey, at one stage, failed to score off 114 consecutive balls he
faced from Tayfield. My reading of
other reports suggest that Nadkarni at Kanpur in 1960/61, where he bowled 24
maidens in the space of 29 overs in multiple spells (a couple of days after
the Brisbane Tied Test), does not qualify, nor does Lance Gibbs final 14
maidens in 16.3 overs at Bridgetown the following year. An able assist to
Collie Smith at Auckland
in 1956 was provided by Tony MacGibbon, who was out for 9 off 121 balls.
This is one of the longest innings ever played by a batsman who failed to reach
double figures (the record, 8 off 135 by Trevor Bailey at Leeds in 1955).
MacGibbon’s first scoring shot was an edge for four after 58 balls. His first
“honest” scoring shot was a single after 96 balls, and his tally of 3 scoring
shots in a complete innings of 121 balls has no known parallel in Test
cricket. The West Indies that (first) day bowled 99 overs before tea,
including 52 overs between lunch and tea. Hasn’t the game changed! |
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2
September 2011 Those
First-Ball Wicket-Takers The remarkable
coincidence of two Australians taking wickets in their first over in Test
cricket, on the same day at Galle, attracted plenty of comment. Nathan Lyon,
it is said, is only the second Australian to take a wicket with his first
ball in Test cricket, after Arthur Coningham at the MCG in 1894, who was the
first player to achieve the feat in Tests. But this is one
of those
records that is difficult to research; since
these things are not recorded on standard scorecards, historians have relied
on their predecessors noticing when these things happen, and writing about
them anecdotally. It should not be surprising that sometimes these things get
overlooked. So it is with Coningham.
Here is one earlier case. At the SCG in 1882/83, Irish-born Tom Horan, who
was playing in his tenth Test but who had not previously bowled, bowled WW
Read in the second innings, with the first ball of an eventful over. The Sydney Morning Herald remarked “Horan’s first
over was sensational. He bowled W.W. Read with the first ball, and nearly
lamed Barlow with the last.” The exact meaning
of “lamed” was left to the imagination. It is not
surprising that the import of this was missed, given that Horan was not a
regular bowler. (I have reconstructed the innings over by over and can
confirm that Horan had not previously bowled in the innings.) We can still
say, though, that Coningham is the first bowler do
it on Test debut. One could add that the concept of a “Test career” or even
“Test cricket” did not really exist in 1883. There is even a
precedent of sorts for the Copeland/Lyon coincidence. In a Johannesburg Test
in 1905/06, both AEE Vogler (South Africa) and JN Crawford (England) took
wickets with their respective first balls in Test cricket. These cases are
confirmed by a surviving scorebook. These are the
only “new” cases of the feat in my database. There might well be other cases
unfound, in the many Tests for which complete records are still not
available. |
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28
August 2011 A
“Last Ball” Test Victory Discovered? There have been
many close Test matches over the years, including a number of matches won
with very little time to spare. The two Tied Tests both finished with only one
ball left to play. However, there has still been only one Test won on the
absolute last ball of the last possible over: Port Elizabeth 1949, when
England hustled a leg bye off the last ball to win by three wickets. Some evidence
that there may have been another has now turned up. New Zealand played three
Tests in Pakistan in 1955/56; apart from the standard scores, there is not
much in the published record about these matches. The second Test in Lahore
was a remarkable match that included an innings of 209 by Imtiaz Ahmed
batting at Number 8. (Imtiaz, incidentally batted 380 minutes, not the 680
minutes given in Wisden Book of Test
Cricket.) The standard account says Pakistan won by four wickets with 18
minutes to spare. So I was surprised to come across a rather different
on-the-spot newspaper account
(Dominion, Wellington) that spells
out in some detail how the match went down to the wire, with the winning run
hit off the very last ball. It is quite specific, and self-consistent, about
the final overs. The last over was bowled by Johnny Hayes. The account is
supported by a similar account, less detailed but independent, in the Otago Daily Times, which adds that the
scores were level for about three overs. These accounts
conflict with the Pakistan newspaper Dawn,
which gives the 18 minute figure. It is still possible, though, that Dawn has it right. Tea had been called
when New Zealand was out. Post-tea sessions in that series were normally 90
minutes, and the Pakistan innings time of 92 minutes is consistent with the
last-ball scenario. However, the session would have been extended if an early
tea had been called for the change of innings. In that case, the N.Z.
reporters may have simply been under a misapprehension, and were assuming
that stumps would be called after 90 minutes. It also seems hard to believe
that a team, even in the funereal ’Fifties, would sit with scores level for
three overs before hitting a run off the last possible ball. On the other
hand, calling tea 20 minutes early seems a little strange and out of order,
especially when the time factor was so critical. The New Zealand Cricket Almanack for that
year supports the 18 minute figure, and this very probably was, in turn, the
source for a statement to the same effect in Frindall’s Wisden Book of Test Cricket. Wisden
in 1957 is
ambiguous on the matter. However, looking at NZCA carefully, I suspect that the match report was not
eyewitness, and was based mostly on Dawn.
Teams in those days sometimes brought back collections of press clipping from
tours. [NZCA reports from this time
and later, written usually by Arthur Carman, are normally rich in statistical
information that must have been obtained from scorebooks, but the reports
from this series contain little or nothing that is not found in Dawn.] It may be that no scorebook was
brought back from that tour. It wouldn’t be the last time that a touring team
on the subcontinent did not come back with a scorebook (Tied Test in Madras a
notorious case). The final-day
report in Dawn is a bit odd: it is
far less detailed than the reports from the first three days of the Test, and
it becomes rather brief and sketchy when describing what was, either way, an
exciting and important final session. Can it be
resolved? There is supposition in either scenario. I don’t think that either
account can be ruled out, but there is no clear resolution. [Researching such
obscure Tests can be a challenge. Some of the materials for this item were
obtained from as far afield as the Library of Congress in Washington, and the
National Library in Wellington.] UPDATE: The Christchurch Press has an independent report that supports
the last-ball scenario, although not conclusively (“what might well have been
the final over of the match”), while New
Zealand Herald supports the Dawn
account, although like Dawn it
is brief and vague. The
First Batting Helmet? Helmets for batsmen
have been around for a long time now. The first batsman to use one in a Test
match was Graham Yallop in an innings of 47 at Bridgetown in 1978. Earlier,
helmets were used by Barry Richards and others during the first ‘World
Series’ season in Australia in 1977/78. Turns out it was
an old idea, if this
report in the Times of India is
any guide. Under the byline of respected cricket author Ray Robinson, it
shows a prototype batting helmet in Australia in March 1965. At the time, the
Australian team was under severe pressure in the West Indies, where Wes Hall
and Charlie Griffith were threatening life and limb. The report says that the
helmets were about to be sent to the West Indies. It is not known if this was
done; if so, they certainly were not used. I haven’t seen
any similar reports in Australian papers at the time, but I haven’t checked
widely. UPDATE: Ken Williams at the Melbourne CC
Library confirms this story, and says he recalls when it happened. He recalls
that the helmets were in fact dispatched to the West Indies, but were never
collected. Perhaps they are still sitting in an old warehouse somewhere in
Trinidad. |
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8
August 2011 Lloyd
and Richards Amok Continuing the
theme of extreme batting sessions, I came across one from 1974/75. India was
hosting the west Indies in a most interesting series. The series was 2-2
going into the final Test, but India was then blown away by Clive Lloyd’s 242
not out, off less than 300 balls (probably – his 200 came up off 240 balls,
but the final total is not known). India saved the follow-on, but the West
Indies second innings, after a slow start, climaxed in some heavy hitting by
Lloyd and then Viv Richards, just prior to a declaration. They were just
cameo innings, but unusual ones. Lloyd scored 37 off 17 balls, and Richards
39 not out off 23 (figures found, oddly enough, in The Times, rather than Indian sources). Both innings have few if
any parallels among innings of this size. I have gathered
together what data there is on the fastest innings of a given size. Each
innings in the following list has a characteristic in common: there are no
innings that are both larger while being made off fewer balls. For example,
for Lloyd’s 37, there is no innings known of greater than 37 that was made
off fewer than 17 balls. Starting with Adam Gilchrist’s 24 off 9 balls (the
fewest balls faced for any innings greater than 20), the list is complete
from then on. Fastest Innings of Their Size
UPDATE: no sooner was this written than
Abdur Razzak of Bangladesh played an innings of 43 off 17 balls against
Zimbabwe, displacing the innings of Lloyd and Richards from the list. We are looking at
complete innings here. Innings that started very fast, but continued at a
lesser pace, are not included. For example, “Foffie” Williams of the West Indies
once reached 30 off only 8 balls against England in 1948 (66440442), but his
whole innings of 72 off 56 balls was not fast enough to qualify for the list. The most
impressive innings on the list are those that are significantly larger than
the preceding entries, or off far fewer balls than subsequent entries. Mann’s
49*, Southee’s 77*, Richards’ 110*, and Sehwag’s 319 stand out, although the
most remarkable must be Nathan Astle’s 222. Richards and Sehwag are the only
players to appear three times; Sehwag certainly has rewritten the records
when it comes to extremely large innings scored at extreme speed. Naturally, the
data here is incomplete, and there are other possible entries for this list
where balls faced is not yet known. One interesting one is Farook Engineer’s
45 against New Zealand in 1964/65, which sources give as made in either 25
minutes (probable) or 21 minutes (less likely). A balls
faced tally as low as 20 is possible, although something like 25 seems more
likely. Back to the
subject of fast sessions. Thanks to Lloyd and Richards, the West Indies
scored 163 runs between lunch and tea on the 5th day at Wankede
stadium (it was a six-day Test). India, trying to limit the damage, bowled
only 26 overs in the session. This appears to be the first time that a
complete session was scored at significantly more than more than a run a ball
(6.27 runs per over in this case). There are many precedents of more runs in
a session, but all of them involved much faster over rates. The only sessions
identified so far with faster scoring rates have all been since 2000. (There
are probably others in the period 1975-1998, but that will take further
research.) For the time
being the list of fastest-scoring sessions looks like this
Minimum 160 runs 25 overs New Zealand
scored at 8.17 runs per over in a ‘session’ during Astle’s 222, but there were
less than 23 overs. I haven’t yet taken the time to thoroughly check all of
these entries. If readers have comments, or suggested additions, please let
me know. Footnote: Times of India mentions a hit by Richards
that it calls an “off-side sweep” off Ghavri, a fast-medium bowler.
Presumably this is a reverse sweep, now common, but rare in 1975. The
reporter notes this rarity, and admires Richards’ improvisation and adaptable
technique. There are occasional mentions of this shot going back to the
1920s, and I’m sure I read of such a shot in the 1909/10 MCC series in South
Africa, (although I can’t find it now). Many inventions are made
independently by different people, and I daresay the reverse sweep is one
such. |
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28
July 2011 Another
Underwood Blitz I commented a
while back (13 Nov 2010) on a little-known but extraordinary spell of bowling
by Derek Underwood in 1969. Now another example, even more extreme, has come
to light. At Lord’s in 1974,
some cruelly-timed showers “queered” the pitch during both of Pakistan’s
innings. On the first day, Pakistan were cruising at
68/0; after rain cost four hours’ play, they were all out for 130. On the
third day, Pakistan were travelling well in their second
innings, at 173/3, when rain delayed the fourth day until 5:15. When play
started, water had got under the covers, and the lively wicket that resulted
was fully exploited by Derek Underwood, who quickly bowled the Pakistanis out
for 226. Justice eventually evened out when the fifth day was washed out and
the match was left drawn. On close
examination, Underwood’s second-innings spell becomes quite remarkable.
Underwood took his six wickets that day while conceding only two runs,
including a sequence of five for 0. This makes him the sixth known bowler to
nab five wickets without conceding a run (the fourth chronologically), and
one of the first to take 6 for 2. Only one bowler has taken 6 for 0, and that
was Jermaine Lawson in a Test of dubious status against Bangladesh. The only
bowler to take six or more wickets for fewer runs than Underwood in an
authentic Test was Curtley Ambrose in his famous 7 for 1 blitz against
Australia at Perth in 1992/93 (Sarfraz Nawaz also once took 7 for 1, but he
also bowled some no balls). It is interesting
that neither Wisden nor The Times identified Underwood’s
sequence; they credited him with 6 for 9, which was his return for the
afternoon as a whole. This may be why the rarity of Underwood’s figures was
little-noticed even though it was achieved at cricket’s ‘headquarters’. It
was not completely unknown, however: for example, there is mention of it here.
Pitches were not
always covered in England in 1974. Once removed at the start of play, covers
would stay off until the scheduled stumps regardless of rain. This is what
tripped up Pakistan on the first day, but the fourth day disaster was due to
faulty covers, exacerbated by the famed Lord’s slope. This and other
controversies eventually led to the full covering of pitches in Test matches
in England, but this does not appear to have come about until 1979. The relevant
entry in Best bowling Spells in the Unusual Records section has been updated. More
on the most Productive Sessions As mentioned
earlier, I have been able to flesh out some more cases of extreme scoring in
a single session of play. New or modified entries in the list are highlighted.
Some of the biggest scores came in long extensions to final sessions in the
early 2000s. Such sessions have now been curtailed, and fewer extremes are
occurring. Thanks to Shahzad for some of the information. Most Runs in a Two-Hour
(maximum) Session – Test matches 240 (~115
minutes) Eng v Ind, lunch-tea day 2, Manchester 1936 (two teams) 236 (43 overs) Aus v SA, Lunch-Tea day 1, Joburg
1921 (119 off 85 balls by Jack Gregory) 235 (45 overs) Eng v NZ, Lunch-tea day 3, Leeds
1949 (both teams batted) 233 (41 overs) Eng v Pak, Lunch-Tea day 2,
Nottingham 1954 (Denis Compton 173) 223 (43 overs) Eng v SA, Lunch-Tea Day 2, Lord’s
1924 220 (47 overs) Eng v NZ, Lunch-Tea day 2,
Auckland 1933 (Wally Hammond 150) 216 (28
overs) Pak v Ind, lunch-tea day 2, Lahore 2006 (two teams) 209 (32
overs, 100 minutes) Aus v SA, lunch-tea day 1, Sydney 1910/11 208 (34 eight-ball overs) lunch-tea day 2, WI v
Eng, The Oval 1939 (KH Weekes 113) 207 (29 overs) Aus v Zimbabwe Lunch-Tea day 2, Perth
2003 (both Matt Hayden and Adam Gilchrist scored centuries in the session) 206 (44
Overs) Eng v NZ, lunch-tea day 3, Auckland 1930 201 (38 overs) Aus v SA, before lunch day 3,
Johannesburg 1902 (1st Test), (Clem Hill 116 runs) Most
Runs in a Longer Session 249 (33 overs) SA v Zim, post-tea day 1, Cape
Town 2005 244 (58 overs, 165 minutes), Eng v Aus, post-tea
day 3, Oval 1921 239 (45
overs, 140 minutes), Eng v NZ, pre-lunch day 3, Lord’s 1937 (two teams) 236 (35
overs, 150 minutes) Eng v Aus, post-tea day 1, Edgbaston 2001 (two teams) 227 (150 minutes) Eng v India, pre-Lunch day 2,
Manchester 1936 225
(150 minutes, 36 overs) SA v Ind, pre-lunch day 3, Centurion 2010 (AB de
Villiers 119) 223 (35 overs, 150 minutes) Eng v Ban, post-tea day
1, Chester-le-Street 2005 (ME Trescothick 127) 221 (150 minutes) Eng v SA, pre-Lunch day 3, Oval
1935 (Les Ames 123) 3rd day 219 (35 overs, 150 minutes) NZ v Zimbabwe day 1,
post-Tea, Harare 2005 (Daniel Vettori 127) 219 (44 overs, 150 minutes) Aus v NZ (2 teams)
tea-stumps day 5, Brisbane 2001 216 (42
overs, 150+ minutes) tea-stumps, NZ v Eng day 4, Auckland 2002 209 (150 minutes) SAf v Eng, pre-lunch day 3,
Oval 1929 208 (47 overs, 154 minutes) Aus v SA, post-tea
day 3, Melbourne 1910/11 (Victor Trumper 133) 208 (150 minutes) Aus v SA, pre-Lunch day 2,
Lord’s 1912 (Warren Bardsley 118) 204 (40
overs, 150+ minutes) tea-stumps day 4, SA v Pak, Cape Town 2003 203 (150 minutes) Eng v SA, pre-Lunch day 2, Oval
1935 (two teams, 2nd day) 202 (42
overs, 140 minutes) lunch-tea day 2,
Eng v WI, Lord’s 1957 202 (41
overs, 150+ minutes) tea-stumps day 1,
Aus v Eng, Leeds 2001 200 (57 overs, 150 minutes) Eng v SA, pre-Lunch
day 2, Lord’s 1924 [Note that prior to 1940, tea break timings, and
lengths of afternoon sessions, were rather variable. Prior to 1915, tea breaks often did not take
place if there was a change of innings after lunch; tea was incorporated into the change of innings.
Sometimes this resulted in a long extension of one session and shortening of
another. Prior to 1900, tea breaks often did not take place at all. In most series in England from 1899 to 1949, pre-lunch
sessions were normally 150 minutes, except on the first day.] The
Thousand-Ball All-Rounders A mention in
Cricinfo of Vinoo Mankad’s extraordinary all-round effort at Lord’s in 1952
(72 & 184 and 5/231) got me wondering, who has been involved directly in
the most balls in a Test match? That is either as batsman or bowler. The
problem here is that balls faced is not always available,
but I have put together a list that should be largely complete, thanks to
some estimating. I doubt if a list like this has been published before. Most Balls Faced + Balls
Bowled in a Test match
Figures in italics
include some estimates based on batting times and prevailing over rates. The most
interesting entries are those who did both a lot of batting and a lot of
bowling. Only Giffen, Mankad, Sobers, Atkinson and Simpson have both batted for
300 or more balls and bowled 300 or more balls in the same match. Perhaps the most
surprising entry is Congdon, a little-known performance. It is also
noteworthy that only one performance since 1972 has made the list. The most
by a South African is 841 by Jacques Kallis at Cape Town in 1999. |
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19
July 2011 A clip I saw on
an upcoming documentary on the dominant West Indies team of the 1980s got me
taking a quick look at statistics for retiring hurt. It shows that batsmen
facing those Caribbean quicks in the 1980s certainly had something to fear. Some 78 batsmen
retired hurt in all Tests between mid-1976 and mid-1990 (about 360 Tests),
including batsmen who later returned to the crease. This rate of 6.2 per 100
team innings is almost exactly double the rate of 3.0 per 100 innings seen in
the last 10 years. It also seems that the injuries were more serious in the
earlier time. About 70% of the retiring batsmen returned to the crease in
1976-90, but nowadays it is about 80%. Of the 78
batsmen, some 34 were facing the West Indies. The West Indies played in 109
Tests in that period, giving a retirement rate of about 17 per 100 team
innings, more than five times the standard rate in modern matches. About 40%
of batsmen retiring hurt against the West Indies did not return to the
crease; even this high figure does not include cases like Paul Terry, who had
his arm broken by Winston Davis at Old Trafford in 1984, but returned with
his arm in a sling and batting one-handed. Figures for other
countries from 1976 to 1990 are also illuminating. (Looking at bowling teams
here) figures include England 11, Australia 7, New Zealand 9, Pakistan 9, India 6. De
Villiers High Point? When AB de
Villiers reached a century in 75 balls against India at Centurion last
December, it was described, with a reasonable probability, as the fastest by
a South African. No other South African had officially recorded a century
faster than 95 balls. There is one other contender, however. At Newlands way
back in 1902, Johnny Sinclair reached a century in about 80 minutes (some
sources say 60 minutes, but this seems to be an error). Using the very
detailed newspaper accounts of the day, I have pieced this innings together
over by over, and came up with an estimate, as it happens, of 75 balls.
Although it is possible to discern every scoring shot during Sinclair’s
innings, the batsmen facing dot balls in some overs are not clearly
identified. The 75 balls for Sinclair includes what
I consider a reasonable distribution of dot balls, but, naturally,
uncertainty remains. Most of de
Villiers innings came in one session, which was extended by 30 minutes due to
time lost earlier in the Test. AB hit 119 runs pre-lunch, the most by any
batsman before lunch since Les Ames hit 123, in a similarly extended session,
against South Africa at the Oval in 1935. The most runs hit in a pre-lunch
session of standard two-hour length appears to be 116 by Clem Hill at
Johannesburg in 1902, in the same series as Sinclair’s record. The 1902 session,
however, included 38 overs, whereas India bowled only 36 overs in 2.5 hours
at Centurion, and de Villiers’ runs came in less than 31 overs. It is interesting
that these fast-scoring records of 1902 were recorded in Tests with the
shortest scheduled hours of any Tests: matches were three days of five hours
each. South Africa’s
225 runs in the session are also the most by one team before lunch in a Test
match, with the exception of 227 by England against India at Manchester in
1936, which once again was a 150-minute session. I will update the
Unusual Records
section accordingly. |
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31
May 2011 There is a new
cricket fantasy competition site called cricketpredictions.com. I know this
because they contacted me and asked for my opinion. Now I am not into these cricket fantasy league things much, but since they
asked nicely, I will post a link to
them here, and those who are interested take a look. The new wrinkle
seems to be that your chosen players don’t have to succeed for you to win,
all you do is predict their performance (succeed or fail). This is not a
paid ad. One-Sided
Partnerships Here are some
stats on the most one-sided major partnerships in Test history, taken as a
ratio of the runs contributed by the major partner vs the minor partner. Runs
not accounted for are sundries.
I have defined a
major partnership here as 150 runs. If the cut-off is reduced to 100 runs the
analysis becomes more difficult. However, there is no doubt as to the
identity of the most one-sided century partnership. At Faisalabad in 2004,
when Sanath Jayasuriya and Dilhara Fernando added 102 for the ninth wicket,
Jayasuriya outscored his partner 88 runs to one. I don’t normally
post large tables, but for what it’s worth, here is a set of data on the runs
Sachin Tendulkar has scored off bowlers in my database. It includes everyone who has bowled more
than 100 balls at the Little Master, or taken his wicket. However, it is ONLY
COMPLETE FOR TESTS SINCE EARLY 1998. By “complete”, I mean from January 1998
onwards, except for one Test v Zimbabwe in 1998, and fragments of two other
Tests in 1999, one v Pakistan and one v Sri Lanka. The data also
covers Tests from 1990-97 v Australia, with one
exception (Brisbane 1991/92), and v South Africa (two missing). So for
Tendulkar v Warne all is complete, but for Tendulkar v Murali, incomplete. I haven’t studied
it in detail, but a few interesting points: · Tendulkar
averaged 107 off Shane Warne’s bowling, but only 14.7 off Glenn McGrath. · Australian
spinners Warne, MacGill, Hogg and Hauritz have a combined average against
Tendulkar of greater than 150. · Ironically,
an Australian spinner, Peter McIntyre, dismissed Tendulkar without ever
conceding a run. The only other known bowler to do this is Mushtaq Ahmed.
(Peter Taylor has an average of 0.0 against Tendulkar, but he also bowled in
the missing Test at Brisbane in 1991/92). · Tendulkar
had an odd weakness against the bowling of Hansie Cronje, although data is
not quite complete here. · The
actual number of different bowlers Tendulkar has faced, which may eventually
exceed 300, is amazing. Bradman faced about 60 bowlers in his career. [Table Removed(see January 2014.] UPDATED
FOR WHOLE CAREER IN 2014 |
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17
Apr 2011 Referral
Stats I haven’t seen
any detailed studies of the umpire decision referral system yet. There was something
on the Cricinfo It Figures blog regarding the World Cup, but it looked at
dismissal modes rather than outcomes of referred decisions. Anyhow, here are
some basic stats on the referrals in the World Cup. There were 182 referrals
mentioned by Cricinfo. All but
Batsmen were a
little more measured in their requests for referrals. They challenged less a
bit often than bowlers did, and enjoyed a slightly higher success rate.
Overall, one decision in five was overturned, suggesting that umpires are
better judges of lbws than players after all. There were only
16 referrals for caught behind decisions; five decisions were overturned.
Remarkably, only one came from a batsman (JP Duminy) and that challenge was
successful. The near absence of batting referrals is (to me) is very
surprising given how many batsmen historically have complained about being
given out caught behind. The situation may have been influenced by the lack
of ‘Hot Spot’ and ‘Snicko’ technology, without which it is very difficult to
overturn caught behind decisions. For lbws, there
were 16 decisions overturned in the batsman’s favour and exactly the same
number overturned in the bowler’s favour. This is a remarkable balance, and
suggests that umpiring errors were random rather than systematic. There seems
to be little or no benefit of the doubt one way or another. One other
conclusion could be that the UDRS had no effect at all on the total number of
lbws being given; they were just distributed among different players! On the
other hand, given the record high proportion of lbws (16.3% of all dismissals)it may be that umpires are now more confident of giving
batsmen out, now that there is opportunity to reverse errors. I found 17 cases
where the referral itself was uncertain, and the original decision was upheld
for that reason. There may have been more. There were
differences between countries in the success rate for referrals. Readers can
draw their own conclusions
On an individual level,
four batsmen led the way with five referrals each: Ponting, Surkari, Taib, Bagai. Ponting was the only one of these to be given out
twice thanks to a challenge. The bowlers who had the most referrals were
Shahid Afridi with eight, and Murali with seven. Eighteen umpires
had decisions challenged. Although he was challenged fourteen times, not one
of Aleem Dar’s decisions was overturned. Steve Davis, (0/8), Billy Bowden
(0/6), and BNJ Oxenford (0/6) also had no decisions overturned. RA
Kettleborough and EAR de Silva had overturn rates of 50% (each
4 out of 8). |
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3
Apr 2011 Dropped
Catches – 2010 Report Missed
chances by fieldsmen is
an area in cricket often discussed, but largely free from statistical
analysis. However, I have extended an earlier survey of Cricinfo’s
ball-by-ball texts (see March 30 2009 etc) to include Tests played since
early 2010. A few findings: · The
percentage of catches dropped has been remarkably consistent since 2008 at
27.5%. This is slightly higher than earlier figures (2001-2007) of around
26%, but not significantly so; texts for earlier Tests were not as detailed
as more recent ones, and some misses may have been missed in the search. · The
Australian team had the lowest rate of drops (23%) in 2010, the previous leader
being South Africa (from 2005 to 2009). The West Indies’ rate has soared to
36%, worse now than Pakistan and Bangladesh. · England
has improved markedly from 28% in 2008-09 to 23.5% in 2010. · Hashim
Amla was dropped five times in his 253 against India, equalling the recent
high by Andy Blignaut in 2005. Ironically, Amla as fieldsman missed more
chances (12) during the year than any other non-keeper. This might be a
little unfair, since miss rates for short leg fieldsmen are very high, and
some of their “misses” might be stretching the definition. · Virender
Sehwag was dropped most times (12), and maintains his lead of the last decade
(now 54 times). · Harbhajan
Singh suffered more often than any other bowler, with 20 drops and only 30
caught. (Once again the definition of a dropped catch at short leg may have
contributed to this). Chris Martin was luckier, with only one dropped catch
off his bowling (and 15 successful catches). · MS
Dhoni missed 15 chances, including missed stumpings. · Most
expensive drop of the year: Ricky Ponting on 1 dropped by Mohammad Aamer, on
the way to 209 at Hobart against Pakistan. · Spare
a thought for Mitchell Johnson, caught 10 times during the year, but not
dropped once. A
Few Stats on Powerplays at the World Cup. Do winning teams do better? Written before the final. Overs 1 to 10 The winning team
has scored more runs in 33 out of 47 cases, and lost fewer wickets 27 times
(with 10 ties). Overs 11 to 15 The winning team
has scored more runs in 28 out of 43 cases, and lost fewer wickets 18 times
(with 15 ties). Third Power play. Surprisingly, in
a large majority of matches we do not see complete power plays from both
teams. There have only been 15 out of 48 games so far where the third power
plays are directly comparable. In all the others, one or both teams have not
completed their third powerplay, often because the match finished during the
powerplay. Quite frequently the third powerplay does not even start. In the 15 cases
where third powerplays were completed, the winning team scored more runs 10
times, and lost fewer wickets 7 times with 4 ties. One of the games was tied. In those 15
cases, the winning team “won” all three powerplays on 3 occasions, 2
powerplays on eight occasions, only one powerplay three times. The other game
was tied, with England getting the better of all three powerplays. |
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7
Mar 2011 Back
to (Occasional) Blogging The
Fast Bowler’s Burden A friend asked me
about stats for bowlers who have appeared to dismiss batsmen, only to hear
the dreaded call of ‘NO BALL!’. This is very
tricky one to research. Basically, there are no possible stats, apart from
occasional anecdote, before 1999. It would be interesting to know how many
wickets were foregone by no-ball-prone bowlers like Bob Willis and Malcolm
Marshall, but I doubt if such data could ever be gathered or even estimated. Prior to about
1968 any data would have little meaning because the back-foot no ball rule
gave batsmen the time to change their strokes. However, since
1999 Cricinfo’s ball-by-ball texts allow a stab at statistical analysis for
modern players. I searched for as
many cases as I could find and found 148 cases in 540-odd Test matches.
(There were more than 12,000 no balls). There was a ‘dismissal’ once every 81
no balls, compared to dismissals (excluding run outs) about once every 66
balls. It is certain that some cases would have been missed in the search,
but I doubt if it exceeded 10%. There were perhaps one thousand no balls for
which the text description is minimal, but many of these would have been
minimal because nothing notable happened. Some cases are probable lbws, but
an umpire’s verdict was not given. With these
caveats in mind, the ‘leading’ bowler was Brett Lee with 10, twice as many as
any other bowler (Morne Morkel, Ishant Sharma, and Malinga with 5). Lee as
also bowled a lot more no balls than anyone else in this period, 583, ahead
of Shaun Pollock on 404, but Pollock had only three no ball dismissals. A few bowlers
have experienced this on debut: Lasith Malinga, Michael Beer, and (probably)
CB Mpofu of Zimbabwe all suffered before taking their first Test wicket. Beer
and Ravi Bopara are the two bowlers on the list who have taken fewest Test
wickets (one each). Ponting and
Dravid led the batsmen with 5 each, no one else more than 3. Habibul Bashar
was let off twice in the first seven overs of a Test against West Indies in
2004, both times off Pedro Collins. At Christchurch in 2006, Craig Cumming
topped this by being reprieved three times against Sri Lanka, though not in
the same innings, and off three different bowlers. Muralitharan,
curiously, had no recorded no ball dismissals, even though he bowled 209 no
balls in this period. Warne, also, never suffered this fate, although he
bowled only 95 no balls. I haven’t done the stats, but the impression from
the list is that it is overwhelmingly a fast bowler’s burden. UPDATE: MS Dhoni
was twice caught off no balls (Roach) in the same innings at Eden Park (Test
2017). A Few Comments on ‘Diversity’ in the
Australian Team Basically,
non-Anglo Australian international cricketers are few. I count 24 players who
have played Tests or ODIs for Australia who were born overseas, but the large
majority were born in the British Isles or New Zealand. More than half of the
24 played before World War II. In the early days, there were several Irishmen
played for Australia, including one captain (Tom Horan), although one
academic has calculated that Irishmen were under-represented in Australian
cricket at the time. By the 1930s
there were a number of players of Irish extraction in the Test team. It was a
time of division in the team with Catholics like O’Reilly and Fingleton
distrustful of Protestants like Bradman. Two Australian
players have been born in “India”, Bransby Cooper (in modern-day Bangladesh)
and Rex Sellers. Cooper, who played in the inaugural Test of 1877, was 100%
Anglo as far as I know; Sellers was an “Anglo-Indian” who played only one
Test, in 1964. Also of interest is Sam Morris, born in Hobart of black West
Indian parents (from Barbados); he played just one Test, in the 1880s. Andrew Symonds,
of course, has a West Indian connection. He was born in England and adopted,
his biological father being from the West Indies. Dav Whatmore was
born in Sri Lanka and played seven Tests. A couple of other Sri Lankan
migrants (Francke, Goonasera) have played at state level. Even the children
of non-Anglo migrants seem to be rare in Australian cricket. Perhaps the most
prominent is Len Pascoe (14 Tests), born Len Durtanovich. Andrew Zesers had a
Latvian-born father, but he never quite made the Australian team. Jason
Krejza has a mother from Poland and his father was a footballer from
Czechoslovakia. There are a
number of other players from non-Anglo families who could be named.
Typically, these players had grandparents rather than parents born overseas.
Pre-War, there were a few Germans, Otto Nothling, AE Hartkopf, HC Nitschke,
and Hans Ebeling, who became an important administrator. More recently, there
has been Mike Veletta, Julien Wiener, Tim Zoehrer, Michael Di Venuto, Dirk
Tazelaar, Michael Kasprowicz, and Carl Rackemann (German grandfather), Simon
Katich (Croatian grandparents), among others. There are other
ethnic names I don’t know much about. Graham Manou (a Belgian name), Phil
Jaques (parents are English), Nathan Hauritz, Adam Voges, Ashley Noffke. Interesting
recent additions to overseas-born cricketers have, of course, been Moises
Henriques (Portugal) and Usman Khawaja (Pakistan). Here is a list of
Australian players (Tests and ODIs) born overseas
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29
December 2010 Yes,
it Was Australia’s Worst Day Ever There was plenty
of ‘gut feel’ to the first day of the Boxing Day Test at the MCG, and it
pointed to the worst day anyone could remember for Australia. I wondered if
this could be measured, so I looked at days where Australia had spent time
both batting and bowling, and compared averages. Sure enough,
there was nothing to really compare with a batting average of 9.8 (98 all out)
and a bowling average of 157+ (157/0). There have been a couple of days where
a big Australian collapse has been followed by opposing batsmen running amok
(such as the second day of the Gabba Test of 1985/86, where Richard Hadlee
finished Australia off), but in those cases most of the collapsing came with
the tail, the top order having been out the previous day. The only
comparisons I could find were the first day at the WACA in 1992/93 where
Australia were out for 119 (including a spell of 7/1 by Curtley Ambrose), and
the West Indies replied with 135/1. At Port-of-Spain in 1995, Australia were out for 105 and West Indies scored 98/1. Neither
quite compares to the Boxing Day debacle. Indeed, even in
the age of the minnow there are few comparisons. Looking at the first days of
Tests, Bangladesh have had a few (in Colombo in 2001 they were out for 90 and
Sri Lanka scored 246/1 on the first day), and Zimbabwe was once out for 54
while conceding 340/3 to South Africa, at Cape Town in 2005. But the only
exact parallel to Australia’s plight, where no wickets were taken at all, was
in Hamilton in 2001, where Pakistan were out for 104 and New Zealand scored
160/0. Australia’s MCG
debacle was actually slightly worse than this. In taking no wickets and
ending the day 59 runs behind, Australia arguably suffered the worst first day
by any team in any Test match. Speaking of
worsts, Mitchell Johnson came up with one in Brisbane. He scored a duck and
took 0 for 170 in the match. These are the worst bowling figures by any
Australian who also batted and made no runs; indeed, the bowling figures
match Geoff Lawson (Perth 1986) as the worst match figures by an Australian
in any Test (though Lawson managed 13 runs). Only Paul Adams of South Africa,
with a duck and 0 for 173 against West Indies at Cape Town in 2004 has done
worse than Johnson by this measure, although I think that Salim Altaf with a pair of ducks and 0 for 145 at
Melbourne in 1976/77 still takes the cake for worst all-round performance in
a Test. |
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For comments, or to contact Z-score (Charles
Davis) email stats334 at iprimus. com.au (The
address is like this to avoid SPAM. Type the address in the usual format |
14
December 2010 Looking
at Speed In spite of
having vast reserves of data on batting times, I have never calculated career
batting speeds for most batsmen in terms of runs per hour. There are lists of
fastest and slowest batsmen in the relevant section of this blog, but
those tables use runs per 100 balls as the yardstick. Certainly balls faced is the better comparison from a statistician’s
point of view, but there is something to be said for looking at speed in
terms of time as well. From a spectator’s point of view, a century in two
hours is usually more exciting than a century in three hours, even if the
difference is due to slower over rates in the latter case. A comparison of
scoring speeds in terms of time will give us an idea of the impact that
specific batsmen had on those watching. So here, belatedly, is the list of
the fastest batsmen in Test cricket.
Minimum 1000 runs. Lower order batsmen in italics. The list is
dominated by bats from earlier eras, because a lot more balls were bowled in
each hour in those days. Still, a list like this shows why the likes of Victor
Trumper, Frank Woolley and Stan McCabe achieved such enduring fame. The
fastest modern batsman, Shahid Afridi, has to settle for 10th
place. The list of
slowest batsmen has a more modern look, although there are few very recent batsmen.
The slowest batsmen of all come from the 1970s and 1980s, an era when over
rates had already fallen, but before the evolution of modern heavy hitting,
super bats and smaller grounds. It is notable that only one of the batsmen on
the slow list scored more than 2000 runs in Tests.
Take it from
someone who remembers, Chris Tavare’s claims to be the “dullest batsmen of
all time” are quite convincing. |
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24
November 2010 Readers’
Notes At the suggestion
of reader Arjun, I took a look at Chris Gayle’s recent triple century against
Sri Lanka, and found that Gayle probably broke a long-standing world record.
Gayle hit 143 of his 333 runs off one bowler, Suraj Randiv (known,
confusingly, as HKSR Kaluhalamulla on Cricket Archive). This is the most runs
(known) by one batsman off one bowler in a Test innings, beating the 136 by
Len Hutton off Chuck Fleetwood-Smith at the Oval in 1938. The Gayle case is
particularly remarkable in that Randiv only conceded 183 runs in the innings
(Fleetwood-Smith conceded a record 298). Most runs by one
Batsman off one Bowler, where known
The sources for
this sort of record are, of course, incomplete. Two notable innings lacking
data are Jayasuriya’s 340 in 1997/98 (Chauhan 1/276), and Javed Miandad’s 271
against New Zealand in 1988/89 (Boock 1/229). However, in both of these
cases, it is unlikely that Gayle’s figure would be exceeded, because there
were so many runs scored by other batsmen in those innings, and this would
dilute the head-to-head bowling figures. But it is possible:
one extraordinary case not quite on this list also involves Suraj Randiv.
Just a couple of months ago, Sachin Tendulkar hit 105 runs off
Randiv’s bowling in an innings of just 203. Almost every other known case of
‘head-to-head centuries’ involves batsmen making triple centuries. Randiv is
the only known bowler to suffer two such centuries in separate innings,
although Khan Mohammad conceded more than 100 to both Sobers and Conrad Hunte
(260) in 1958. Another reader,
Martin, noted that on 15th November this year, five batsmen
reached Test centuries (Gayle, McCullum, Harbhajan Singh, Kallis and Amla)
and asked if this was unique. I found just one
precedent, 30 Aug 2001. Funnily enough it ranks only 94th for total runs in a
calendar day at 692 runs (#1 is 1086 runs on 8 Dec 2001), but there were five
centuries. Four of them came from a whacking Pakistan was inflicting on
Bangladesh. There was almost a sixth century. Mahela
Jayawardene finished the day on 95 not out. A
Record Falls, But When? Sometime during
the recent India/Australia Test series, Allan Border was surpassed as the
batsman who faced the most balls during a Test career. But this time it
wasn’t run-record holder Sachin Tendulkar who took the record, but Rahul
Dravid. The existence of this record was noticed by a few people, but
without noting that the Border total was incomplete, so the series when
Dravid went past Border was misidentified. There are four
innings by Border for which balls faced are unrecorded, at Chennai in 1979/80
and Bridgetown in 1984, worth 78 runs. Based on his batting times and the
over rates for the missing innings, this equates to about 270 balls faced,
about 1% of Border’s total, which comes to about 27,275 balls faced (plus or
minus 50 shall we say). During the recent series against Australia, Dravid
went from 27,135 to 27,357 balls faced. Tendulkar finished the series on
about 26,185 balls faced. Beyond this, it
should be noted that there are numerous examples of balls faced figures from
the 1970s into the 1990s being incorrect. So while we can now be sure that
Dravid now holds the record, exactly when he went past Border may never be
known. Dravid has also
batted longer than anyone else, more than 650 hours at the crease. UPDATE: Shahzad
has kindly provided balls faced for the Kanpur Test of 1979/80. This raises
Border’s known balls faced to 27,166, plus an estimate of about 124 balls for
his one unknown Test. Border’s total is 27,290 balls plus or minus about 20.
Unfortunately, the innings where Dravid surpassed this still cannot be pinned
down, because Dravid played a couple of short innings (13 off 28 balls and 1
off 7, followed by 21 off 53) when he was just in this range. |
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13
November 2010 Of
Spellings and Pronunciations I had been a bit
puzzled as to why Mutiah Muralitharan, after many years in international
cricket, had expressed a wish to change the spelling of his name, to
Muralidaran. Some authorities have gone along with this, although Cricinfo
and Cricket Archive still use the old spelling. Apparently, Murali’s birth
certificate and passport both (reportedly) use the latter spelling. So where
did the ‘th’ spelling originate? Reader Mahendra has helped here, pointing me
to an article in the
Sri Lanka Daily News in 2007. It is by Dinesh Weerawansa, and I will quote at
length in case the original disappears. In the late 80s I took
particular interest in going to the Air Force grounds at Katunayake to
witness a school cricket match. Making use of my Saturday off day, I peddled [sic] all
the way to Katunayake from my hometown of Negombo. It was a less important
inter-school game between Maris Stella College, Negombo and St.Anthony’s
College, Katugastota. But I had a person to meet, of course without an
appointment. He was a young cricketer who was a member of that St. Anthony’s
side. Having joined the ‘Daily
News’ as a cub reporter, I was in-charge of school cricket since 1987. I
occupied the entire inner back page of Tuesday’s paper with my school cricket
review, which was sub editored by my dear friend, the late Marianne Decker. There was an Antonian
cricketer who had been going great guns but even the sports reporters did not
know the exact way he spells his name. The intention of my ride to Katunayake
was to meet the emerging schoolboy cricketer and find how he spells his name
and pronounces it. His first name was spelt it
different ways in different newspapers - Some called him Muttiya, Muttiyah,
Muttiah, Muttiyaa or Mutiaya. When it came to his surname, it was still worse
- Muralidharan, Muralidharam, Murralitharan, Muralitharan or even
Muralitharam. On that particular evening after the match, I met this young
schoolboy to find out the correct spelling. Ever since, I used that
correct spelling in all my school cricket write-ups. It was this young
schoolboy who has now become a household name in Test cricket. e
is the man who accounts for the world record for most number of Test wickets
- Muttiah Muralitharan. Muralitharan showed the
makings of a world beater right from his early days as a schoolboy cricket.
On two successive inter-school seasons, he aggregated over 100 wickets each. So the source of the
original spelling was Murali himself. The confusion arises mainly because
names in Sri Lanka are normally rendered in different alphabets, in Sinhalese
or Tamil. As with Urdu in Pakistan, conversion to English/Latin can be an
inexact matter. For one thing, ‘th’ in English has two distinct
pronunciations, as in “thing” and “this”. Beyond the soft ‘th’ lies ‘d’, which is why “this and that” becomes “dis and
dat” for some non-native English speakers. The ‘th’ or ‘d’
in Murali’s name is probably somewhere in between, and I suspect that a
completely correct pronunciation would be difficult for English speakers. The vowels, also,
would be tricky. Anyway,
Murali#aran recently joined another exclusive club when, batting at #11, he
hit the winning runs in an ODI against Australia. He had previously been
involved in a one-wicket ODI win, but did not hit the winning run.
Considering that there have now been more than 3,000 ODIs, it is rare thing.
I recall Glenn McGrath once saying that one of his goals was to one day hit
the winning run in an ODI, but he never quite managed it, at least not from
#11. Number 11 batsmen who have hit the winning
run in an ODI
Mason and
Gillespie, I think, are the only ones to do it off the last possible ball of
the match. Some
New Records Blogging is a
great way to get to the bottom of some tricky records. I just have to be
tolerant of accepting correction. Last week Sreeram found a new record
session score. This week reader Shahzad has added to my lists in two
categories. There are two additions to the list of most boundaries in a half
century: GF Labrooy (60) 9
fours 2 sixes SL v NZ Auckland 1990-91 B Yardley (74) 9
Fours 2 Sixes A v WI Bridgetown 1977-78 Shahzad also has
a new record for the most no ball calls in a Test innings (see 24 October) 53 Pak(435) v WI Georgetown 1987-88. Will post these
lists in my “Unusual Records”
section so that any future updates can be made. UPDATE: Allan
Knott hit 12 fours in reaching 52 against Pakistan at Edgbaston in 1971. He
is the first known player to do this. He reached 101 with 21 fours – also
unique at the time – and was out for 116 with 22 fours. His 18 fours in his
first 78 runs may be unique. Spellbinding
Underwood Speaking of adding
to existing lists, I came across an incredible bowling spell by Derek
Underwood in the Lord’s Test of 1969 against New Zealand. Underwood took 7
for 32 in the final innings, but I also discovered that his seven wickets
were clustered together for a cost of only eight runs, (although it spanned
113 balls). Underwood also took 6 for 4 and 5 for 2. All of these spells
belong in the Best Bowling Spells section, and rank very highly. None of these
figures, curiously, made their way into reports in Wisden or The Times. It
would have been easy to miss, because no fewer than 80 runs were scored while
Underwood was collecting his seven wickets. Underwood’s parsimony in that
part of the innings only comes to light thanks to the surviving scorebook. In this innings,
Glenn Turner carried his bat for 43 not out. Apparently he played Underwood
with relative comfort, but he was criticised for not trying to protect the
other batsmen, who were all at sea. Turner faced only 83 of the 186 balls
that Underwood bowled. |
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