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3 December 2009 Some Unknown Centuries in
a Session Even though scoring rates in Tests are increasing with our smaller grounds and super bats, the scoring of a century in a session by a batsman was little more common in the past than now (not withstanding the feats of Virender Sehwag, who scored 133 in a session just today). That’s thanks mainly to the higher over rates in olden times, when it was possible for 45 or 50 overs to be bowled in a session. In my recent research I have recently come across four one-session centuries that don’t appear to have been recognised in the record books. 1. WR
Hammond (167) v India at Old Trafford 1936. Hammond was 118 not out in 120
minutes at stumps after reaching 100 at a run a minute. This appears to have
been the product of one session. I haven’t seen mention of a tea break in any
of the reports I have consulted, even the extensive one in the Manchester Guardian, and I have presumed
that a slightly early tea was taken when India was all out for 203, after
which England scored 173 for 2. In the next Test at The Oval, Hammond scored
92 runs in a session on his way to 217. 2. Kenneth
“Bam Bam” Weekes played only two Tests, the last two played before World War
II. In the final Test at the Oval, Weekes scored a spectacular century, going
on to 137 at faster than a run a minute. His first 113 runs came between
lunch and tea on the second day, West Indies going from 152/3 to 360/5. Just
after tea, he hit 20 of the 21 runs conceded in a single over by Perks. An
over-by-over reconstruction of this innings gives an estimate of 135 balls
faced, with 100 coming off 110 balls. Shortly after he was out, a
thunderstorm ended play for the day with the score at 395. The following day,
the last in Test cricket for over six years, Learie
Constantine hit an even more spectacular 79 off about 63 balls, an innings
analysed in the blog entry for 6 Sep 2006. 3. Kenneth
Weekes’ more illustrious cousin Everton twice scored a century in a session
for West indies in the 1955/56 series in New Zealand. On the first day of the
series, Weekes went from 13 to 123 in the final session, West Indies
progressing from 48/2 to 234/3. New Zealand had been bowled out for 74 earlier
in the day: Weekes scored a century on the first day of a Test for a team
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1 November 2009 A passing comment by Christian Ryan in his book about Kim Hughes (Golden Boy) got me wondering: which batsman has hit the winning runs in a Test match most often? Ryan had said that Jeff Moss in 1979 was the first batsman since Frank Penn in 1880 to hit the winning runs in his only Test. Not strictly true, as I found that Penn had been non-striker when WG Grace hit the winning run at the Oval. Trivial as the question was, it gave the database a good interrogation. It is easy to find out who was present in Tests where winning runs were hit, but not so easy to work out which specific batsman was responsible in each case. I was able to identify the specific batsman in 93% of cases. There have been fewer than 500 Tests decided by a wickets margin, and, for most players, hitting the winning runs is a rare honour. Bradman never did it (although he once faced the last ball of a Test which was won by four byes). Shivnarine Chanderpaul has not done it, and there are no clear instances for Graham Gooch in his 8900 Test runs. Not surprisingly, the batsmen who feature most often usually played for very successful teams. Desmond Haynes was present at the death, either as striker or non-striker, on 18 occasions. Ricky Ponting has 13, Jacques Kallis 11, Hayden, Thorpe and Greenidge 10. It is Ponting who emerges as the specialist in this field, hitting the winning runs nine times. He may share the top podium with Haynes, who has seven, but who was at the crease in two other Tests where I cannot identify the winning shot-maker. In one other winning Test, Haynes faced the final ball, but it was finished by a no ball. The players who have enjoyed the winning-shot experience most times are
*plus two other possible instances. Byes have been the final winning runs in at least 12 Tests. Greg Chappell may belong in the above table; he has four known instances plus one possible. Some 16 players are known to have done it on debut, most recently IR Siddiqui of India, against England in 2001, who like Moss hit the winning run in his only Test match. |
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10 October 2009 While some players can look like immovable fixtures in Test teams – Allan Border famously played 153 consecutive Tests for Australia – others miss Tests frequently, through lack of form, unavailability, or injury. Here is a little calculation showing which players were in and out of their teams most often. It counts the number of times a player played for his country, without appearing in his country’s next Test.
Most for West Indies, 14 by S Chanderpaul,
New Zealand 12 by RO Collinge Note, this is not a measure of the total number of Tests missed during a career, but the number of times the player was in and out of the team. Some of the names on the table, such as Old and Emburey, are no surprise, but Brian Statham at the top of the table was a surprise to me. Staham did miss some tours, and went on one or two when England did not send its strongest team abroad (such as 1951/52 to India), only to be dropped afterwards. His place on the table is also a sign of the strength of England’s bowling during his career. The list of England players who served as twelfth man during the 1956 Ashes series is an interesting one
Add to this list Frank Tyson, who was only selected for one Test of that series, and you have one formidable set of bowlers who couldn’t hold down a secure team place. Ten years earlier, any of these six would have been among the first selected for England. The ratio of misses to played Tests for Statham is about 0.37. Some others who had shorter careers have higher ratios; in other words, they were dropped or injured more regularly. The highest ratios among those who missed Tests ten times or more are 0.83 ‘Nana’ Joshi of India – ten misses, played 12 Tests in the 1950s 0.67 Bill Bowes of England (1930s and 40s) 0.57 Andrew Hall of South Africa, a recent player. 0.48 Kumara Dharmasena of Sri Lanka 0.48 Neil Foster of England In general, English players tend to dominate these lists, with 37 out of the top 95 places in an extended table (there are only six Australians). England selectors have never been loath to experiment with their team. |
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20 September 2009 The “Hot 100” section has been updated. I only update this occasionally now. It turns out that a player’s scoring speed, unlike his batting average, does not vary much during his career, so the lists only change slowly. Still, changes do occur; Virender Sehwag has cemented his place in the top five by increasing his scoring rate from 77.5 to 78.7 over the last year. However, he has not scored a Test century since July 2008, or 20 innings, the longest such stretch of his career. Perhaps he is pushing it too hard? The only change in the order of the Top Ten is a one-place slip by Andrew Symonds, who has now fallen from grace. There are more changes in the next ten players, whose speeds are clustered together much more tightly. Matt Prior of England makes a debut splash at #12 on the list. It was noted in an earlier blog entry that his 61 off 42 balls at Lord’s was the fastest innings of its size ever played against Australia. A striking change in the “Most Tenacious” category is the disappearance of Mike Hussey, who a year ago was the highest-ranked current player, at #16 and 133 balls per dismissal. His BBD is now 109 and outside the Top 50. There are a few changes with old-timers, too, as more information about their balls faced comes to light. Bruce Mitchell of South Africa has edged past Sid Barnes to take third spot in the “Most Tenacious” category. The actual change is small, from a BBD of 152 to 154, but it highlights the fact that there will always be a bit of imprecision in the figures from that era. |
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11 September 2009 Wild Mood Swings While studying the 1957 series in England (see below), I noticed that Peter May had followed up his epic 285 not out at Edgbaston with a duck at Lord’s. I wondered if anyone had followed a higher score with a duck; surprisingly, there are three cases... DG Bradman 299* (v S Africa), 0 (v England) 1932. J Edrich 310* (v N Zealand), 0 (v S Africa) 1965. RM Cowper 307 (v England), 0 (v S Africa) 1966. In all these cases the innings were in separate series (with many months in between for Bradman and Cowper), so May’s innings are the extreme within a single Test series. Cowper’s case is more extraordinary given his sequence of scores of 0, 307, 0, 1. It is certainly the highest score to be both preceded and followed by a duck, although Rahul Dravid also did this when he made 270 against Pakistan. No other player has flanked a score of more than 200 with a brace of ducks. Ricky Ponting managed the inverse, flanking a duck with a pair of double-centuries when he hit 242, 0 and 257 in consecutive innings against India in 2003. The highest score to follow a duck is 325 by Andy Sandham in the West Indies in 1930, with a sequence of 0, 5, 9, 0, 325. More recently, Younis Khan’s two highest Test scores, 267 and 313, both followed ducks. |
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6 September 2009 The Slowest Test Centuries Test centuries come in plenty of shapes and sizes. The “slowest centuries of all time” is a reasonably interesting category of records that is not well-served in the record books or online. Test Cricket Lists has a good section on slowest centuries in minutes batted, but like other sources, doesn’t say anything on the more relevant measure of balls faced. Can more be said on this matter? The slowest centuries time-wise are by Mudassar Nazar, 557 minutes against England in 1977/78, and Jackie McGlew of South Africa, 545 minutes against Australia in 1957/58. Mudassar’s 100 has been reported as 415, 419 or 420 balls, while McGlew comes in at a formidable 485 balls. Both tallies have been topped, as it happens. One that threatens McGlew is Allan (Albert) Watkins, who during England’s “Second XI” tour of India in 1951/52 saved the Delhi Test with 137, reaching his 100 off 480 balls (give or take a few, due to unmarked byes in the scorebook). Two other centuries from the 1950s stand out. I recently re-analysed the scorebook Colin Cowdrey’s 154 at Edgbaston in 1957, in a famous stand of 411 with Peter May. Somewhere previously I reported this as 100 off 525 balls, but a few difficulties with the score had to be ironed out. There are a couple of errors in said score. For one thing, Cowdrey’s scoring strokes add up to only 150, not 154. Fortunately, the missing four is easily found in the bowling analysis, backed up by a mention in a newspaper report. And somewhere in Sonny Ramadhin’s record 98 overs a single is missing, most probably missed by the scorer in the 218th (!) over. [I suspect that this score held at Edgbaston is a re-copy, possibly from Bill Ferguson’s running sheets. Ferguson was scoring for the West Indies team, a few months before his death. It is easy to make occasional errors when converting a linear score to a traditional one by hand.] Once this is sorted, Cowdrey’s tally comes to 535 balls for his first 100 runs. His 615 balls for his first 150 runs is also an all-time record, even though he went from 100 to 150 off only 80 balls. That 615 balls also exceeds the slowest double century, 608 balls by Bob Simpson (or an unconfirmed 611 by Glenn Turner). This sounds like championship stuff, but there is one century that threatens Cowdrey’s mark. Mudassar Nazar’s father, Nazar Mohammad, scored his only Test century for Pakistan against India at Lucknow in 1952/53. It was a model of immobility. After India was out for 106, Nazar got into his groove with 21 in a session and a bit (56 overs) on the first day, then batted right through the second day adding only 66 runs. The 51 overs before lunch included 34 maidens. By stumps he had 87 runs off 169 overs at the crease. He collected his ton quite promptly on the third day (perhaps at his captain’s behest), and it seems fair to say he reached 100 off very close to 174 overs (452 minutes). There is no real possibility of ever finding his exact balls faced, but if he got half the strike, it comes to about 520 balls. The Times of India commented "there was not a single stroke he essayed which would have earned the approval of a connoisseur". Still, it was effective. Nazar carried his bat for 124 not out, and Pakistan won by an innings, their only win over India prior to 1978. Nazar is also recorded as the first player to be on the field for an entire Test match (although it is hard to be sure that he was never substituted in the field). Nazar may well have faced more balls than Cowdrey in reaching 100. Very slow scorers tend to get more than half the strike because they hit singles early in an over less often than their partners. Cowdrey faced 621 balls to Peter May’s 525 during their Edgbaston partnership. However, May was scoring much faster than Cowdrey, and this was an extreme case, while most of Nazar’s partners were scoring almost as slowly as Nazar, so the strike effect in this case was probably weaker. The estimate of 520 balls is the best we can do for now. |
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1 September 2009 Column from 21 August 2009 In Test cricket, caution seems to be a forgotten art. In the past, the early stages of Ashes Tests were always about manoeuvring for position rather than seizing advantage, but in the current series both teams seem to have dispensed with this tradition. At The Oval, England produced, once again, more than 100 runs before lunch and 300 in the day. At Lord’s, the 126 before lunch was England’s best opening session since 1938. Absence of caution was even evident in England’s catastrophic 102 all out at Leeds. The innings was all over in 33.4 overs (203 balls); this was shortest innings that England, batting first on winning the toss, have suffered in any Test since 1886/87 (45 all out off 143 balls at the SCG). So, with the series all even going into the final Test or the first time since 1965/66, prospects for a result at the Oval should be good. The Leeds Test used less than half its available time. The match was over barely 51 hours after it started; England’s shock is understandable when you consider this was the shortest complete Ashes Test, in elapsed time from first ball to last, since the Lord’s Test of 1921. One effect of modern batting dynamism is that it is rare now to find bowlers who rely on containment for success. This feeds into the debate over the use of spin bowling by Australia. Nathan Hauritz has not bowled badly in the Ashes series, but it appears that after the retirement of Shane Warne, specialist spin bowling has become something of a disposable luxury, and Hauritz finds himself on the bench at crunch time in the series. One reason for this is that a traditional role of finger spinners – the ability to limit scoring and hold fast when batsmen are going well – has faded under the onslaught of super bats and smaller grounds. Australian spinners in the past could be relied on to stem the flow of runs if necessary, but today everyone gets hit. This is evident in the table, which shows that the run rates conceded by Australian spinners has been recently much higher than for pace men, a reversal of the traditional pattern. Hauritz himself is not a particularly expensive bowler, but truly parsimonious spin bowling seems to have become a thing of the past.
Would You Believe? In the Leeds Test, England trailed by 94 runs at the end of the first day (England 102, Australia 4 for 196). This was England’s worst first day since the Oval in 1948, when they were out for 52, and Bradman’s Invincibles made 2 for 153. |
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17 August 2009 More Notes on the
first Ashes Series, written for The Age 1.
Edgbaston 31 July 2009. Edgbaston has been the fastest-scoring ground for Ashes Tests over the last fifty years, and the only one to average 3 runs per over. Australia’s quick start has continued a recent tradition. The two fastest-scoring Ashes Tests ever played have been the last two at Edgbaston; in 2001 the teams averaged 4.36 runs per over, and in 2005 it was 4.32. England fastest batting was at Edgbaston in 1985 (5 for 595 off 134 overs), followed by 2005, with the Lord’s Test just two weeks ago ranking third. You would think that the dropping of Phillip Hughes only months after making twin centuries would have few parallels, but there is an eerie precedent. In 1949/50, Jack Moroney was, like Hughes, a New South Wales opener who started his Test career with a duck in Johannesburg. Both made good score in their next innings (87 for Moroney, 75 for Hughes) and a century in each innings shortly afterwards (118 and 101* in Moroney’s case). However, Moroney only lasted two more Tests: a pair of ducks in 1950/51 cost him his place. He played only one more Test, a year later: Hughes will be hoping for a better future. It can be little comfort to Hughes that his replacement, Shane Watson, had an average of just 4.7 as an opener in first-class cricket. Watson, though, has recently done well as an opener in One-Dayers. Neither case is as strange as that of English opener Charles Russell, who in 1923 scored 96, 140 and 111 in his last three Test innings, and was never selected again. Like Hughes and Moroney, his success came in South Africa, and his first Test innings was a duck. Mike Hussey, with a longer track record, has kept favour with selectors, but he needs a major score soon. He is playing his 40th Test; his average, 85 after 20 Tests, is down to 54. No other batsman has suffered a more severe fall at this stage of a career, in either absolute or relative terms. Jimmy Adams of the West Indies comes closest. Adams’ average dropped from 69 to 44 between his 20th and 39th Tests, but he did score a century in his 40th. Hussey has failed to exceed his batting average in his last 15 Test innings. He still has a way to go to reach Mark Taylor’s 21 consecutive innings, but few others are ‘ahead’ of Hussey. The leader in this category (among recognised batsmen) is, surprisingly, England great Wally Hammond, who fell short of his batting average in 22 consecutive innings from 1933 to 1935.
Would You Believe? Matthew Prior’s 62 off 41 balls at Lord’s was the fastest complete innings over 50 ever played against Australia, in any Test match. At 145 runs per 100 balls, it surpassed the 100 off 72 balls (139 r/100b) by Shivnarine Chanderpaul at Georgetown in 2002/03. 6 August 2009 Charles Davis Michael Clarke has marked his 50th Test match appropriately enough by raising his Test batting average above 50 (50.08 after the Edgbaston Test) for the first time since early in his career. In Ashes Tests, he currently stands in most eminent company: among Australians his average of 59.8 is second only to Bradman. Statistically, his career has some unusual features. Although he now has twelve Test centuries, his top score remains 151 (on debut) in Bangalore in 2004. No other established batsman has ever averaged 50 with such a low top score; the nearest is ‘Golden Era’ great Stanley Jackson who averaged 48.8 with a best of 144*. Clarke’s career is in strange contrast to his close contemporary Virender Sehwag. Sehwag has a virtually identical Test average (50.06) to Clarke, but he has exceeded 150 eleven times, with five double-centuries and two triples. Who is more valuable, the inconsistent batsman who plays the occasional match-winner, or the steady type who can be counted on? An open question, perhaps. Clarke has played some valuable eighties and nineties under pressure, but it is notable that he has never scored a century when Australia has been bowled out for less than 400. This may be partly because Australia scores 400 more often than not, but Ricky Ponting and Simon Katich occasionally make tons in low scores. Even Sehwag, with his predilection for giant scoring, has done it six times, including a recent double-century when India were bowled out for 329 by Sri Lanka. In any case, Clarke’s career chart is looking healthy, especially compared to Mike Hussey. The chart compares the career tracks of Clarke and Hussey with the average of over 100 “typical” batsmen who have played 100 innings. Hussey’s declining trajectory, incidentally, is steeper than for any other player with a substantial career. He set an all-time record by scoring his first 1000 Test runs in 166 days, but his last 1000 runs have taken 557 days. See Chart here. Would You Believe? Why do English crowds abuse Ricky Ponting? Perhaps batting greatness is now so unfamiliar in England that it goes unrecognised. No living Englishman has an average of over 48.1 in Tests; the last to average 50 was Ken Barrington (58.7), who retired over 40 years ago and died in 1981. Thirteen living Australians have averages over 48, led by Ponting on 56.0, and including Brad Hodge and Phillip Hughes, who can’t find a place in the current Test team. |
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26 July 2009 Notes on the first
Two Ashes Tests, written for The Age 2.
Cardiff There was a ‘clean slate’ look to the Cardiff Test. On an unfamiliar ground, half of the 22 players were making their Ashes debuts, the greatest number since the Ashes became an institution in 1882, (apart from war-time interruptions). The seven Australian debutants included the entire bowling squad, but it was batsmen Marcus North and Brad Haddin who excelled. It was just the second occasion that two Australians scored centuries on Ashes debut: Adam Gilchrist and Damien Martyn did likewise at Edgbaston in 2001. It is decades since the face of Australian cricket changed so fast. In addition to the debutants, there are another seven Australian players who have played Tests in the last 18 months but are yet to play against England. The new bowlers in Cardiff did not quite have the firepower to force a victory. England’s escape act, finishing on 9 for 252, had some unique features. Occasionally Tests are drawn with nine wickets down, but it is much rarer when the tailenders, the Number 10 and Number 11 batsmen, save the Test. This has happened only seven times previously (just once in Ashes Tests, thanks to Brett Lee and Glenn McGrath at Old Trafford in 2005); James Anderson and Monty Panesar were the first English tailenders to do it. The 69 balls faced by Anderson and Panesar is also a record for any 10/11 pair holding on to draw, exceeding the 64 balls by New Zealanders Simon Doull and Shayne O’Connor in Hobart in 1997. Curiously, England were on the receiving end of a similar partnership only six months ago, when Fidel Edwards and Darren Powell stood fast for 60 balls to secure a draw for the West Indies in Antigua. Anderson and Panesar saved England from one undesirable record. Their first innings of 435 would have been the highest score by a team losing a Test by an innings. The record remains 434 by South Africa in losing Sri Lanka (5/756) by an innings and 153 runs in Colombo in 2006. Whatever the frustrations for the Australians, England’s problems were greater. Australia’s 6/674, the highest score in a time-limited Ashes Test since Lord’s in 1930, had commentators harking back to Bradman’s day for parallels. The five ‘centuries’ by England’s bowlers has no Ashes precedent, even in England’s epic 7/903 at the Oval in 1938, although five English bowlers had suffered similarly against the West Indies at Lord’s in 1973. The all-Test record is six by Zimbabwe against Sri Lanka in 2004. Would You Believe? In England’s first innings in Cardiff of 435, the top score was Kevin Pietersen with 69. Only once in Test matches has a team scored more with a top score less than 70. In Colombo in 1992/93 Australia, trailing Sri Lanka by 291 on first innings, came back with 471, David Boon top scoring with 68. Australia won by 16 runs thanks to Shane Warne’s breakthrough 3 for 13. 3.
Lord’s On the way to England’s first Ashes win at Lord’s for 75 years, Andrew Strauss enjoyed another luxury: the choice of enforcing the follow-on, for only the second time in the last 20 years for England against Australia. Strauss also become the first England Ashes captain to decline this option since Ray Illingworth in 1970/71. It was a sign of the changing character of modern Test cricket. Not enforcing the follow-on no longer raises eyebrows. Since 2004, this has happened in 20 out of 45 follow-on situations. It should no longer be seen as a defensive move: in that time, 32% of follow-ons have led to draws, while only 20% of Tests have been drawn when it is not enforced. One reason for the declining popularity of the follow-on lies in the faster scoring of modern Tests. England built on their best opening session (0/126) to an Ashes Test since 1938 to lead by over 500 with two days to play. England scored at 4.25 runs per over, their fastest in Ashes Tests apart from two at Edgbaston, in 1985 and again in 2005 (the famous two run victory). Tucked away in England’s hectic second innings was a little gem: an innings of prodigious speed, 61 off 42 balls, by Matthew Prior. With today’s surfeit of heavy-hitting in One-Dayers and Twenty20s, it is easy to forget how rare such innings are in Test history. Prior’s half-century off 37 balls ranks third in Ashes Tests, behind Graham Yallop’s 35 balls at Manchester in 1981, with the probable leader being Jack Brown’s 50 off 34 balls (give or take a few, records are not exact) in his series-winning 140 off about 170 balls at the MCG in 1894/95. At 145 runs per 100 balls, Prior’s 61 was the fastest innings over 50 ever played against Australia, in any Test match. I have drawn up a list of innings which were the fastest of their size: they make an interesting short list. Fast Test Innings,
by Size, against Australia Each innings on this list is faster than anything
larger. To start, Geraint Jones 27 off
12 balls, at 225 runs per 100 balls, is the fastest innings
of more than 20 runs. For innings bigger than Jones’ 27, the fastest is Bob
Crisp’s 35 off 19 balls (184 r/100 balls). And so forth.
Would You Believe? In another sign of the times, Alastair Cook’s first 50 runs at Lord’s included a record eleven boundary hits. While others have reached scores of 51-53 with eleven boundaries (at least twelve cases) only once before has it been done in 50 runs or fewer in Ashes Tests – by Alec Stewart at the SCG in 2002/03. |
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9 June 2009 A few notes I made
a while ago on Australia’s best bowling partnerships Australia’s most successful bowling pairs in a Test series are the subject of the next table. Five- and six-Test series tend to dominate the list. This is not surprising, but even so it is odd to see six of the last seven Ashes series in England on the list, even series that we lost, while there are no Ashes series in Australia on the list since the 1978/79 disaster. Curiously, Lillee and Thomson in 1974/75 (58 wickets) don’t make the cut.
Alderman and Lillee’s 81-wicket haul in 1981 holds a substantial lead, and has not been exceeded by bowlers from any other country. How Botham and Brearley managed to win that series is one of the wonders of Test cricket. Clarrie Grimmett and Bill O’Reilly’s 1935/36 peak came in their last series together. Grimmett was then dropped from the team after taking 44 wickets at 14.5! Although they were one of Australia’s most famous bowling partnerships, almost all of their bowling together came in overseas Tests. Australia lost the 1978/79 Ashes 5-1 in spite of the 66 wickets by Hogg and Hurst. Australia did this by batting even worse than England in a real ‘race to the bottom’. Bowlers, it is said, win Test matches, but sometimes it takes more than two. In 1931/32, Grimmett and Ironmonger only bowled together in three of the Tests. Ironmonger was left out of the Adelaide Test, where Grimmett took 14 wickets. In spite of this, Grimmett didn’t even get a bowl in the following Test at the MCG, where Ironmonger took 11 for 24. It is surprising to see Shane Warne’s highest ranking with Merv Hughes rather than with Glenn McGrath. However, the Warne/McGrath firm is the only one to appear twice on the list. Some bowling partnerships in shorter series are worth a mention. Australia’s best in a four-Test series is 42 wickets by McGrath (30) and MacGill (12) in the West Indies in 1998/99, while one of the finest performances of Warne/McGrath was 41 wickets in a three-Test series against Pakistan in 2002/03, Warne taking 27 of the wickets at 12.7. And Australia’s worst bowling partnership? Well this is a bit hard to measure, but the Adelaide Test of 1931/32 is worth a mention as it featured Stan McCabe and HM ‘Pud’ Thurlow as opening bowlers. McCabe, a great batsman, was at best a useful medium-pacer who averaged less than one wicket per match during his career. Thurlow (0 for 86) was destined never to take a wicket or score a run in Tests, and even managed to get run out for nought to leave Don Bradman stranded on 299 not out. Australian selectors really struggled to find any authentic opening bowlers for the Sydney Test of 1928/29. Grimmett took the new ball with one Otto Nothling, who, like Thurlow, was playing his only Test and did not take a wicket. England scored 636. |
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14 May 2009 A “New” Hit for
Eight When Andrew Symonds scored eight runs off one ball at the ’Gabba earlier this year, it attracted some attention as a very rare event. Only two precedents in Test matches could be named, plus another case where Brian Lara scored three with five penalty runs (which stretches the definition too far, I think). So I was surprised to come across another, while analysing the Bombay Test of 1951/52. In the scorebook, it is quite clear that Vijay Hazare hit Brian Statham for eight after lunch on the first day of the match, taking his score from 19 to 27, on the way to 155 off 225 balls. The shot helped Hazare towards 50 off 52 balls, pretty good scoring in a mostly dreary series. Strangely, I can find no other detail about the shot: it is not mentioned in the Times of India, London Times or Wisden, although they give the correct number of fours for Hazare, 19. Sreeram tells me that Hazare does not mention it in his autobiography either. So the circumstances of the shot are a bit of a mystery. The other known occurrences are: Patsy Hendren off Percy Hornibrook at the MCG in 1928/29 (not in Brisbane, as sometimes reported), and John Wright, also at the MCG, off Len Pascoe in 1980/81. |
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11 May 2009 How Fast Were the
Bowlers of the Past? Perusing the latest Wisden, one soon encounters a survey by David Frith of “The Ashes Masters”, a pretty good take on the greatest Ashes players. But I was struck by a short passage on Harold Larwood, where Graeme Fowler suggested that Larwood (and Fred Trueman for that matter) were not fast bowlers. The evidence cited is that wicketkeepers did not stand as far back to these bowlers as keepers do to today’s fast men. Fowler said he used to stand 25 paces back to Michael Holding, whereas those keeping to Larwood stood only 12 paces back. Let’s leave aside the fact that Holding’s peak was more than 30 years ago, just 20 years after Trueman’s peak, and look at some other evidence. I was reminded of a photo I had seen of Maurice Tate about to bowl at the SCG in 1924/25. I have posted it here (sorry, I seem to have lost the ability to insert photos in the text of this blog). It shows the keeper standing up to the stumps (as they did in those days to all but the fastest bowlers), but slips standing an awfully long way back. The photo appears to have been taken on an ordinary lens (no significant distortion apparent) from the old Paddington Hill at about a 45 degree angle from the pitch. By drawing a diagram of the scene to allow for this perspective, I came up with a distance of 25 yards from stumps to first slip, further to second and third. I came up with a similar figure for a picture I found of Michael Kasprowicz bowling in 1999. Now Tate was no slouch, and was at his fastest in this series, but all reports indicate that he was not a true express bowler, and Larwood was faster at his peak. The photo shows that Tate was fast enough to justify the slips backing off a long way. There are also published measurements of Larwood’s speed. My old (1968) edition of the Guinness Book of Records gives Larwood a speed of 93 mph (150 kph); other sources, including Frith himself (The Fast Men), say he was even faster. One could argue about the sources of this info, and the accuracy, but also bear in mind that any such measurements would be made on the basis of a very few deliveries, which were probably not the fastest he bowled. Ultimately, it’s hard to prove one way or the other, but personally, I prefer the idea that the standards of what constitutes fast bowling have not changed much. If keepers of old did not stand back so far as the modern fashion, that does not automatically mean the bowling was slower. I still think that Jeff Thomson 35 years ago was as fast or faster than any bowler in the world in 2009, and there should be no reason to think that 40 years before Thomson, no one could bowl fast. |
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6 May 2009 A “Pre-Historic”
Twenty20 International, of Sorts As I have mentioned in the past, occasionally matches can be found that pre-date the official beginnings of their type. One such is the One-Day international between South Africa and Australia in 1966/67, almost four years before the first fully-recognised ODI. I have just come across another, a game with some of the trappings of a Twenty20 international, but played at Lord’s in 1951. The England/South Africa Test at Lord’s that year was dominated by the bowlers and finished just after lunch on the third day. In fact it was only half the length of the Lord’s Test of the previous year, which set a few records that I discussed in my previous entry. At the end of the match, on the spur of the moment, the teams decided to play a “pick-up” or exhibition match, single innings for 90 minutes each, effectively 20 to 22 overs each. Though largely forgotten, the game has acquired some curiosity value in the era of Twenty20. A good time was had, and the crowd was appreciative. The players evidently approached this match with the appropriate level of seriousness, which was none at all. The match (like the first ever Test and the first ever One-Day international) went unremarked in Wisden, perhaps with good reason in this case, but there was a mention of it in The Times. It gets some discussion in C.O. Medworth’s book of the 1951 tour (Noursemen in England), but none of these sources offer a score. The match is absent even from the vast databanks of Cricket Archive. I came across this match in my collection of scorebook photocopies. I had copied it at Lord’s as part of the 1951 Test without realising what it was. Anyway, I can offer a score, possibly the first time one has been published. England Innings
South Africa Innings
The import of the match can be judged by the fact that Cuan McCarthy batted at Number 4, just about his only venture away from # 11 in his career (28 innings, top score of 5 in Tests). In spite of the promotion, he was bowled for one by Jack Ikin, whose Test bowling average was over 100. The teams were similar to the Test teams, but with a few ring-ins. The 12th men, Ridgway and Mansell (whose 46 off 29 would be regarded as good T20 fare today), both played. Fred Ridgway never played a Test in England, but did play Tests in India as part of the “Second XI” MCC tour of 1951/52. Also playing for England was one Frederick Alexander, a Middlesex player who was probably on hand for fielding duties in the Test: he only ever played two first-class matches. For South Africa, Hugh Tayfield (listed as “P. Tayfield” in the score) got a Guernsey. He would become famous as South Africa’s greatest spin bowler, but he was on the outer on this tour, and was not selected in any of the Tests. The eleventh South African player was not named in the scorebook, and I have presumed it was Dudley Nourse, the captain. Note: the copies I printed out were cut off part way across, so I cannot read the names of players taking catches. The game continued for two balls after South Africa had won (perhaps the scoreboard had fallen behind), and this is how Mansell, who had hit the winning runs, lost his wicket. |
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20 April 2009 Sometimes a Test match of seemingly dull cricket can become rather more interesting on closer inspection. Such a match is the England v West Indies Test at Lord’s in 1950. I had kept a copy of the original score in my files for a few years before looking at it in detail recently. It reveals a pattern of cricket that has more or less disappeared from the game, perhaps for the better. The result was not unremarkable: it was the West Indies’ first victory in England, and as such was a pivotal moment. It may also have been pivotal in setting Test cricket onto its 1950s trajectory of defensive attrition. The inability of the English batsmen to wrest the upper hand from the spinners Alf Valentine and ‘Sonny’ Ramadhin would cement in place a defensive approach to spin that passed previous extremes. The 20-year-old Valentine had come to England with only two first-class wickets, but 13 wickets against Lancashire heralded a great debut at Old Trafford where he took eight wickets in the first innings, the best first day’s Test cricket for any bowler. After that, the Englishmen found it impossible to attack his bowling when in concert with Ramadhin. After the West Indies scored 326 at Lord’s, England on the second day fell – bit by bit – for 151, with the spin twins bowling together without change for 86 overs. This is the longest spell without bowling change that I have encountered in my Test studies. Next highest is 79 overs by Wilf Rhodes and WE Astill at Georgetown in 1929/30. (Other extremes may well be found with further study; readers may care to suggest examples.) At one point Valentine conceded just two runs in fifteen overs. After Cyril Washbrook was out at 2 for 74, there was no score at all for almost 13 overs. Bill Edrich, batting at Number three, scored only one run off his first 85 balls faced. As suggested in The Times, his batting (16 runs off 184 balls in the match) was not worthy of such a position, and he would be dropped from the team. It is interesting, though, that The Times noted that most of the top-order batsmen were dismissed attempting attacking shots, suggesting frustration at the extreme accuracy of the bowling. When the West Indies batted again, the three “W”s showed that batting sanity was still quite possible; all scored at respectable pace, Clyde Walcott’s 168 coming off 334 balls, and Everton Weekes’ 63 off 113 balls. With a fourth innings target of 601, the England response was predictable, and some more extremes of slow scoring were set as the innings of 274 wore on. Washbrook reached 100 off 368 balls, pretty slow already, but he stalled completely on 114. He failed to score off the last 67 balls he faced, including ten consecutive maidens from Ramadhin. Others have had longer scoreless spells, but there is no parallel for a batsman already past the century. Another record beckoned. Late in the innings, with Wardle and Jenkins at the crease, fifteen consecutive maidens were bowled (by four different bowlers, oddly enough), 92 balls in all without a run off the bat, and including the wickets of Wardle and Bedser. This rivals a spell in a Test at the MCG in 1882/83 as the longest without score. (There appears to have been four byes scored at some stage, but their location is not marked in the scorebook.) This final stretch took the match past 600 overs, to a total of 3,645 balls bowled plus 5 no balls/wides, which remains the most bowled in any five-day Test match. Valentine’s 75 maiden six-ball overs in the match remains a record. It is said that Valentine could bowl a maiden over in 90 seconds, which helps explain how such a match could be finished with almost two full session to spare. In the next match, at Trent Bridge, Valentine and Ramadhin would bowl more than one thousand balls in a single innings. Even when England seemed to have their measure, Washbrook and Reg Simpson needed 125 overs to put together an opening partnership of 212 runs, with Simpson requiring almost 400 balls for his 94 runs. At modern over rates, this partnership would take more than four sessions to play out, but in 1950 this meant two and a half sessions. The attritional approach to spin bowling would remain a feature of Test batting in the 1950s and into the 60s. Perhaps England’s negativity stemmed from the confidence-shattering encounters with Bradman’s ‘Invincibles’. It may have been reinforced by the domination of ball over bat in the 1950/51 Ashes series. The previous generation of England batsmen like Hammond and Sutcliffe sometimes batted very slowly, but they did have an ability to keep the scoring ticking over with ones and twos, an approach sometimes abandoned completely in the 1950s. I found one 50-over sequence in the Lord’s Test where only five singles were scored; there were eight fours. Strange then, that the match is remembered most for the celebratory attitude of the crowd. For the first time, West Indian immigrants in the crowd brought a ‘calypso’ atmosphere to an England Test. They must have been a patient lot, a patience that was ultimately rewarded. |
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15 April 2009 Left-handed batting has never been more “in” in Test cricket. Even after the retirement of the likes of Adam Gilchrist, Justin Langer and Matthew Hayden, the Australian team can still boast four lefties in its first six batsmen, thanks to recent debutants Phillip Hughes and Marcus North. In the Durban Test, left-handers scored almost 81 percent of Australia’s runs, a proportion very rarely seen. For Australia, there are only two precedents, both in 1983/84. Oddly enough, recent West Indies’ teams dominated by
lefties are an exception, with important batsmen of the last decade – Lara,
Gayle, Chanderpaul, What we call ‘left-handed’ batting is not necessarily a sign of natural handedness. Most higher-order left-handed batsmen are actually natural right-handers, and they tend to have higher averages than those batting right-handed. Left-handers are more often found among the higher echelons of batsmen. Among recognised batsmen, the incidence of left-handed batting is 19 percent for those who average less than 35, 30 percent for averages of 35 to 45, and 32 percent for averages over 45. Left-handers have scored almost half of all Australia’s runs in the current decade, an all-time high:
Not including
Sundries. While there are fluctuations, there is a clear overall upward trend, and it is also clear that the figures have almost always exceeded the incidence of natural left-handedness in the general population (about 10-12% depending on the definition), even in the early years of Test cricket. Advantages for left-handers have been noted in a number of sports where handedness changes the angle of attack and opponents engage directly one-on-one. There is reportedly a strong effect in fencing, but no advantage in golf. For batsmen, another advantage lies in the technicalities of the LBW law that make it more difficult for right-handed bowlers against left-handed batsmen. Teams that mix left- and right-handers also appear to have advantages (even though it didn’t work on the first day at Cape Town, with our champion right-handers Ricky Ponting and Michael Clarke both making ducks). There are synergies that appear to benefit left/right partnerships. Matt Hayden and Justin Langer both had much better average partnerships with Ponting than they did with each other. I hope to comment on further on this another day. Would You Believe? The 275 runs (115 and 160) by lefty Phillip Hughes at Durban was the most by any player in his second Test match, by a margin of one run. The previous best was by Zaheer Abbas with 274 (batting once) at Edgbaston in 1971. |
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30 March 2009 More columns written for The Age (19 February 2009) A couple of previous columns, on the subject of team performances, have mentioned a study of missed catches and stumpings in recent Tests. Here are a few more records, extended to individuals, from late 2001 to the present. Who has benefited most from dropped catches, and who has suffered the most? Dropped most times: 39 – Virender Sehwag (India). Most for an Australian: 31, Matthew Hayden. There is something to be said for hitting the ball hard. Sehwag has been dropped almost as often as Tendulkar (22) and Dravid (23) combined. Most missed chances off a bowler: 74 off Danish Kaneria (Pakistan). Most off an Australian bowler: 51 off Brett Lee. Danish is adept at creating chances for fieldsmen at short leg, but they accepted all too rarely. Highest percentage of missed chances (bowler): 42% off Mohammad Rafique (Bangladesh, 37 missed, 52 taken). Highest for Australians: 27% off Jason Gillespie. (minimum 30 wickets) Spare a thought for Nathan Bracken, who has seen seven catches dropped and only seven taken off his bowling in Tests. Among those let off were Tendulkar (twice), Sehwag (twice), and a sitter off Brian Lara. Bracken’s career may have followed a different path if they had been taken. Most missed chances in the field: 50 by Adam Gilchrist. Most by a non-keeper: 36 by Rahul Dravid (India). Gilchrist, of course, saw more edges flying his way than any other player. Most ‘expensive’ dropped catch: 297 runs. Inzamam-ul-Haq, against New Zealand in 2002, was dropped on 32 by Robbie Hart, and went on to make 329. Honorable mention to Kumar Sangakkara, who was dropped on 0 against Zimbabwe in 2003/04, and made 270. Highest percentage of missed chances (fieldsman): 41% by Alastair Cook (England; 24 dropped, 34 taken). Highest for Australia: 29% by Shane Warne (20 dropped, 49 taken). (minimum 40 chances) The figure for Warne was a bit of a surprise, although I do remember quite a few misses late in his career. Lowest percentage of missed chances: 7% by Chris Read (England; 3 missed, 38 taken). Lowest for a non-keeper: 13% by Graeme Smith (South Africa; 15 missed, 102 taken). Read, who has played only 15 Tests, is also one of the finest keepers all-time in preventing byes. It’s a shame that in the modern game the very best keepers often can’t hold down a Test place. Would You Believe? Andy Blignaut (Zimbabwe) was dropped five times in his 84 not out against India in 2005. Historically, this has been exceeded in the distant past. In 1882/83, Australia’s George Bonnor, in making 87, was dropped seven or eight times, including five off the bowling of AG Steel, and Bill Ponsford was dropped six times (three by Bob Wyatt) on his way to 266 in his last Test in 1934. Blignaut’s five, however, included a “hat trick” of dropped catches off three consecutive balls (from Zaheer Khan), probably unique in Test history. UPDATE: Wide Wally points out that Geoff Arnold suffered a hat trick of dropped catches at Old Trafford in 1972. There were two batsmen involved (Stackpole and Francis) so Blignaut is still the only batsman known to be so lucky. (27 February 2009) Sometimes – not often – things change quickly in Test cricket. Just four months ago, Australia enjoyed a big lead over South Africa in the ICC team rankings (they led by 22 points, which seems a lot; the calculation method is peculiar, involving various performance weightings). Now the top two teams are, in effect, playing off for the top spot, a rare event. It’s worth looking at how the teams got to this position, in terms of conventional averages. The chart shows averages for Australia and South Africa over the last twelve years. The measure used is the difference between team batting average and bowling average. This figure can be positive or negative depending on team fortunes. 2008 figures include
early January 2009. Australia has spent the last 20 years in positive territory. 2007 was the best result in decades (although there were relatively few Tests played) but last year was the worst result since 1988, and is only positive if you throw in the Sydney Test in January. South Africa have also had a good decade, but they have almost always trailed Australia until just now. The sudden turnaround would be hard to believe except that the two teams have actually met during the crucial period, and so far, South Africa are looking like the Number One team in the world. In Australia, the suddenness of the declining fortunes, and injuries to key players, have produced a scramble for new talent not seen for decades. At the peak of its stability from 2000 to late 2002, Australia introduced only one new player (Brett Lee) in 30 Test matches. Combined team experience peaked at 800 Tests during the last Ashes series in 2006/07, but is now down to 281, the lowest level in 20 years since the Adelaide Test of 1988/89 vs West Indies (235 Tests team experience). Would You Believe? Australia have introduced five debutants in the space of two Tests (Doug Bollinger, Andrew McDonald, Phil Hughes, Marcus North, and Ben Hilfenhaus). The last time this happened (leaving aside the Packer upheaval of 1977-79) was in two Tests in 1964/65, separated by several months, against Pakistan and then the West Indies. In Johannesburg we have three debutants in one match, a number last seen at Adelaide in 1985/86 vs India (Merv Hughes, Geoff Marsh, Bruce Reid). (3 March 2009) In a dramatic week for cricket, there was also action on the smaller stage of Test match statistics. There was an avalanche of giant scoring: in eight days, there were five scores of 600, two of them going on to 700. This is an extreme case of a modern phenomenon: there have now been 44 scores of 600 in this decade, and there have been more totals over 700 in the last five years than there were in the previous fifty. The soaring incidence of large team scores is shown in the Table.
It’s remarkable that while giant scores have doubled in frequency, overall batting averages have risen only slightly, just four percent higher now than in the 1970s and 80s. The secret may lie in scoring rates, which are about fifteen percent faster than 30 years ago (rising from 46 runs per 100 balls to 53). The effect is to make more time available to get to the really big scores. This may also be why there are more big fourth-innings run chases than ever, with four of the six biggest successful chases occurring in the last decade. When South Africa was set 454 to win in the Johannesburg Test, commentators were seriously discussing their winning chances, something we wouldn’t have heard much about twenty years ago. Oddly enough, the top two teams, Australia and South Africa, have not really taken part in the scoring feasts. Australia did start this ball rolling with a 6 for 735 against Zimbabwe in 2003, but since then our best score has been 602, and South Africa’s best in five years is 604. Meanwhile, the West Indies, of all teams, have surged past 700 three times while winning a mere five Tests in five years; one win was against Bangladesh. It could be that the less successful teams feel more motivated to seize records when they come within reach. When Brian Lara made his epic 400 not out against England in 2004, he took a rather cautious 180 balls to go from 300 to 400, breaking the world record but practically guaranteeing a drawn game. Some have argued that West Indies cricket benefited more from setting the record than it would have from winning the match, and a draw was on the cards anyway. Maybe, but is that what the game is all about? Would You Believe? The only team that has not conceded a score over 610 in the last decade is Bangladesh! Ironically, this may be more a sign of weakness than strength. A number of opponents have threatened massive totals, only to declare at scores like 2 for 470 (South Africa) or 3 for 610 (India), knowing full well that this would be enough for an innings victory. (13 March 2009) One of many puzzles about international cricket is the huge variation in Test match attendances internationally, seemingly unconnected to either national team success or local passion for the game. In England and Australia, attendances have boomed in the 21st Century, but on the subcontinent, stands are so often empty. In South Africa, things are fair to middling. Crowds for the big showdown Tests against Australia were unspectacular. Still, the total of 73,000 for the Johannesburg Test was a big improvement on previous tours, up from about 42,000 for both the 2005/06 and 2001/02 Tests at the same ground, but a far cry from the 112,000 recorded in South Africa’s glory days in 1966/67. On the subcontinent, recent Test match crowds belie the public passion for the game. When Test cricket returned briefly to Pakistan last month, fans stayed away even when Younis Khan, not out 306 overnight in Karachi, was in line to break the world record score; only a few hundred showed up to watch. Tests in Pakistan in the 1950s, which included some of the most boring cricket ever played, used to attract daily crowds of up to 50,000. By the late 1990s, when Australia last toured, this had fallen to 5,000 or so, but now even that seems like the good old days. The picture in Australia couldn’t be more different. Test crowds in Australia have been trending up continuously for almost 20 years, almost doubling, as shown in the chart. The chart shows daily averages up to and including 2008/09; considering that more Tests are played now than in past decades, the situation is very healthy, with more people, in total, attending Tests than ever before, even if the daily averages are not quite what they were in Bradman’s day (37,000 in 1936/37). Total attendances at Tests have surged; they had fallen well behind One-Dayers during the 1980s, but caught up again around 1996, and have been more than 50% ahead in recent years. Daily Averages based
on four-year cycle. Not including off-season matches in Darwin and Cairns. Attendances for One-Day Internationals, by contrast, have been static since peaking around 1988. However, there is no doubt that a gradual decline for One-Dayers from 1996 to 2004 was arrested by the success of Twenty20 Internationals, which have drawn up to 84,000 people. Dropping ‘neutral’ ODIs not involving Australia has also helped averages.
More than 2.38 million patrons have passed through the Test match turnstiles in Australia in the last four seasons, an all-time high, just ahead of the pre-Packer peak of 2.35 million from 1974/75 to 1977/78. |
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10 March 2009 Some slow-scoring records can be found in cricket record books. There are mentions of batsmen who took a long time to get off the mark, or who went without scoring for extended periods, and occasionally mentions of bowlers who have bowled many consecutive maiden overs. It’s surprising, then, that one basic question is very difficult to answer. What is the longest period in Tests with no score at all? Here the record books go quiet. It is a question that, even with the aid of original scorebooks, can be tricky, because traditional scorebooks don’t show the real sequence of events. This has to be painstakingly extracted. Anyway, I can’t answer the question with certainty, but I have come across a couple of extreme cases recently. One was in the Leeds Test of 1958, between New Zealand and England. The Test was one of the most one-sided ever; England lost only two wickets and won by an innings, even though half the match was wiped out by rain. The New Zealand batsmen looked paralysed from the start, being bowled out for 67 off 59.1 overs. In reply England cruised to 267/2, with May and Milton (on debut) scoring centuries. It was in the Kiwis second innings that the slow scoring reached extremes. Bert Sutcliffe made a duck off 51 balls, while at the other end John Reid took 39 balls to get off the mark. In total, 81 balls went by without a run off the bat, including the wicket of Miller. There were, however, four byes at some stage, not marked in the scorebook. It is an interesting sign of the times that this spell did not really come to the attention of Wisden or the correspondent of The Times. When Sutcliffe was out, Bill Playle came to the crease and took 23 balls to get off the mark. He scored just three runs of his first 140 balls faced (approximate, since there were a couple more leg byes). Playle finished with 18 off about 175 balls, a worthy addition to the pantheon of extreme inertia. At one point, there were 26 overs from one end, bowled by Laker, Lock and Loader, that produced just eight runs. The 81-ball pause is the second longest I have encountered. The longest is a spell of 88-92 balls (22 to 23 four-ball overs, can’t be more precise than that) by Alick Bannerman and Bill Murdoch at the MCG in 1882/83. This has been reported elsewhere as a 14-over scoreless spell, but careful reading of newspaper reports confirms that it was longer than that. Once again, though, there were some byes scored during this spell. The search continues for a completely scoreless period. A relatively recent extreme case is a 63-ball spell in the India v Sri Lanka Test at Chandigarh in 1990/91. I did some research on this Test following an item in Ask Steven on Cricinfo recently. [This is the most recent Test for which complete extended details are not available; for a statistician that is a bit like having a stone in the shoe, especially as Tendulkar played in that match and we don’t know how many balls he faced.] Anyway, the 63 scoreless balls came in Sri Lanka’s first innings, when Gurusinha scored 52 not out, out of 82 all out. Sri Lanka was on a score of 54, and three wickets fell; it happened during a remarkable spell of 5 for 2 by SLV Raju. Incidentally, I have gathered quite a bit of previously obscure info on this Test, but unfortunately Tendulkar’s balls faced is still unknown. So here is a list of the longest scoreless periods I know of. Any suggested additions by readers would be welcome. Longest scoreless
periods (runs off the bat)
* Contained sundries Thanks to Peter Lyons for the Leeds 1958 scorebook. |
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3 March 2009 A couple more columns, as written for the Age. 5 February Powerplays are one of the complications of One-Day cricket that have persisted without being well understood. They are an extension of fielding restrictions that originated in the Packer World Series matches in the 1970s, and by 1983 were in use in ODIs. The restrictions were increased for the first 15 overs in 1991/92. Powerplays, offering some flexibility to the extended restrictions, were introduced in 2005, and now in 2009 one Powerplay is at the discretion of the batting captain. After all the fanfare, it is surprising to learn that Powerplays don’t seem to have a great effect. There has been little creativity in their use. In 2007 and 2008, Overs 16 to 20 almost always had Powerplays, but Overs 21 to 25 did not. Yet the Powerplay overs produced the same average scoring as overs 21 to 25, about 22 runs. Not much to see here. Overs 10 to 15 were a little more active under Powerplay, but any observable effect was no more than about five runs per innings, on average. Now we have “Batting” Powerplays, mostly used after the 40 over mark. Is there any positive effect on scoring? I have compared scoring rates during a dozen of these new 2009 Powerplays (first innings only) with a similar set of matches from 2008 (excluding rain-affected, short matches and ‘minnow’ matches). The 2009 and 2008 samples had simiIar overall scoring, close to 250 runs. The Powerplays at Overs 16 to 20 have been abandoned, resulting in a slight reduction in scoring, by about 3.5 runs in these five overs. This is an effect, but it is not great. Is there an increase in later overs that makes up for this?
*The 2008 matches all had Powerplay
in Overs 16-20, but none in Overs 41-46. The Table compares the scoring rates with and without the new Powerplays later in the innings, alongside results from 2008. There is no noticeable positive effect on scoring. The 2009 Powerplays produced 6.4 runs per over, against 6.8 when not used, (and 7.0 in 2008). Wickets fell at about the same rate during the Powerplays than without them. These are early days with the new system, but overall, there is little solid evidence here that Powerplays influence matches significantly. Perhaps there will be more effect as teams adapt to the new system, but nothing much has happened yet. 12 February 2009 Fiftieth anniversaries are especially notable when they celebrate rare events. In Adelaide fifty years ago last week, Richie Benaud’s team won back the Ashes, something that since then has happened only twice in this country (1974/75 and 2006/07). It may be worth taking a look at changes in the game since that time. The 1950s are often seen as a period of decline, but in 1958/59 Test cricket was still a big deal. Four years had passed since any Tests in Australia. In that time, Australian teams had played Tests in every Test nation except the nearest, New Zealand (who had had to make do with a Second XI tour). The MCC tour was a major undertaking for the touring players, who still travelled by ship (air travel was now routine but expensive) and who could count on seven continuous months away from home. The six-day Tests were the last in Australia to use the traditional timing of five-hour days. Even though over rates were declining, a day’s cricket produced up to 550 balls, about the same as six hours work for today’s generation. Remuneration for the Australian players could only be described as semi-professional, generally less than £100 ($200) per man per match. Team payments for the whole series would have come to around £5,000, compared to gate takings of £185,000. No Aston Martins for girlfriends in those days. The Tests were the first to be televised in this country, and although broadcast was only local (no live intercity broadcast was possible), the ABC paid the princely sum of £5,000 for the series, to televise the last session of each match. Crowds averaged about 29,000 per day, as against 38,000 per day for the 2006/07 series. The series is notorious for slow scoring, although Australia’s series in South Africa a year earlier had been even worse. England, though much fancied, did not exceed 300 for the series, while the Australians, bitter over ‘doctored’ English pitches in 1956, enjoyed grinding their opponents into the dust. Brisbane was the worst. Trevor Bailey made a failed attempt to stonewall the match to a draw with an infamous 68 off 427 balls; his half-century off 350 balls remains the slowest known in all Test cricket, and at one stage he hit only one boundary in 293 balls. The cause celebre of the day was chucking, which by mid-series was becoming an obsession for the massive English press corps. There would be ramifications: Ian Meckiff, who destroyed England at the MCG, would eventually be drummed out of Test cricket, though not for another five years. Also five years in the future was an answer to the call for ‘brighter cricket’: the one-day game. Ultimately, this would help transform Test cricket, too, as the shotless stonewallers gradually disappeared from the game. Slowest-Scoring Ashes teams (five- or six-Test series) Australia in 1956, 29.9 runs/100 balls. England in 1958/59, 33.3 runs/ 100 balls. England in 1978/79, 34.4 runs/100 balls. Australia in 1884/85, 34.5 runs/100 balls. England in 1953, 34.7 runs/100 balls. Fastest: Australia in 2001, 71.3 runs/100 balls. Would You Believe? In the entire 1958/59 series, only one ball was hit for six (by Fred Trueman). The 2006/07 series, by contrast, produced 27 sixes. |
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12 February 2009 A couple of columns, as written for the Age. (22 January 2009) Top cricketers profess unconcern at such trifles, and highbrow commentators scoff, but player ratings and rankings remain a favourite topic among fans. The ICC now has its own historical player rankings system, an extension of a well-known system that has gone under several names over the years, and like many things associated with the ICC, it is quite contentious, and secretive in its workings. While the system works well for snapshots of current form, its extension to historical data is dubious. The rankings have attracted a lot of heat because Matthew Hayden is placed well above Sachin Tendulkar, Hayden even making it into the Top Ten batsmen of all time. The method in this is obscure and difficult to discover, but it seems to be associated with career peaks rather than averages. There seems to be bonus points for scoring well in winning sides, something that happens far more often for Australia than for other nations. Hayden does have some claims to greatness. He is only the sixth Australian – and our first opener – to complete a career of more than 20 Tests with an average over 50. He held, briefly, the world record innings, a real curiosity considering that huge scores from Hayden were rare. Ultimately, few sober judges would rank him above Tendulkar. Hayden does have the slightly better average in the 21st century, but Tendulkar also averaged in the mid-60s from 1993-99. The fact that Tendulkar had a more difficult set of opponents should clinch it, even if this is not really Hayden’s fault. I have done my own calculation of averages adjusted for strength of opposition, location of run-making, and changes in scoring standards. Most current batsmen lose out a bit, partly because of smaller grounds and the new super bats. Hayden suffers more than most, his average falls from 50.7 to 44.8 on adjustment, Tendulkar’s from 54.3 to 51.3. If this process is carried out for all batsman (something I did for my book The Best of the Best in 2000) an historical ranking can be produced. There is no space here for the detailed explanation found in the book, but here is a list of Top Ten all-time batting rankings, updated to 2009. The ratings are calculated from the adjusted averages, also using a factor for length of career (in years). A
Better Batting Ranking?
Three other batsmen might qualify for this list, but they played too few Tests for a reliable statistical fix. They are George Headley (5.30), Graeme Pollock (5.06), and Golden Age maestro Stanley Jackson (4.76). Matthew Hayden ranks 39th on this list. Would You Believe? Hayden played 109 Test innings after his world record 380 against Zimbabwe; this included 15 centuries – a remarkable success rate – but he never got past a score of 153 again. (29 January 2009) A Sundries column in November discussed the statistics of dropped catches, which have been gathered in detail for Tests since late 2001. These showed that while Australia has done well when it comes to taking catches, the record is probably not as good as may have been thought; in general, South Africa has dropped fewer catches over the last seven years. A corollary to “catches win matches” might be “catches dropped by winning sides don’t get noticed”. During the winning years, the standard reaction to Australians such as Shane Warne dropping catches was surprise, as if it’s rare (it’s not). In the final innings of the Sydney Test, Australians dropped four catches, but most was forgiven when they won with ten balls to spare. Still, Matthew Hayden dropping a sitter with just overs to go was memorable, and it points to an interesting observation about Hayden’s later career. Since 2002, there has been a very clear correlation between Hayden’s batting average (going down), and the number of chances he dropped (going up). The year-by-year fluctuations in Hayden’s fortunes can be seen clearly in both stats (see table). Hayden was superb in both departments in 2002 and 2003, but he had a relatively poor 2004. He averaged only 43 with the bat, while his percentage of dropped catches soared from 18% to 29%. Both stats recovered nicely in 2005, but in 2008 his average fell away to 32 while he dropped seven of the 17 chances (over 40%) of the chances that came his way. Through this period, dropped catches by Australians in general stayed fairly constant at between 21 and 28%.
Fielding in the slips can be tough, and even a good slipper may drop one-quarter of the chances on offer (the current best is Graeme Smith at 13%, the worst Alastair Cook at 42%). At his best, Hayden was well below 20%, significantly better than average, but when he began missing over 40%, it just added to the writing on the wall. This pattern echoes the decline of Adam Gilchrist, who at his peak from 2002-2004 dropped catches at a rate of only 12%, but by 2008 the rate was rising to over 20%. Gilchrist himself cited his declining form behind the stumps as hastening his retirement. Would You Believe? Australia’s One-Day batsmen are suffering a century drought. There were only three tons by Australians in ODIs in 2008 (Adam Gilchrist, Ricky Ponting and Shane Watson), the quietest year since 1995. Ponting’s concern that the big match-winning innings are not happening often enough seems justified. Only one of the last 27 half-centuries by Australians has been converted into a century. |
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2 February 2009 234 or not 234, that is the question... I have mentioned a few times in the past (can’t be bothered looking for the links) that there are some oddities about surviving scores of the Bradman/Barnes partnership of 1946 (405 runs, which remains the highest Test partnership in Australia). The story, oft-told, is that when Bradman was out for 234, Barnes threw his wicket away when on the same score a few minutes later, saying that he thought his innings would be remembered longer if his score was the same as the Don’s. So what are the oddities? There are two surviving scores of the innings that I know of. One is a fantastically detailed re-copy on large-format paper by S.G. Miller, presumably prepared from the scorer Bill Ferguson’s running sheets. Miller’s scores of this series generally look very accurate, but in the case of the Barnes’ innings, the scoring strokes only add up to 233! Time to re-write history? Not so fast. When the bowling analysis is re-scored, the missing run is found, and the score is back to 234. There is more. I have a copy of Fergie’s “traditional” scorebook that he copied in the evenings of the Tests from his running sheets. Taking a deep breath, I re-scored this one too, and this time Barnes came out with a score of 235! However, there are two ‘anomaly points’ in this score, which when cross-checked against Miller, look very much like errors. When corrected, Barnes recovers his 234 once again. Fergie’s running sheets would certainly help here, but if they exist, I don’t know where they are. But even the running sheets can have problems, not so much with the scores but with regards to the balls faced. It appears that Ferguson could be a little careless in recording dot-balls, and it is quite common to find in his running sheets the wrong number of balls (usually too few, but not always) in the over. He seems to have ‘corrected’ these anomalies when making the re-copied scores, but whether it was through a superior ability to interpret his own writing, or just a ‘best guess’ in some cases, is unclear. I favour the latter. Support for this comes from comparing Miller’s version with Ferguson’s. In the Australian innings, there are no fewer than 63 separate overs where the order of the balls differs in the two versions. Even the very first over of the innings is recorded as 20020200 by Miller and 02000202 by Ferguson. It is curious that with all these differences, the final tallies of runs come out the same (apart from the couple of anomalies mentioned earlier). It is further complicated by a note in the Miller score that, after the tea break on the fourth day, the batsmen returned to the wrong ends, and so “crossed”. All this assumes some minor importance because Barnes’ innings may hold a record as the slowest double-century ever by an Australian. The Miller re-score seems to settle on a tally of 608 balls to reach 200, which is exactly the same number recorded by Bob Simpson in his 311 at Old Trafford in 1964. The Ferguson score for Barnes (re-scored) comes to 601 balls. As it happens, both these tallies have been exceeded (marginally) by Glenn Turner in his 259 at Georgetown in 1972, which is reported (though not recorded on the scoresheet) as 611 balls for the first 200. Just how trustworthy this figure is could be debated; I have encountered problems with scores from the West Indies in the past, and the huge Turner/Jarvis partnership, probably the longest in Test history, has reported figures for length that vary in media reports. There is even one more candidate for slowest 200. When I re-scored Dudley Nourse’s 208 at Trent Bridge in 1951, I got 597 balls for the 200. However, this score lacked markings for byes and leg byes, which were relatively numerous, so uncertainties exist about the strike in some overs. There is also a likely error in the score, since the analysis came to 209, not 208, runs for Nourse and 123, not 122, runs conceded by Bedser. I didn’t work out the probabilities for the possible range for the balls faced – a more complicated calculation than it sounds – but Nourse could conceivably have faced up to 607 balls for his 200. (By the same token, it could well be lower than 597 balls also). Some statisticians might write this off as a loss due to the uncertainties. I prefer to think that this is useful information; we know these four innings were quite similar statistically, and that they represent the extremes in slow double-centuries, which have largely (and thankfully) vanished from the modern game. If we can’t quite say for sure which is the slowest, we have still learned something. |
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30 January 2009 A couple of columns, as written for the Age. (8 January 2009) Charles Davis Mike Hussey has had a career like no other. Ignored until past his 30th birthday, he was finally selected after Australia’s chastening in the 2005 Ashes. Almost immediately, Hussey showed Bradmanesque tendencies, averaging almost 85 in his first 20 Tests. Lately, though, his career has reflected Australia’s declining fortunes. There is an interesting graphical comparison to be made with the careers of other top line batsmen. The chart summarises how the careers of 115 recognised batsmen who have played over 100 innings have progressed. These players have an “average average” around 44 runs. The “Low Range” and “High Range” lines show the band of averages where the great majority of the top batsmen can be found (technically, ± 2 standard deviations). Of course, individuals often have careers that fluctuate up or down. Some players improve their averages after 50 innings, some decline: the numbers are about equal, and generally they stay within this band. Chart Here “Typical” Averages
are calculated for recognised batsmen with more than 100 innings. The outstanding exception, of course, is Don Bradman, whose career is so far out of the band that it looks statistically impossible. Mike Hussey, at one stage, looked almost in the same class. For most of his career he has been second only to Bradman. Just recently, however, he has returned to the pack, and his average at the 58-innings point of his career (59.3) is now below a few of the greats, like Garry Sobers (61.5), at the same stage. Surprisingly, even Adam Gilchrist had a higher average after 58 innings (60.7). Statisticians term the experience of Hussey (and Gilchrist later on) “Regression to the Mean”. The Indian and South African bowlers have certainly had something to do with it, but it is probably too much to expect that a batsman who averages just 42 at Sheffield Shield level could maintain a Test average of over 80. Ricky Ponting, who averages over 63 in Shield cricket, is an interesting comparison here. Bradman averaged 110. Would You Believe? The sight of a player batting with a broken hand or arm, a la Graeme Smith in Sydney, is very rare, but it happened in consecutive Tests in England in 1984. At Headingley, Malcolm Marshall braved a broken thumb to help Larry Gomes reach a century, even hitting a boundary one-handed. Then at Old Trafford, Paul Terry did the same for Alan Lamb; Terry’s example is perhaps the most extreme since his arm was actually in a sling. Other cases include Salim Malik against the West Indies in 1986, and Colin Cowdrey (who didn’t actually face a ball, but saved the match by coming to the crease for one over) at Lord’s in 1963. (15 January 2009) Although Twenty20 cricket is still the new game in town, there are already some interesting patterns emerging in the stats. There have been 55 T20s between Test-ranked nations, 25 won by the team batting first and 27 by the chasing team, with three ties. This ‘balance’ is superficial, and disguises some deeper inequalities. In day/night games, there is a major advantage to batting first. Nineteen games have gone to the team batting first, and only ten to the chasing team, six of them in the dry air at Johannesburg. At other grounds the winning ratio is an unhealthy fifteen to four. The Melbourne International is a case in point. Australia basically won that game in the first eight overs, before the lights went on. A pattern also seen rather too often in the 50-over game. In daytime games, the opposite holds. Teams batting second have won seventeen games, and lost only six. Why is this ratio so lopsided? Maybe teams batting first overreach in the early overs and lose too many wickets. When batting second, you have the luxury of tailoring your strategy to suit the target. The average first innings score is around 163 with 7.4 wickets lost. Over-by-over scoring is shown in the chart. Chart Here *Teams batting first
in games between Test-ranked nations. After a couple of settling overs, batsmen take advantage of fielding restrictions to score at nearly nine runs an over in Overs 3-5. Rates drop when the field spreads in Over 6, gradually rising again to about 10 runs per over in the final two overs. Naturally, the frequency of wickets increases. Early on, there is about a 25% chance of a wicket falling in a given over; this rises gradually to 50% in the 16th over, and jumps to 70% in the final over. On average, the last five overs produce 15-20% more runs than the first five. In 50-over games the ‘gradient’ is greater: the last 10 overs are typically 50% faster than the first 10. Even when teams have wickets to burn in the final overs of Twenty20, the average scoring rate rises only to about twelve runs per over at the death. There are many exceptions, of course, but twelve an over seems about the average to expect from all-out attack. It will be interesting to see if these patterns change as the game matures. Would You Believe? The only Australian to be dropped from the Test team immediately after scoring a Test double-century was Jason Gillespie. Gillespie is the only Australian to finish his career with a top score (201*) more than ten times his batting average (18.7). |
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20 January 2009 In discussing over rates on this blog, I have once or twice alluded to a record number of overs bowled in a day of Test cricket, 162 overs bowled on the second day of the 1946 Lord’s Test (England v India). The number, based on a press report, needs correcting. Now that I have re-scored the scorebook for this Test, I have found that this was a slight exaggeration. The correct number is 157.4 overs. This is still the most cricket in a day that I know of, in terms of balls bowled (942), ahead of two days in the 1947 Trent Bridge Test (153.5 on the second day and 155.2 on the fourth). The 1946 record was assisted by the fact that, at that time, English first-class cricket often ran to 6.5-hour days on the second and subsequent days. On that day at Lord’s, there was also a change of innings that coincided with the tea break, so both teams shared the bowling without any extra interruptions. Most Overs in a Day
Some of these figures may be revised with further research. It is also interesting that five of the eight highest daily over counts occurred in 1946 or 1947. One wonders why these over rates were higher than in most pre-War Tests , which occurred under the same playing conditions but which generally did not exceed the low 140s. Put it down to post-War enthusiasm after seven years in cricketing purgatory. Five-day Tests limited to six hours per day became standard in England in 1950, after a series of three-day Tests in 1949 (against New Zealand) were all left drawn. The last entry in the table, at Trent Bridge in 1950, actually has the highest over rate, because it was a six-hour day. This is a tribute to the young West Indian spinners Valentine and Ramadhin, who were assisted by slow scoring (263 runs off those 146 overs). Valentine, it is said, could bowl a maiden in 90 seconds. More than 50 maiden overs were bowled that day. |
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10 January 2009 A couple of new columns, as written for the Age. First, a slightly longer article here, on the “problems” of winning the toss and batting first. Sundries (26 December 2008) The alarming lack of depth in Australia’s bowling in the Perth Test produced some interesting statistical aberrations. Australia’s fourteen wickets in the match included eleven from Mitchell Johnson, an unprecedented haul from such a meagre total. Australia’s other bowlers, between them, took 3 wickets for 509, a combined analysis never seen outside the most extreme innings defeats. The ‘best’ of them, Peter Siddle, took 1 for 128 in the match, which is the worst return for any Australian “second-best” bowler, the previous record being set in 1893, with 1 for 94 by Charles Turner in an innings defeat at the Oval. This sort of thing is seen occasionally from the likes of Bangladesh, but will be unfamiliar fare to Australian fans. Meanwhile, Jason Krejza, with 1 for 102 and 0 for 102 in his second Test, became the first bowler to concede the century in each of his first four bowling innings (Arthur Mailey came close in 1920). Johnson’s first innings of 8 for 61 is the best return in a losing side by any Australian bowler, previously 8 for 65 by Hugh Trumble at the Oval in 1902, a match lost by only one wicket. Kapil Dev leads the international field here with his 9 for 83 in losing to the West Indies at Ahmedabad in 1983. The highlight of the match for Australia, statistical or otherwise, was Johnson’s sequence of five wickets for just two runs in 21 balls at the end of the second day. How does this compare to other extreme sequences? This sort of stat is rarely published, so it is worth listing the best known Australian sequences for five wickets: 5/1 (17 balls) Gerry Hazlitt 7/25 Aus v Eng The Oval 1912 (his last 17 balls in Tests) 5/2 (19 balls) Ernie Toshack 5/2 Aus v Ind Brisbane 1947/48 5/2 (21 balls) Mitchell Johnson 8/61 v SAf Perth 2008/09 5/2 (28 balls) Glenn McGrath 6/17 Aus v WI Brisbane 2000/01 5/2 (31 balls) Glenn McGrath 5/53 Aus v Eng Lord’s 2005 Four bowlers from other countries have achieved sequences of five wickets for no runs (excluding Bangladesh Tests): Hugh Tayfield (1953), Fred Trueman (1961), Lance Gibbs (1961/62), and Venkatesh Prasad (1998/99). The shortest spell for five wickets was 13 balls (approximately) by Monty Noble for Australia at the MCG in 1901/02 (conceding five runs). Bert Ironmonger took five wickets in 17 balls (three runs) against South Africa at the MCG in 1931/32. Would You Believe? Australia never lost an Ashes Test when both Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne were in the side, and the team went unbeaten for ten years in all home Tests (from 1996/97) when both champion bowlers were playing. Bowlers win Test matches, they say, but it often takes more than one. Sundries 1 January 2009 Charles Davis After loss-free years in 2006 and 2007, the sudden derailment in 2008 of the Australian Test juggernaut has come as quite a shock. Australia has now lost four Test matches in 70 days; the last time this happened was during the Packer upheaval in 1979. Australia’s last series loss at home, against the West Indies in 1992/93, was by a margin of one run. To find a team that defeated Australia at the level of Graeme Smith’s men, we must go back even further, to the West Indies in 1988/89 (3-1 winners). The nature of the losses is also striking. All of Australia’s previous losses in this century had been by narrow margins, or in dead rubbers, often both. Until this year, Australia had lost only four Tests in eight years where the series was still up for grabs: all of the defeats came narrowly or in extraordinary circumstances. But in 2008 all five of our losses have been in live rubbers, mostly by significant margins. Fans once grumbled when the Australians tended to lose close matches, or sometimes did not whitewash opponents already beaten. All of a sudden they seem like the good old days. The age of the team has come under some scrutiny. The link between age and performance is a complex issue. Some teams grow old because the players are so good (and well-paid), and this is why the oldest Australian team ever, apart from those affected by wartime, was the 2006/07 Ashes team that whitewashed England. The team’s average age has dropped by two years since then. Other teams, like the West Indies in the early 1990s, grew old because the supply of good new players dried up. There is no strong relationship between the age of the team and its performance. The oldest Australian teams have been 36 years, in England 1926 (lost) 33.2 years, Ashes 2006/07 (won) 32 years, in England 1905 (lost) 31.6 years, the “Invincibles”, in England 1948 (won) 31.1 years in 1980 (return of Packer’s players) (won) 31.0 years, current (lost) The youngest teams were aged around 25 years in isolated Tests in 1884, when Test cricket was new, and again just before the Packer rapprochement. The only sustained period where the average stayed below 29 years was from about 1967-1974, before players’ incomes rose, and senior players often chose to retire young, to seek alternative careers. Would You Believe? The 180 runs added by JP Duminy and Dayle Steyn was not quite the highest ever partnership for the ninth wicket in Tests – the record is 195. However, it was the longest, at 238 minutes or 382 balls. Asif Iqbal and Intikhab Alam batted for 378 balls for the ninth wicket (190 runs) against England in 1967. |
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5 January 2009 Stationarity Records Various record books include lists of the slowest batsmen to get off the mark, or who spent the longest periods without scoring. It invites the question, who has faced the most balls without scoring in a Test match? A stat rather more difficult to find. I decided to put together a list after I found two new extreme cases while inching my way through old Test scorebooks. Firstly, there was a classic “Barnacling” by Trevor Bailey, who tried, unsuccessfully, to save the Leeds Test of 1955 v South Africa. Coming in immediately after lunch on the last day, Bailey hustled to one off 23 balls, but then went back into his shell. His second scoring stroke came off his 107th ball faced (give or take, there is one unmarked leg bye somewhere along the way). I believe this is the only innings in Tests to feature just one run off the first 100 balls. Bailey made only one scoring stroke off Trevor Goddard all afternoon, and that came after 62 balls bowled by Goddard. Goddard was the most economical bowler of his day; Bailey vs Goddard was a case of immovable object meeting immovable object. Bailey was last out for 8 off 135 balls in a single session of play, having gone scoreless at one point for between 78-82 balls. By coincidence, the next Test I analysed was from Johannesburg in 1938/39. It included an innings of passing strangeness by another king of the block, Bruce Mitchell. When South Africa batted on the second day, Mitchell appeared to have forgotten himself in steaming to 36 in less than half an hour, off 39 balls. Suddenly, when the spinners were brought on, the real Mitchell re-emerged, and it took him 52 balls to go from 36 to 40. Returning from the tea break on 56, Mitchell became becalmed, taking an hour to score again, and he remained on 56 for a total of 85 balls. He was eventually out for 73 off 271 balls. The first half of his innings took 39 balls, the second half 232 balls. Was there ever an innings like it? Mitchell had not quite surpassed himself, however, since he had once faced 95 balls without scoring (see entry for 20 April 2005). For the moment he holds the top two places in the immobility stakes. The list as it stands follows
Notes: Geoff Allott faced 90 consecutive balls in all without scoring, spanning three innings. The figure for Snedden is quite uncertain. In 1881, George Giffen took about 63 balls to get off the mark in his Test debut. I will add this list to the “Unusual Records” section. It should be regarded as a work in progress. Other extremes may well be found. Thanks to Shahzad Khan for some helpful data, and to Peter Lyons for a copy of the Leeds Test of 1955. |
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21 December 2008 Another Couple of “Sundries” Columns 4 December 2008 After four years in the Australian team, Michael Clarke is a proven Test player. He was named “Player of the Series” against New Zealand. Yet if you go through his resume since his sensational debut in Bangalore in 2004, it looks a little bland. What is missing is a few of those stellar one-off performances that mark the careers of the greats (ironically, his most two eye-catching performance was a spell of 6 for 9 as a part-time spinner). While he won that series award, Clarke has not won a Player of the Match award in his last 36 Tests since 2004. In that time, eighteen Australian players have won at least one, including every one of Clarke’s teammates in the Adelaide Test.[Correction: every one except Nathan Hauritz.] Clarke has now made nine Test centuries, without surpassing that 151 on debut. More strikingly, the lowest team total to include a Clarke century is 474, and the average is 534, higher than for any other Test batsman (minimum eight centuries). Now Clarke cannot be blamed if his colleagues score so many runs, but even so, there have been 42 centuries by Australians in totals of less than 450 since Clarke’s debut; Simon Katich alone has made four. It’s not that Clarke fails completely under pressure. His average when Australia loses is a respectable 38, but the pattern is one of moderate scores, often reaching 20 but with a top score of 81. There is a way of measuring how well a batsman scores runs “against the flow”. Compare his average in those innings where his teammates score poorly, against his average where teammates score well. If the ratio of these averages is high, this means a batsman keeps his head when all about are losing theirs, while a low ratio means he tends to make his runs in big totals. Clarke’s ratio of 0.71 is lowest of current Australians – Ponting is 0.93 and Hayden 0.86 – although some earlier players, including Steve Waugh (0.58) have still lower ratios. (Waugh’s ratio is affected by his early career, when both he and his team tended to fail regularly.) At the other extreme, there is Andrew Symonds, who made a duck in Australia’s 535 at Adelaide, and whose ratio of 1.96 is almost unparalleled. Symonds has never shone in big innings: his best score when Australia exceeds 500 is only 53 not out, while Michael Clarke has made seven centuries in such totals.
Would You Believe? Way back in 1926 at the Oval, when Harold Larwood (a 150kph bowler) was bowling, two intrepid Australians, Herbie Collins and Jack Gregory, decided to bat without gloves. Why they did so is not recorded, but the correspondent for The Age noted drily that “Collins was struck on the fingers by Larwood, and obviously felt it for some time.” Indeed. 12 December 2008 The spotlight is once again on our cricketers’ workloads, as a very busy program looms in 2009. Next year sees the Australian team scheduled to play 62 days’ worth of Internationals on tour, which will pass the peak of 58 set in 1999, if all matches take place and last the distance. Behind all the concern, there seems to be an assumption that players have never worked harder, and that workloads have increased inexorably. Do the numbers support this? Let’s take a look. The table compares the number of days cricket played annually by the most active players of different generations. The cricket includes all international, first-class, and senior one-day games, including Twenty20, but not minor cricket. The figures are annual averages over the busiest five years of each player’s career.
So while there has been a long-term increase in workload, it was the players of the 1980s (Allan Border) and the 1990s (Mark Waugh) who spent most time on the field. Waugh, in particular, was one of those who played whenever he could, including the county circuit in England. In 1995 he played on over 170 days, possibly a world record. Mike Hussey’s workload, while considerable, is only a little more than Greg Chappell’s was, and less than 20% greater than Neil Harvey in the 1950s; and remember that Harvey held down a full-time job. Some might argue that the game has changed, and is somehow more intense than in the past. Perhaps, but the other side to this is that the old-timers often put in more than 120 overs in a day, an inconceivable total nowadays. They also played more minor cricket then. In the 1928/29 Australian season, the young Don Bradman played at least 68 days at all levels, including district cricket. No current player could find the time for that; there would be no time left for buying Aston Martins for girlfriends, and so forth. A couple of suggestions for our cricketers, from a non-combatant: - Get through your overs faster, and matches become shorter! More time to put your feet up. - Go easy on the practice. It seems more players are injured in practice than in the field, Jason Krejza being just the latest. Would You Believe? Philip Hughes scored 93 out of 172 and 108 out of 173 for NSW against Tasmania last week, becoming the first player in Australian first-class cricket to score more than 50% of his team’s total in both innings. It did happen once in an Australian tour match, by JT Tyldesley for Lancashire vs Australians in 1899. |
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11 December 2008 Another Nugget for the Vault Some of the work on this website is from data extracted over the years from my collection of copies of original Test match scorebooks. Collecting this material is an ongoing project, advancing slowly. Occasionally there is a small breakthrough, and I have Peter Lyons (from the Isle of Lewis!) to thank for a recent one. Peter alerted me to a rather rare book from 1926, “The Greatest Test Match”, by John Marchant, which describes, in loquacious detail, the Oval Test of that year when England won back the Ashes. The original edition had an unusual feature, a reproduction of a scorebook of that Test (not included in a later edition). As it happens, this is the only significant Ashes Test since 1920 for which a scorebook cannot be found in the major archives, so the book filled the gap nicely. I set about re-scoring the match to get balls faced. Not so easy. For one thing, the reproduced pages are very small, and the writing practically illegible in places. I sought the help of the very detailed newspaper reports of the day (Australian papers much better than English for this purpose), and still it was difficult. The score seems to have a lot of errors, more than any other I have come across (except perhaps Sydney 1903/04). A few dozen changes seemed to be necessary to make it add up, and even then a complete reconciliation of batting and bowling was not achieved. Curiously, the problems were alluded to by Marchant in the book. He hadn’t analysed it deeply, but he did find anomalies, some of which arise as early as the third over of an innings. Still, it is a find, and balls faced for this historic match have been calculated, even if the numbers are not precise. The match was played on a pitch that varied in quality from session to session. The nexus of the match was the Hobbs/Sutcliffe partnership of 172 on the third day which lasted for 86 overs under the most difficult conditions of the match. Hobbs’ batting that morning baffled his opponents and amazed observers. Collins’ captaincy was criticised: apparently Hobbs foxed Collins into thinking that second-string bowler Richardson was doing very well, and Richardson was kept on for a 19-over unsuccessful spell at a critical time. Sutcliffe, for his part, did not score for 56 balls at one point, but finished with 161 off about 470 balls. Hobbs score 100 off about 255 balls. (Collins, incidentally, faced about 200 balls in his first innings 61 before he hit his first boundary) Collins was even accused, more than 50 years later, of throwing the match to accommodate some bookmaker contacts of his. There is no hard evidence for this, although Collins was known to be a heavy gambler. It would seem that the scorebook in the Marchant volume was an amateur effort; at least, one hopes it was not the official record. In any case, the balls faced record for all Ashes Tests since World War I is now virtually complete. I say virtually because the Nottingham Test of the same year is still missing; however, this match lasted only 46 minutes before being rained out, and no wickets fell. Balls faced are also complete for 1903/04, 1905, 1909, 1911/12, and much of 1912; 1907/08 is missing, as is 1912, which was last seen a few years ago. If any reader knows the whereabouts of any Test match scorebooks, amateur or professional, I would love to hear about it. A case in point: the only known copy of the 1909 scorebook is a photocopy at Cricket NSW; it must have been copied in recent decades, but where is the original? |
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10 December 2008 More ‘SUNDRIES’ Columns Written for The Melbourne
Age November 2008 Sundries 20 November 2008 Charles Davis Catches win matches, we are told. Certainly they help, as New Zealand showed on the first day at the ‘Gabba, but this is one area where statisticians, lacking data, traditionally fear to tread. Perhaps it is time some of these boundaries were pushed back. I have collated, from ball-by-ball and other accounts, almost 2,000 missed chances in Tests since 2002, allowing some basic questions to be addressed, like just how many chances are dropped? And who drops them the most? About 6.5 catches and stumpings are missed per Test match, on average. The most recorded was 19 for an India/England Test in Mumbai in 2006, including twelve by India. A few months earlier in Faisalabad, Pakistan set a benchmark by dropping nine in one innings against England. At the other extreme, there appeared to be no missed chances at all in the Johannesburg Test in 2006, South Africa vs Australia. Australia, though, has twice missed six in an innings against India, at Chennai in 2004 and at Adelaide this year. Overall, about 25% of chances offered to fieldsmen are put down, if you include very difficult chances. The figure varies from team to team, but perhaps not as much as you might expect. Australia, not surprisingly, has a strong record, but not as strong as South Africa, as shown.
Surprisngly, these rankings were just about identical in the first half of the study (2002-04, and the second half (2005-2008). Of course, some misses have far more dramatic effects than others. Just ask Kumar Sangakkara, who was dropped on 0 against Zimbabwe in 2004 and went on to make 270. Missed chances off recognised batsmen average out at a cost 36.0 runs. Oddly enough, the average score at which catches were dropped is also 36.0 runs. This exact match is coincidental to a degree, but it is linked to the fact that the runs lost in a missed chance tends to be, on average, similar to the batsman’s batting average. Much more can be said on this topic. I hope to return to it, and discuss how dropped catches have affected individual players, in a later column. < | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
