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4 November 2010 Updates The “Hot 100” page,
the fastest and slowest batsmen in Test cricket, has been updated. This is
only updated occasionally now, since I have found that the lists only change
slowly when you are considering whole careers over the entire history of Test
cricket. Still, there is some new data behind the averages. To calculate
batting speeds, balls faced are used wherever possible; currently, this is
available for about 86% of all innings. For innings where balls faced are not
known, an estimate based on batting time and the prevailing over rate is
substituted. Batting times have been found for more than 99% of all Test
innings, so for most players, a reasonably comprehensive calculation of
batting speed is possible. While the all-time list changes only slowly, there are
some notable developments. Virender Sehwag’s speed continues to rise; he has overtaken Kapil Dev, and he will soon
overtake Adam Gilchrist for second spot at the rate he is going. Sehwag has scored at almost 99 runs/100 balls over the
last two years, and equally incredibly has averaged over 60. Tillekeratne Dilshan
has risen four places to #9 on the list, pushing
Andrew Symonds out of the top 10. Equally notable is Ross Taylor, who has
gone from #33 on last year’s list to #16. There are so many current players on the fast list that
one wonders about a need to ‘adjust’ the figures to allow for the super bats
and smaller grounds. Perhaps one for future study. There are no current
players at all on the slow list. The slowest player who batted during 2010 is
Misbah-ul-Haq, on 38.8 runs/100 balls for his whole
career, ranking 358th out of 497 qualifying players. Likewise, the “Most Tenacious” list – the players with the
longest average innings – is little changed. Bruce Mitchell of South Africa
has slipped down the list slightly, as a bit more information has come to
light. Record Identified Reader Sreeram has made a good
pickup, finding a new record for most runs in a two-hour Test match session.
It came on the day, at Old Trafford in 1936, where most runs were scored
(588). Previously, I had not been able to find a mention of the score at tea
on the second day (in spite of checking five or six contemporary newspapers),
and I had presumed that there had been an early tea on change of innings, but
now it transpires that India went to tea on 69/0, after England went from 400
at lunch to 571 when they declared. That gives 240 runs in the session,
beating the 236 by Australia in Jo’burg in 1921.
England, for good measure, had scored 227 before lunch, in a 150 minute
session. Unfortunately, it is still not possible to determine exactly how
many overs were bowled in each session, or on that day as a whole
(approximately 140). The 236 by Australia remains the record for one team in a two-hour
session, while the record for extended sessions is still 249. See the lists here. |
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24 October 2010 Crossing the Line I recently came across a couple of extreme cases of no-balling,
dating from the 1988/89 West Indies tour of Australia. This was a time when
the no ball plague, set off by the front foot rule introduced in the late
1960s, reached its peak. Since the 1990s, the frequency of no balls has
subsided a little, although outbreaks still occur. There is usually a difference between the number of no
balls given in the sundries and the number of no ball calls (by umpires) in an innings. Finding out the latter is not
so straightforward for Tests before 1998, since we need to know the number of
no balls that were scored from. Original scorebooks help here, though they
have to be examined carefully. Generally there will be more no ball calls
than no ball runs, but the number of called no balls can be reduced if there
are cases of ‘four no balls’ etc. I have pieced together a list of the most no ball calls in
an innings. The first innings on the list, at the WACA in 1988/89, saw an
unusual number of scoring shots off no balls, fifteen in fact, lifting the no
ball count from 35 to 50. The West Indies also conceded 37 no balls in the
second innings of that match, but there were ‘only’ 38 no ball calls.
The figures in brackets are estimates, based on the total
number of balls faced by batsmen. There are a couple of other candidates for
this list, for which the balls faced data do not make much sense, so they are
not included. Sri Lanka in 1992 had good reason to regret overstepping
71 times in the Colombo Test against Australia. Australia conceded only 14 no
ball calls, and won the match by 13 runs. The Closest Tests India’s one-wicket win
over Australia at Mohali was a rare enough thing, but was even more
unusual in that both innings were closely contested, with only 23 runs
between the teams after first innings. The list of Tests that were extremely
close on both first and second innings is extremely short. Tests won by 10
runs or less or one wicket, that were close on first innings:
At the Oval in 1890, England beat Australia by 2 wickets after
leading by 8 runs on first innings, and at Perth in 1977/78 Australian beat
India by two wickets after being behind by eight runs. Honourable mention to
the drawn Melbourne Test of 1974/75 where the scores were 242, 241, 244, and 238/8. |
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25 September 2010 Take Five Before Lunch The scoring of a century before lunch on the first day of
a Test is a fairly familiar record, at least to Australians, mainly because
three of the four batsmen to achieve the feat were indeed Australians. It is
also vanishingly rare, and it has been done only once since 1930 (Majid Khan in 1976). The decline in over rates has made
it ever more difficult to repeat; even Virender Sehwag at his most Jessopian
has not (quite) managed it. Notable pre-lunch performances by
bowlers is a far less familiar field. By chance, I came across two
remarkable instances recently (20 August entry), and so I decided to create a
list of most wickets by a bowler in the first session of a Test match. Like
its batting equivalent, five wickets is very rare,
especially since 1920, although not quite as rare as a batting century.
** on Test debut Nice to see SF Barnes (perhaps the greatest of bowlers) on
the list (Barnes once took eight wickets before lunch, but that wasn’t on the
first day of the match). Valentine on debut is perhaps the most
extraordinary, since he didn’t even open the bowling: Maninder
Singh, bowling at #4, is the only other non-opening bowler on the list.
Curious to see two New Zealanders achieving the feat only months apart in
2005. Graham McKenzie took his first five wickets in the first 45 minutes of
the match, and for good measure forced another batsman to retire hurt. As always, suggested additions to my lists are welcome.
Note the update below in the previous entry on boundary hitting. |
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5 September 2010 The Worst Scorebook in
the World Perhaps an exaggeration, but such was my thought on seeing
the official scorebook for the third Test between West Indies and Australia
in 1991 at Port-of-Spain. I have uploaded a sample of this score here (bowling page from
Australia’s first innings). For reasons unknown the scorer has used
pointlessly minuscule writing for much of the innings, so small that it would
have been possible to fit one thousand overs onto the page. The writing is
clumsy, sometimes near-illegible, and the overs have not been placed in any
rational order. For example, after headache-inducing research, I determined
that Malcolm Marshall’s 18.1 overs are placed in the following order:
There is an additional (20th) over marked,
which is completely spurious. I don’t know what it is doing there, or why the
last five balls of his 19th over seem to be filled in, when the
first ball had finished the Australian innings. There must be armies of amateur club scorers out there who
would be embarrassed if they produced work like this. And this is supposed to
be the original source for the data and statistics for a Test match less than
20 years ago. As a matter of interest, a couple of years ago I came
across a memo in the SACA archives, from an Australian statistician,
complaining about the state of this very scorebook (I wish I had taken a copy
of the memo). I can only concur. I do know that on the next couple of tours
(1995, 1999) a scorer was sent with the Australian team, rather than rely on
local scorers. (I might add that many scores from the West Indies are in a
much better state. For example, the 1965 tour scorebook, recorded by locals,
is quite sound.) There are ‘issues’ with other scores from this tour. To
cut a long story short, it confirms a point I have made earlier; that balls
faced data for batsmen recorded before the computer age are only
approximately reliable. A quick look at three independent sources for balls
faced for the fifth Test of 1991 shows significant differences, and a full
re-score of the scorebook produces different figures again. At least in the
re-score the total of balls faced reconciles with the number of balls bowled,
which cannot be said for the other sources. Don’t Bother Running Most of the records for concentrated boundary hitting,
i.e. high percentages of scoring in fours and sixes,
have been set in modern times, thanks to improving bats and smaller grounds.
So it was interesting to come across some detail on an innings by Roy Dias of
Sri Lanka in 1982, which represents an earlier extreme case of boundary
hitting. The Sri Lanka Daily News
says that Dias, batting against India in Madras, reached his half-century
with 12 fours. Now sometimes reports like this are misprints, but this one is
supported by an earlier statement that Dias hit six fours in his first 25
runs. So I put together a list of the most extreme cases of
boundary hitting in a half-century that I have come across. Only a handful of
these dates from before 1998.
And a very unusual one
Arguably the most extreme example is by Herschelle Gibbs in 2001, 48 of his first 50 runs in
fours, although the freak innings by Tim Southee
exceeded all the other boundary tallies, with 50 out of 53. Reggie Spooner in
1905 only received 5 runs for his “six”; with modern scoring, he would have
registered 46 out of his first 50 in boundaries. Dias, incidentally was playing in
what was only his country’s fifth Test match. UPDATE: Mohan and Sreeram have suggested some additions to the list. Gus
Logie (81) hit 12 fours in his first 53 at Lord’s 1988. Saurav
Ganguly reached 51 with 10 fours and a six at
Hamilton on 1999 on the way to 101, as did Viv
Richards (114) in his century against England at St John’s in 1981. RS Kaluwitharana hit 12 fours in his 51 against Zimbabwe at
Colombo in 1998. Cricket Archive
gives Madan Lal 11 fours and a six in his 52* against Pakistan
in Karachi in 1982, which would surpass Southee’s
mark. However, this figure is in doubt. The Times of India report says Madan hit 10 fours and a six, and also specifically
mentions strokes for 2 and 1, which would preclude the extra boundary. |
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20 August 2010 A handful of small items... Historical research into cricket statistics can be, at
times, a little dry, I must admit. But occasionally there are moments of
amusement. I got a chuckle out of this particular headline, from the Times of India in 1989 (copied from a
microfilm). Speaking of unique innings, Ravi Shastri
managed one at Eden Gardens in 1987. He was bowled by Abdul Qadir on the second ball he faced, having scored five
runs off his first ball thanks to overthrows. This is the highest-known score
by a batsman out second ball, since I haven’t found any cases of a batsman
hitting a six and being out second ball, although Sanath Jayasuriya scored six
not out from one ball against England in 1993. More than 40 batsmen have been
out second ball and scored four. UPDATE. Mohan has
pointed out a contender. In the dying moments of the 1955 Kingston Test,
Frank King, fresh to the wicket, hit a six off Ian Johnson and was out next
ball. It is not clear that the six was off his first ball faced, but it may
well have been. Frank Worrell had been out earlier in the same over, and Ray
Robinson’s notebook gives King a time of 2 minutes. Maninder Singh took five wickets
in his first 33 balls at Bangalore in 1987 against Pakistan, in the first
session of the match. The wickets came in the space of 26 balls. (There is a
list of the known records in this category in the entry on the 26 April.)
Given that the previous eleven Tests between the two countries had been
drawn, accompanied mostly by severe boredom, Maninder’s
breakthrough must have astonished spectators and fans. Even so, it was
Pakistan who won the match, by 16 runs, after being bowled out for 116. Only
twice in the last 100 years has a team been bowled out for less on the first
day and gone on to win the match. Graham McKenzie took five with his first 34 balls at the
MCG in 1967/68, and forced another batsman (Rusi Surti) to retire hurt. McKenzie opened the bowling, and
his wickets were all taken in the first hour of the match. Update on Umrigar. I mentioned
last year (December 9) that ‘Polly’ Umrigar had
scored a century in a session, previously unrecognised, at Port-of-Spain in
1961/62. I didn’t have an exact figure but can now confirm that Umrigar went from 63 to 172 between lunch and tea, 109
runs. The tally benefited from the extension of the session by 30 minutes
when the ninth wicket fell just before the scheduled tea break. A Note on Consistency There have been a couple of items recently where the
subject of measuring a batsman’s consistency has cropped up. There was a
paper in the Journal of Quantitative
Analysis of Sports by Booroah and Mangan, kindly sent to me by Shekhar,
and an item on Cricinfo by Gabriel Rogers referred
to by Dave Barry. I suppose I could get into the arcane of the statistical
methods but one, much more basic, question is more interesting to me. The question is : is a
‘consistent’ batsman better or more valuable than an ‘inconsistent’ batsman? Although the answer might seem obvious, in my opinion it
is not obvious at all. The trouble is, when a cricket commentator criticises
a batsman for being ‘inconsistent’, he is not talking about the same thing
that a statistician might assume. The commentator will almost always be
referring to a batsman who fails frequently. Such inconsistency will be
reflected in the player’s batting average. You will never hear a batsman
being criticised for inconsistency after he scores a double-century, yet such
a score will greatly increase a statistical measure of inconsistency. It is not at all clear to me that a batsman who makes many
half-centuries is more valuable than another, with the same average, who
makes many single-digit and triple-digit scores. Indeed, the latter batsman
will play more really memorable or match-winning innings. Of course, which batsman is more valuable will vary
depending on match circumstances. So I disagree with downgrading a batsman’s average just because
his scores are unusually variable (I don’t think that Rogers actually argues
this, but Booroah and Mangan
seem to). Rogers finds evidence that high averages correlate (rather roughly)
with consistency, but has not yet shown that consistency is as useful as
batting average as a measure of batting achievement. Consistency is an interesting characteristic of a player,
but not a measure of overall quality. |
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30 July 2010 One More Record for
Sachin Sachin Tendulkar’s 48th Test century, against Sri
Lanka the other day, came just a few days short of the 20th
anniversary his first Test century, a 119 against England at Old Trafford in
1990. (Coming before his 18th birthday, that first century made
him the youngest Test century maker up to that time, with the questionable
exception of Mushtaq Mohammad). This extraordinary
timespan puts him ahead of Bradman by this measure of Test match longevity. I
wondered who had had the longest careers at the top, as measured by their
ability to score centuries. The following table resulted...
It is notable that the next five careers on the list all included
long wartime interruptions. The list is also notable for the relative absence
of other recent cricketers; none of the next eleven players is a contemporary
to the Little Master. Vijay Merchant is an interesting case, in that he
scored only three centuries in his Test career, two of them coming in his
last two innings but five years apart, in the days when India played very few
Tests. Note that most of the dates refer to the first day of the respective
Test matches, rather than the day each century was scored, so the figures are
not exact. A Tale of Two Triples My ongoing Test studies have recently passed through 1965
and into 1966, and have included two triple centuries, by John Edrich 310* off
451 balls at Headingley in 1965 and Bob Cowper 307
off 589 balls at the MCG in 1966. These innings came
only eight Tests apart. The latter innings has a touch of personal interest,
in that it is my earliest clear memory of watching cricket on TV. I recall
seeing Cowper, in glorious black and white, get
bowled for 307, and commentator Norman May on the ABC was extolling this
“magnificent innings”, and I thought, “no it wasn’t, it was really boring”.
Forty-four years on, perhaps I can attempt a more sophisticated analysis. The innings are similar only superficially. There are
major differences in the detail of the scoring strokes. Edrich’s
innings, with 52 fours and five sixes, remains the richest Test innings ever
seen in terms of boundaries, quite surprising given the modern penchant for
heavy hitting. Cowper, by contrast, hit only 20 fours, the fewest for any
triple century, and the ten fours recorded in his first 200 is the lowest for
any double century as well. The key to this was the difference in ground
conditions. Contemporary reports talk of the “lightning” outfield that Edrich enjoyed, comparing it to the conditions exploited
by Bradman in his 309 in one day in 1930. Edrich
hit only three threes, and none at all in his last 190 runs. At the other end
Ken Barrington’s first 50 included ten fours and a rare hit for seven runs. By contrast, the MCG outfield that Cowper contended with
was beyond dead slow. This was seen even on the first day, when the England
batsmen hit ten threes before striking the first boundary. On the third day,
Australia scored 234 runs for one wicket with only five shots reaching the
boundary all day; another five fours were all-run. In addition to his two
all-run fours, Cowper hit a record 26 threes in his innings, and had 167
scoring shots to Edrich’s 115. The number of
scoring shots by Cowper is not especially unusual as triple-centuries go, but
Edrich’s total is extremely low. So in spite of scoring his runs 32% faster than Cowper, Edrich actually scored off a lower percentage of the
balls he faced, scoring off 25.5% of his balls faced to Cowper’s 28.3%. This
shows, that at the very least, Cowper was not guilty of the defensiveness
that a twelve-hour triple century might suggest. The lack of boundaries was
also uncharacteristic of Cowper, in spite of the fact that he never hit a six
in his Test career. In his other Test innings, Cowper scored a healthy 47% of
his runs in boundaries, vs 43.5% for Edrich. Conclusion? Cowper’s lack of
boundaries, and Edrich’s surfeit, were largely
the product of local conditions. One can actually take Cowper’s 167 scoring strokes and
distribute the ones, twos, threes and fours into the same proportions struck
by Edrich. This a very theoretical exercise, but it
produces an adjusted score under “Headingley”
conditions for Cowper of, wait for it, 445 runs! I calculate that Cowper ran over 8500 yards between the
wickets during his innings, not including any running done for shots that
reached the boundary. Edrich only ran about 3700
yards. |
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20 July 2010 Big First Partnerships Earlier this year, Alviro
Petersen scored a Test century on debut. This is not especially rare, but he
was also involved in a double century partnership (209 with Hashim Amla) The highest partnerships involving a batsman playing his
first Test innings are 429 by Jacques Rudolph (against Bangladesh, ho hum) and 281 by Javed Miandad against New Zealand in 1976 (with Asif Iqbal). However, neither
partnership was the very first for those batsmen. The highest debut
partnerships are as follows
The Khalid Ibadulla/Abdul Kadir partnership us unique in that both players were
making their Test debuts. They were a curious pair. Abdul Kadir
played his last Test only a few months later, while ‘Billy’ Ibadulla’s next best score in Tests was 32, and, apart
from that 166, his average was 12. Nevertheless, Ibadulla
had a long and successful career in English county cricket. By a curious coincidence, Ian Redpath
appears twice on the list with separate partnerships of 219, firstly on his
own debut, and then seven years later as a partner of Greg Chappell. It is interesting that there is only one case from the
last 1100 Test matches, but six from the first 800 Tests. In general, notable
debuts are becoming rarer, mainly because players have much longer careers
now (in matches played). The number of debutants per match, so to speak, is
much lower than it once was. In the 1950s there were 1.55 debutants per Test.
In the 2000s, it was 0.83. UPDATE: Lawrence Rowe has been added to the above table,
and Petersen removed (his 200 partnership was actually his second). Thanks to
Mohan for pointing out the omission. I have run the analysis again and I
don’t think there are any more cases. Seymour Nurse’s first Test partnership
totalled 243 runs, but this included a batsman retiring hurt. Apart from the players mentioned above, the other batsmen
to be in double-ton partnerships during their debuts are Gordon Greenidge, Fawad Alam, Mohammad Azharuddin,
Roger Hartigan and Wayne B. Phillips. More Scorebook Mysteries I have recently studied the official scorebook for the
unique one-run victory by the West Indies against Australia in 1992/93. The
score reveals an interesting irony. In 1998, the protocols for calculating
scores were changed slightly. Previously, no balls only attracted a penalty
run if no other run was scored from them. The current system, far more
logical and perhaps 150 years overdue, adds the run regardless of other
scoring. Where previously a no ball hit for four scored only four runs, now
it scores five. As it happens, that Adelaide Test contained no fewer than
63 calls of no ball. Off nine of them, runs were scored by the batsmen, three
by West Indian batsmen and six by Australians. There were also two other no
balls, one for each side, where the batsmen ran ‘byes’ or ‘leg byes’. So
under the 1998 rule change, West Indies would have scored four more runs, and
Australia seven, enough to give the match to Australia! There are one or two oddities about the score, which could
be critical in such a close match. I may return to this at a later time. |
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For
comments, or to contact Z-score (Charles Davis) email statz334 at iprimus. com.au (The address is like this to
avoid SPAM. Type the address in the usual format |
4 July 2010 The Match-Savers. Test cricket is rarely more exciting than when a last-wicket
pair is trying to hold out for a draw. While success for the batting team in
this situation is rare, it has been noticeable recently. It cropped up twice
in one series in South Africa last season, England making the escape on both
occasions, and when Monty Panesar and James
Anderson held out for 69 balls at Cardiff last year it pretty much cost
Australia the Ashes. I have put together a list of the longest 10th-wicket
stands to force a draw in the final innings of a Test. It does not include
cases such as at Cardiff, where the draw was effectively secured before the
final ball was bowled (because the partnership had put England into the
lead). The two-hour partnership between Allan Border and Terry Alderman in
Trinidad in 1984 is in the same category. There have been 18 drawn Tests where the result was
uncertain up to the final ball, not including the strange case in Kingston in
1978 when the match was abandoned by the umpires at the fall of the ninth
wicket, after a crowd riot started. Only six of the 18 were achieved by the
#10 and #11 batsmen batting together. Two batsmen have been involved twice,
both current players: Graham Onions was involved in both England’s escapes in
South Africa; Fidel Edwards has been there at the death twice for the West Indies. The drawn Tests where the last pair held out for more than
50 balls, and the result was uncertain till the final ball (this excludes Panesar and Anderson, who had put England into the lead
before the match ended), are:
Discovering the number of balls involved in the famous
Mackay/Kline partnership took quite some research, since these things were
little-reported in those days, and no scorebook of the match survives. So I
have written a piece on the details of this partnership, and have posted it here. |
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15 June 2010 More on Long Bowling
Spells etc In the Unusual Records section, the longest-known bowling
spells by individual bowlers have been recorded. The list suggests that the
longest bowling spell by an Australian was 51.2 overs by Tom Veivers at Old Trafford in 1964, during England’s
interminable 611 off 293.1 overs. (Veivers’ spell
has been reported, incorrectly, in other publications as 55.2 overs.) I was
certainly surprised, then, to find that not only is this not the Australian
record, but that it was not even the longest spell Veivers
bowled in 1964! The Test played by Australia in Calcutta in 1964
is little remembered, partly because it was one of the first Tests in India
to be ruined by rain, the last two days being washed out. In India’s innings,
Veivers bowled 52 overs, and as it happened, it was
in one ‘continuous’ spell (interrupted only by planned and unplanned breaks).
The fact that Veivers bowled unchanged only became
evident on re-scoring the scorebook (kept at Cricket NSW). The match has another statistical footnote. When Indian
spinner Durani (6 for 73) ripped through the
Australian middle-order and tail, at one point there were no runs at all for
78 balls. Ian Redpath held up one end. Surti and Chandrasekhar were the other bowlers involved. Another ‘new’ extreme scoreless spell emerged as I
analysed the famous Mackay/Kline last wicket stand that saved the Adelaide
Test of 1960/61. It appears that the last 10 (eight-ball) overs were maidens,
giving a
total of 80-87 scoreless balls. There were, however, some sundries, and one
report mentions two runs scored by Mackay (others suggest these were byes). A
full analysis of this great partnership will be posted on this blog in the
near future. Also previously overlooked in Unusual Records is the
bowling of Ramadhin and Valentine in Brisbane in
1951/52. In Australia’s second innings, Ram bowled 40 (eight-ball) overs and
Val 40.7, with opening bowlers Worrell and Gomez contributing just 2 and 3
overs respectively. At the end of the fourth day, each bowler had bowled 22
of the 49 overs at that point, and the two spinners continued on the final
morning until Australia won the match, (by three wickets, a struggle all the
way). One report suggests that the two
spinners’ overs came without a bowling change which, equivalent to 107.5
six-ball overs, would make it by far the longest-known spell by two bowlers
(the known extreme is 86 overs by the same bowlers at Lord’s in 1950). However, given that Worrell and Gomez bowled the first
four overs (Gomez taking a wicket in the fourth over), it is not logistically
possible that the spin pair bowled that number of overs without change. They
must have changed ends at some point, and indeed the Sydney Morning Herald states that they did, after tea on the
fourth day. The report implies that this happened immediately after tea, with
Gomez’ third over inserted after about 20 overs had been bowled. If so, the
unchanged spell was 64.7 eight-ball overs, which would be enough for the
record by a margin of just three balls. Unfortunately, none of the sources
searched so far permit certainty. Ramadhin and Valentine actually
took the second new ball during this innings, after 66 overs. They raised
many eyebrows by rubbing the ball on the ground to scuff up one side. |
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23 May 2010 The Fastest Debut 50s In March I offered a list of the fastest-known centuries
on Test debut. I can now add some thoughts on the fastest 50 on debut, sparked
by the discovery of a contender from the deep past. The ultimate statement on fast debut 50s was made by Tim Southee of New Zealand, against England in 2008. Southee took just 29 balls and 38 minutes to reach his
half-century. However, coming in the final innings of the match, it was not
his first Test innings. For that record, we must look elsewhere. I recently obtained another set of newspaper reports (Johannesburg Star) from Australia’s
first Tests in South Africa in 1902. These matches were notable for fierce
scoring throughout, setting some records that still
look impressive today. The series started in Johannesburg on 11 October 1902.
There is evidence that the Australian players, after a long tour of England
in one of that country’s wettest summers on record, would rather have been on
the way home than playing on a frosty Joburg spring
day. Joburg at the time was a newborn city, which
15 years before had been nothing but veldt. It is also notable for cold
mornings and high altitude. On a matting wicket, South Africa scored a remarkable 428
for 7 on the first day, doubly remarkable because there was only 4 hours 20
minutes of play (88 overs). Most of the series seems to have been scheduled
for only 5 hours play per day, three days per Test, the shortest schedule of
any Tests ever played. Exactly why there was so little play on the first day,
I haven’t fully divined from the reports. The Australians weren’t
enthusiastic about their task and may have delayed the start with a practice
session (there had been no warm-up or practice games, after their long
journey from England). Both the bowling and fielding were described as
sloppy. The batsmen certainly made up for any time limitations.
South Africa was 179 for 1 at lunch on the first day (41 overs), a total
that, as far as I know, has not been exceeded in a Test before or since. But
it was after a tea break was taken, at 293 for 3 off 67 overs, that the
loudest batting fireworks were unleashed. AW ‘Dave’ Nourse,
whose career would last almost 22 years, made his debut batting at #8. A
reconstruction of the innings (from five independent South African newspaper
reports) gives Nourse 50 off about 40 balls in 40
minutes (ten fours), on the way to 72 off about 65 balls. In partnership with
EA Halliwell (57 off about 60 balls) the eighth
wicket stand was worth 124 off about 115 balls. When it comes to fast scoring in his debut innings, Nourse is a real contender. Here are the fastest such
innings I know of (minutes batted, then balls faced) Fastest Half-Centuries on Debut (minutes batted)
Fastest Half-Centuries on Debut (balls faced, where
known)
** In team’s second innings |
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26 April 2010 Fast five-fers A while ago a correspondent, Peter Thompson, asked about
bowlers who had taken five wickets in a Test innings very rapidly. Now there
is an entry on this subject under “Unusual Records”, but the question was
specifically about bowlers who have reached five wickets in an innings in the
shortest period after they first came
on to bowl. An equivalent to a batsman reaching 100 very quickly. The question was raised after Stuart Broad took five
wickets at the Oval in 2009 after bowling only 8.4 overs (52 balls). This is
quite a rare achievement in terms of recent Ashes Tests, but how does it rank
over all of Test history? After searching the ball-by-ball database, and some
bowling records, the following list resulted. Note that the database only
covers about 1100 of the 1950-odd Tests. Fewest balls to
reach five wickets in an innings
Some – well, most – of these bowlers benefited from
bowling to tailenders, and for some, including the leader Ernie Toshack, the figures comprise their entire bowling for
the innings. Perhaps Trumble is a more notable
achievement (even thought the wickets was a
‘sticky’) since he came on with only two wickets down, and took another
wicket with his next ball, to achieve the hat-trick, and six wickets in four
overs. There are no cases from 1955 to 2002. This is partly
because the database is very incomplete from 1965-97, but I suspect also that
it was not an era for such freakish achievements of this type. The search
continues. Any suggestions welcome. UPDATE: Maninder Singh took five
in his first 33 balls at Bangalore in 1987 against Pakistan, in the first
session of the match. The wickets came in the space of 26 balls. Graham McKenzie took five with his first 34 balls at the
MCG in 1967/68, for 19 runs, and forced another batsman (Rusi
Surti) to retire hurt. McKenzie opened the bowling,
and the wickets were all taken in the first 45 minutes of the match. He took
6/33 before lunch. The Slowest
Double-Century I have written on this subject before, noting that that
title of slowest Test double-century (in balls faced) is a close race. Sid
Barnes took 607 balls to reach 200 in 1946/47, but Bobby Simpson just pipped
that figure at Old Trafford in 1964. I have just completed a full re-score of
Simpson’s innings (from Dave Sherwood’s running sheets held by Cricket NSW)
and settled on a figure of 609 balls for his first 200. The scorebooks for both innings have slight anomalies; the
scorers, just occasionally, did not record the full number of balls in
certain overs, and it is uncertain if these were really short overs or not.
However, these problems are few, and I am happy with the above result. It is possible that both these innings were shaded by
Glenn Turner’s 259 in 1971/72. I have been supplied with a figure of 611
balls for the 200. However I have not seen this figure in print, and it is
not found in the scorebook facsimile published with the tour book, so I would
regard it as unconfirmed. It is not fully consistent with other figures from
that innings. Simpson’s first 200 contained only eleven boundaries,
perhaps also a record on the low side. (Grant flower’s double ton for
Zimbabwe contained 11 fours and a six, Bradman’s double at Adelaide in
1936/37 had only 12 fours. Bob Cowper’s 307 at the MCG may have had only 10
fours in the first 200). It was not until he had been batting more than
eleven hours that Simpson changed his approach. At one stage 230 off 684
balls in almost 700 minutes, he scored his last 81 off only 57 balls. Not out
overnight on 265, he eschewed major records by swinging at everything on the
third morning, adding 46 off 22 balls, and scoring off almost every ball he
faced. Simpson’s final tally was 311 off 741 balls (the figure given on the
running sheets is 740, added up by hand). Cricket Archive
has 743 balls; don’t know where they got that figure from. |
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6 April 2010 More Scorelessness Another extreme case of a long period without scoring (see
entry for 15 March) has turned up. It was during the Madras Test of 1963/64,
and as such is not a great surprise, since this was the Test of Bapu Nadkarni’s record 21
consecutive maiden overs. Re-scoring the MCC scorebook reveals a very long
spell without score on the third day, 79 balls in all straddling the lunch
break, faced by Brian Bolus and Ken Barrington. Nadkarni
and Kripal Singh each bowled a maiden before lunch, then Borde and Nadkarni (who changed ends) bowled 10 in a row afterward.
There were no sundries, so this is the longest spell identified to date with
no score whatsoever (the very few longer ones either definitely or probably
contained sundries). Between lunch and tea England scored just 27 runs,
including four byes, off 40 overs, with no wickets. Nadkarni
bowled nineteen overs in the session for one run. I can confirm that Nadkarni bowled 130 rather than the reported 131
consecutive scoreless balls, spread over two spells. Just before tea Nadkarni conceded a single and The Times wryly observed
he was then “taken off as though being altogether too expensive”, so Borde bowled the last over before tea (another maiden). Bolus scored 88 off 406 balls, and takes his place in the
pantheon of slow scoring, though not a match for Bruce Mitchell’s 88 off 475
balls in 1929 or Alec Bannerman’s 91 off 620 in 1892. Barrington’s 80 off 313
balls was sprightly only by comparison. Their
partnership of 119 off 510 balls, at 23.3 runs per 100 balls, is the slowest
century partnership for which I have exact figures for balls bowled. Notes from the re-score: the first wicket appears to fall
at 13 not 12. The reported stumps score on the second day requires revision,
Wilson being 7 not out at sumps, not 2 not out. There are some anomalies in
the scorebook that create some uncertainty about exact stats, but they do not
affect the day of “interest”. There is a more notable error in published figures for the
second Test in Bombay. In England’s second innings, Borde
is recorded as bowling 37 overs for 38 runs, but he actually bowled only 27
overs. The scorer wrote down 37, but only 27 overs are filled in, and this is
confirmed by the re-score. India bowled 124 overs, not 134, in this innings. In the first innings in Bombay, Fred Titmus
scored 84 off 330 balls, reaching his 50 in 260 balls. This latter figure
places well among in the Top 10 slowest half-centuries known. This was the
Test where England were unable to field eleven fit
players, such was the rate of injury and illness in the tour party, and only
two specialist batsmen batted. Bhagwat
Chandrasekhar made his Test debut in this match; those who ever saw him bat
will not be surprised to learn that he was bowled by the first ball he faced
in Test cricket. |
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For comments, or to contact Z-score (Charles
Davis) email statz334
at iprimus. com.au (The address is like this to avoid SPAM. Type the
address in the usual format |
27 March 2010 Gunn Bat One interesting Test series that is not represented by a surviving
scorebook is the Ashes series of 1907/08. There is, however, a partial score
of the first Test in the archive of Cricket NSW, incomplete and evidently
from an amateur source. The Test was an exciting one, won by Australia by two
wickets thanks to an unbeaten ninth wicket stand of 56 by Hazlitt and Cotter. The MCC team featured one George Gunn, who was in Australia for
‘health reasons’ and not part of the squad. He had never played Test cricket,
but was called up only a day or two before this match when the team was
saddled with illness and injury. He scored 119 on debut on the first day, a
fascinating innings that has been rather forgotten. Now the strangest thing about that scorebook is while England’s first
innings is otherwise complete, with every other individual innings, and every
ball of the bowling analysis present, Gunn’s innings is completely absent.
Hard to say why, but it appears that someone wrote down a team list before
Gunn’s selection was announced, and stuck to that list! Nevertheless, it was possible, barely, to re-score this innings and
estimate balls faced. Estimate is the best word, because there are a
considerable number of anomalies in the score (not entirely surprising given
the other problems). I was interested in Gunn because he reached his 100 in
122 minutes, which ranks very high among the fastest debut centuries ever. I was a little disappointed to come up with 135 balls faced for his
100 and 175 balls for the whole innings. A bit slower than expected, but
still impressive, and worthy of the ‘Golden Age’. It is similar to estimates
for Harry Graham in 1893 and Ranjitsinhji in 1899.
Apparently the over rate while Gunn batted was rather fast – he was at the
crease for 59 of the 76 overs in the innings. Gunn’s batting time does not include a strange ten minute interlude
after lunch when the Australian team threatened to go on strike. Off-field
tensions between Australian players and the game’s administrators had led to
a stand-off; the players had posted a list of people who were welcome in
their dressing room, pointedly not including any of the game’s grandees. The
authorities demanded it be taken down, the players refused, and conflict
ensued. It would be another four years, though, before a real strike ended
the careers of a number of senior Australian players. Gunn’s time of 122 minutes for his debut century was recently beaten
by Matthew Prior, 118 minutes at Lord’s in 2006. Devon Smith scored a century
in 103 minutes in the second innings of his debut Test. I think that Gunn has
the quickest century if you start from the beginning of his debut Test, about
200 minutes elapsed time after play started. Conrad Hunte achieved a very similar time in 1958. Here is a list of the fastest known debut centuries, in balls faced.
Where balls faced is not available, I have
substituted estimates based on time and prevailing over rate, as denoted.
** in second innings 389 Balls without a Boundary Following on from previous comments about the longest periods without
scoring, I happened upon a period of more than three and a
quarter hours where no boundaries were hit. It came in the fifth Test
in Sydney in 1963/64, where the batsmen responsible were (mainly) South
Africa’s Trevor Goddard and Tony Pithey, with a bit
of help from Eddie Barlow. The spell included the entire pre-lunch session on
the third day. Goddard hit a four in the first over of the innings, and the
next boundary – by Pithey – came in the 49th
(eight-ball) over. Goddard went 211 balls without a four and Pithey 184 balls. Goddard’s drought surpassed Trevor
Bailey’s 196 balls during his notorious 68 at the ’Gabba
in 1958. The outfield was slow, but not so slow that Keith Bland could later
that innings hit 13 fours and a six in his 126. Goddard and Pithey at one stage even went for 235 balls without
hitting any threes. Pithey ended up with 49 off 245
balls, with two fours. South Africa was punished for this inactivity. They dominated the rest
of the match but ran out of time; an extra hour would have given them an easy
win. As it was, they had to settle for a 1-1 series result. They weren’t the
first, or last, team to fail to seize their moment against Australia. |
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15 March 2010 Time to Add Something My blog-writing has slipped away. I have, however, been actively
working on things cricket, this time of the paid variety. I will still try to occasionally add to the blog from time to
time. I have once or twice in the past alluded to an interesting but difficult
record to research. What is the longest spell without scoring in a Test
match? This category of record has been reported occasionally for individual
batsmen or bowlers, but not for teams. A complete list for the record is still not possible, but it may be
worth presenting intermediate results from my burgeoning database. The
database now contains ball-by-ball records for about 1100 of the 1950 or so
Test matches. The longest spells without runs off the bat, in terms of balls
bowled, in the database are Balls without Scoring 92 England
v West Indies, Lord's 1950 - 2nd Inns During
the final stage of a famous West Indies victory, England tailenders Wardle
and Jenkins faced 15 consecutive maiden overs from four bowlers. 88-92 Australia
v England, Melbourne (MCG) 1882 - 1st Inns Alec
Bannerman and Bill Murdoch faced 22 maiden (4-ball) overs from Barnes, Barlow and Bates. 81 New
Zealand v England, Leeds (Headingley) 1958 - 2nd
Inns Faced
mostly by John Reid and Bert Sutcliffe (0 from 51 balls) off Lock and Laker 79 England
v India, Madras 1964 - 1st Inns Bolus
and Barrington around lunch on the 3rd day, during Bapu Nadkarni’s record 21
consecutive maidens. 77 England
v West Indies, Lord's 1950 - 1st Inns The
same team and match as the #1 spot. Ramadhin and
Valentine bowled. Bill Edrich scored one run off
his first 84 balls faced in this innings. 74 Pakistan
v England, Lord's 1954 - 1st Inns Hanif Mohammad scored 20 off 223 balls in
this innings, the slowest innings of its size known. Laker and Wardle were
the bowlers. 74 Australia
v South Africa, Johannesburg (New Wanderers) 1957 - 2nd Inns ‘Slasher’
Mackay and Peter Burge off Tayfield, VI Smith and
Goddard. 71 West
Indies v England, Birmingham (Edgbaston) 1957 - 2nd Inns The
Three ‘W’s, believe it or not (Worrell, Walcott, Weekes). This was in the
aftermath of the record 411 partnership of Cowdrey
and May. 70 England
v Australia, Leeds (Headingley) 1961 - 1st Inns Dexter,
Barrington and Murray off Benaud and Davidson. The
first eleven overs of the second day were maidens. 68 England
v West Indies, Bridgetown, Barbados 1953 - 1st Inns Hutton
and Graveney off five different bowlers. 67 Australia
v England, Sydney (SCG) 1884 - 1st Inns Bannerman
and Jones. Quite uncertain about this one. 67 New
Zealand v England, Auckland 1962 - 1st Inns Three
batsmen off four bowlers. The domination of the 1950s in this list is a little exaggerated,
because Tests from 1964 to 1997 are less well-represented in the database at
this stage. However, I would expect that the 1950s era would still feature
strongly in a complete list. The absence of modern Tests is genuine. The
longest scoreless spell in the last 550 Test matches is 62 balls by the
Pakistan tail against India at Kolkata in 2005. Most of the above sequences contain sundries, although sometimes it is
not possible to exactly locate these, because they are not specifically
recorded in the scorebooks. The highest entry on the above list where there
was no score whatsoever is the fourth (77 balls at Lord’s 1950). Revised: see 6 April 2010 entry. There are no exact times for most of these becalmed periods. What can
we say about these spells in terms of time? If the over rates for the whole
innings are applied to the above list, in order to estimate times, the
slowest is the second on the list at 43-44 minutes. However, there is one
modern contender here, thanks to slow modern over rates. Against Australia at
Harare in 1999, Zimbabwe batted for approximately 43 minutes without a run
off the bat (61 balls). The batsmen were GW Flower, Goodwin and Gripper, the
bowlers McGrath and Warne. There were two byes and a no ball. Any suggested additions to this list would be welcome. UPDATE. I have just come across a report (Times of India) of the second Test
between India and Pakistan at Kanpur in 1960. It says that for a period 45
minutes during the lunch-tea session on the first day “not a run was taken”.
The report states that Borde and Umrigar “shared eleven maidens in succession”, but there
might have been more if there were other bowlers involved as well. The over
rate that day was 21 overs per hour (106 overs in 5 hours). At that rate, 45
minutes gives a minimum of 16 overs and probably more, since there were no
runs or wickets, and Borde and Umrigar
were not known for long run-ups. Ironically, this was only two days after the famous finish to the Tied
Test in Brisbane. By contrast, the report described the batting in Kanpur
after lunch as “mortifying”, and “fit to make the angels weep”. Two days
later, with India finally batting, Mr K.N. Prabhiu’s
report waxed even more lyrical. When Jaisimha
scored just seven runs in the two-hour pre-lunch session, Prabhiu
wrote “Such batting sins against the light. If it is in the cause of Test
cricket, a plague on it.” Jaisimha batted through
the day for 54 runs, still the most meagre output by any batsman in a
complete Test match day (containing at least 75 overs), a record equalled by Chandu Borde later in the same
series. All five Tests of that series were drawn, mostly in the dullest way
possible. The two teams would not meet again for more than 17 years. UPDATE 2. An extreme case from 1963/64 has been added to the above
list. See entry for 6 April 2010. |
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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 a 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
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 batting second, UPDATE. Surprising
to find that Colin Cowdrey hit a century in a
session, a feat also unnoticed in the record books. On the first day at
Edgbaston in 1962 against Pakistan, Cowdrey went
from 47 at lunch to 157 at tea. He was out for 159 off 235 balls, three overs
after tea. The century in a session may have gone unnoticed by record-keepers
because Wisden
makes no mention, but it was discussed in The
Times. There is a scorebook, and it confirms this indirectly, although it
does not give specific scores at the breaks. I think this is only the fourth
known case of a century in a session from the 1960s, and Cowdrey’s
110 runs represents the most runs in a session in that decade. Well, possibly. Another unnoticed century in a session had been scored
by ‘Polly’ Umrigar at Port-of-Spain only a few
weeks earlier. I haven’t yet found exact figures, but in India’s second
innings Umrigar went from about 62 (in a score of
286) at lunch to 172 not out at tea (422 all out). The session was extended
half an hour due to the fall of the ninth wicket. The context was remarkable.
Umrigar’s efforts up to that point in the match
included bowling 56 overs and scoring 228 runs, and this all before tea on
the fourth day. He was said to be completely exhausted by this, no wonder. India were following on, and in the previous Test at Bridgetown the
team had taken 185 overs to score 187 runs, the slowest innings of its size
in all Test cricket. What a contrast. |
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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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For comments, or to contact Z-score (Charles
Davis) email statz334
at iprimus. com.au (The address is like this to avoid SPAM. Type the
address in the usual format |
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
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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. |
