Z-score’s
Cricket Stats Blog April 2015 to August 2016
Longer
articles by Charles Davis
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At Lord’s in 1926, Bert Oldfield was
out to a ‘beamer’ from Roy Kilner. One report said
the ball was above head height, another said it was shoulder height. Oldfield
swung wildly and was caught at fine leg. Kilner was
a slow bowler and the ball was accidental. ******** I have embarked on a little project
to record the (descriptive) fielding positions of catches in as many Tests as
possible. This is only really possible thanks to the wide collection of
scores and reports that I have accumulated over the years. So far I have done
1877 to 1928 and also 1957 to 1967. Also most Tests since 1999, using online
records. Generally, about 98 per cent of catches can be located in this way;
it is a remarkable thing that I can do most of this sitting in my own office/library.
The newspaper reports, rather than the scores, are most useful for this
purpose. I hope this will help with more
insights into changes in the game. Certainly one could say a lot about
the results, but one example will suffice. I noticed that 'gully' as a
catching position was never recorded before 1924. The first mention in a Test
was in England in 1924 where it was spelled "gulley" and inverted
commas were used. By 1926 it was being used in Australian papers with the
modern spelling and no inverted commas. Searching the digital Times database,
there was an isolated use of "gully" in a report of a Gentlemen v
Players match in 1910, again with the inverted commas being used. I didn't
find anything similar in the Australian Trove from the time. I don't know the
derivation of the term. Perhaps others can speculate. So what terms were used instead?
Sometimes the area was part of the slips, but I also find indications that
'point' and 'third man' were broader terms than today and, depending on the
writer, extended to what we call the gully. It might help explain how WG
Grace took so many catches at 'point', which doesn't attract so many chances
today. Other little observations: Pre-1915, references to 'cover' or
the 'the covers' were rare, almost non-existent, but 'cover-point' was
commonly used. I found a grand total of two catches
at longstop, both of them in the 1878-79 Test. 'Midwicket' had not come into common
use by 1928. The area, even out to the boundary, was often referred to,
rather confusingly, as "short leg". Other terms were used, although
it is difficult to unravel. ******** I found another case of a team
scoring 200 runs in a session. At the Oval in 1928 against the West Indies,
on the second day England was 235 for 1 when rain interrupted play before
lunch. Play re-started at 2:30 and went to 4:55 when England was all out for
438. The rather irregular session produced 203 runs in 145 minutes. ******** |
12
December 2016
The Fastest Bowlers in the
Game: Big Data
Cricinfo stores quite a lot of
bowling speed data in attachments to their scorecards. They don’t list the
speed of every ball, but they do give averages and peak speeds for every
bowler in every innings, for about 90 per cent of recent Tests, taken from
automated speed gun readings. While some Tests are missing, this does give
allow us a reasonable comparison of bowlers. I have downloaded all the Test
data since early 2014 and distilled it into averages. I don’t know if anyone
at Cricinfo
has already done this, but it is the sort of thing they should do! The
bowlers with the fastest average speeds, since early 2014, are
Minimum 10 innings. These are not precise averages because no
allowance has been made for varying length of innings. Some bowlers are
affected more than others by missing data, in Tests in Australia in
particular. It would probably be better to
be able to calculate median rather than average speeds, as an indicator of
‘typical’ speed, because fast bowlers who use the slower ball more often
would have their averages depressed. However, that isn’t possible with the
data in this form. The fastest balls recorded
specifically in this dataset were
This data is presented with the
caveat that ‘glitches’ are in evidence. Even though Aaron is a very fast
bowler, the 100 mph ball has to be dubious. The source is
here. Note that Aaron bowled no balls faster than about 92 mph in that
innings except for the one ball at 100. This is most likely a measurement
error. Notice also the evident errors
in Karn Sharma’s figures in that innings. This is
probably due to misidentification of the bowler. This happens fairly
regularly in the data. Another ‘glitch’ evident in the
above table is the ball supposedly bowled by Nathan Lyon at over 95 mph. I still think that the
‘average’ data is useful, but the ‘fastest recorded’ data should be treated
with caution and scepticism. Even if only one ball in a thousand is a serious
glitch, if you record hundreds of thousands of balls, eventually most of the
most extreme records are likely to be glitches. The other trouble with speed
guns is that there is no way of independently confirming a result after the
event. Incidentally, the slowest
bowler in the data is Shakib al Hasan at an average
of 48.4 mph/ 77.9 kph. Also incidentally, major league
baseball currently has a pitcher, Aroldis Chapman, who can pitch at over 105
mph. ******** Greg Chappell Reality
I happened to see one of Robert
‘Crash’ Craddock’s TV interviews in his fine ‘Cricket Legends’ series, with
Greg Chappell. The conversation turned to Chappell’s Test debut, where he
made 108 runs at Perth, after coming in with Australia in trouble. Chappell
repeated, with absolute conviction, the folklore that Ian Redpath offered to
protect Chappell from the bowling of John Snow. There is a quote at the
Cricket Country website:
In those 80 minutes before lunch, Chappell actually faced
71 balls to Redpath’s 56. Snow returned after lunch and had four overs,
Redpath facing 18 balls to Chappell’s 14. However, Chappell faced 13 balls to
Redpath’s 11 in the first three of those overs, with no evidence of
strike-farming. Later, Snow took the new ball. This time Redpath did get
more of the strike, but by this time Chappell was on 47 and had been batting
more than three hours. I doubt if there was any deliberate strike-shielding
going on by then, because Greg hammered 37 runs from 35 balls with the new
ball before Snow was replaced. Chappell went from 50 to 100 off 47 balls. The
sixth-wicket partnership was eventually worth 219 off 434 balls. |
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We don't know what speed fast bowlers
bowled in the old days, but occasionally there is a hint that they must have
bowled at a reasonable clip. In the first Test of 1899, Ernest Jones hit the
middle stump of CB Fry and the ball went to the boundary. However, a no ball
had been called and so the call was four no balls. How often do you see a
ball go to the boundary after hitting middle stump? I might add, while reading up on this
Test, that WG Grace, on his last day in Test cricket took a great one-handed
catch at point "just clear of the grass" to a shot from Hill that
was "hard, low and square". It was said that Grace retired because
the "ground was getting too far away", but it seems he still had
the skill. He still has one of the highest ratios of catches per match of any
non-keeper. Incidentally, there is no hint in the
newspaper reports that Grace was playing in his last Test. I can't find any
mention in The Times of Grace retiring or being dropped, apart from an
announcement of the second Test team a few days prior and a comment that the
changes were "radical": five changes were made. Some statistician colleagues related
the following accounts of the end of Grace’s career. “It was not
decided until just before the next Test. Fry and Grace were part of the
selection committee. According to CB Fry's version, Fry arrived late for the
selection committee meeting. As soon as he arrived, Grace asked him whether
Archie MacLaren should be part of the team for the
second Test. Fry replied in the affirmative. Only a little
later did Fry realise that Grace was asking him whether he (Grace) should be
replaced by Maclaren. … “The version
I heard (can't remember where) was that Grace said to Stanley Jackson after
the Trent Bridge match "It's over - I shan't play again." Sounds
like he made the decision at that point but chose not to announce it publicly
(presumably trusting Jackson not to reveal it), and by asking that question
he was effectively allowing Fry to confirm it.” … “A book that
I now just checked tells both stories and says that it appears that he was
ready to play in the second Test before the Fry incident.” Grace actually played for MCC and
Ground versus the Australians in between the two Tests, and scored 50 and 7
and took 3 for 42. I think it is interesting that just
before the second Test, after the teams were selected, it was announced that
the hours of play would be extended by 30 minutes per day. ******** On his Test debut in 1958, Conrad Hunte scored 50 out of the first 55 runs scored in the
match. 142 not out overnight, Hunte was out to the first ball of the second day. ******** In the England/South Africa Test at
Lord’s in 1912, there was no play before lunch on the first day, but South
Africa was bowled out for 58 before tea. Barnes and Foster took five wickets
each, and were also responsible for all three catches. There is only one other completed
Tests innings where just two players were completely responsible for all the
wickets, including catches. At Joburg in 1927,
South Africa was bowled out for 196, with George Geary and Greville Stevens sharing the wickets, and the two catches
were both taken by Geary. ******** Possibly the only (former) Test
player to die while watching a Test match was former captain Bill Murdoch,
who passed away while watching a Test at the MCG in February 1911. Murdoch,
who was resident in England, was only visiting Melbourne at the time, and his
body was embalmed and taken back to London where he was buried. ******** |
28
November 2016
I am posting a few interesting images that I have come
across, or have been sent. I will link to them rather than insert them here,
for memory reasons. In 1979, Cricketer magazine reported a bowler, Mike
Walters, taking eight wickets in eight balls in an Army match. A
picture of the scorebook was taken. I have heard claims of bowlers taking
nine
wickets in nine balls, but Walters’ effort does have the advantage of
solid documentary evidence, and it was in an adult match. Children’s cricket
records, such as the recent claims of a boy in India scoring a thousand on a
tiny field, against opposition that basically didn’t know how to play
cricket, are best put in a separate category, and at worst, disregarded. I
consider the real innings record outside of first-class cricket to be Charles
Eady’s 566 in Tasmania in 1902. *** Not long ago I posted a wagon wheel for a Victor Trumper century. Here is another, for Trumper’s 113 at the SCG in 1911-12. This is quite
different in style to the earlier one, and is obviously the work of Bill
Ferguson. As such, it is the earliest Fergie Wagon Wheel known. The report,
which was in the Sydney Morning Herald on 18 Dec 1911 (three days after the
event), also includes detailed information on balls faced, in unprecedented
detail. Unfortunately, this level of reporting was rarely followed up. *** Between about 1895 and 1920, the size of some Australian
grounds was reduced by the installation of a cycling track around the playing
surface. It was in response to the sudden craze for cycling, and due to the
fact that no dedicated cycling venues existed with large spectator capacity.
Here is a picture of a novelty
cycling race at the SCG in 1900, sent to me by Colin Clowes.
Colin also noted adverse comments about the track at the time, such as
For the most part, the tracks were not considered part of
the cricket field. However, there was a strange exception. At Adelaide Oval
in 1902, Clem Hill, on 98, was caught by a fielder on the cycling track. The
dismissal was upheld even though the fielder was outside the normal field of
play, and the shot would have been called six had it landed. Shots along the
ground were called four on reaching the track, so if the shot had bounced,
Hill would have reached his century. Apparently the captains had agreed
before the game that such catches would count. The dismissal was part of
Hill’s unique sequences of scores of 99, 98, and 97. The tracks had an effect on scoring, and may have contributed
to the “Golden Age” of cricket. Here is the ratio of boundary hits at the
SCG: before, during, and after the cycling track… % Runs as fours and sixes at SCG
*** Poor Norman O’Neill. In 1958, at age 20, he makes one
double century, and immediately he is “hailed as
the new Bradman” on the front page of newspapers (in this case the Sun-Herald
in Sydney, which I believe was Australia’s largest-selling newspaper at the
time). It was an impossible standard to live up to, although O’Neill did
enjoy a fine career. Other players burdened with the “next Bradman”
sobriquet, include Neil Harvey, Ian Craig and Doug Walters. The fashion
eventually wore thin. ******** Here is an article I wrote, a review of the
2015-16 Australian season, which was published a little belatedly in Between Wickets. I have included an
image of the first page of the article as
published, since it includes an introduction that I swear I did not write. ******** In a Test at Sharjah, Kraigg
Brathwaite (142*, 60*) remained unbeaten through sixteen consecutive
partnerships. This is the most by any player in a single Test, but was
matched by Victor Trumper across two Tests in
1903-04. In Trumper's case all sixteen batting
partners were dismissed, which is not the case for Brathwaite, although he
has a chance to extend his run. When looking at this, I noticed that in 1903-04 Australia
had 35 consecutive partnerships that involved either Trumper
or Monty Noble (or both). ******** Highest first-class scores by a batsman who was involved
in only one partnership. I have included opening stands but I think the other
cases are more remarkable. 324 Waheed Mirza, Karachi Whites v Quetta 1977 (partnership
561 for 1st wicket with Mansoor Akhtar) 319 RR Rossouw, Eagles v Titans 2010 (480 for 2nd
wicket with D Elgar) 319 Gul Mohammad,
Baroda v Holkar 1947 (577 for 4th wicket
with V Hazare) 313 H Sutcliffe,
Yorkshire v Essex 1932 (555 for 1st wicket with P Holmes) 300 DCS Compton,
MCC v NE Transvaal 1948 (399 for 3rd wicket with RT Simpson) 293 VT Trumper, Australians v Canterbury 1914 (433 for 8th
wicket with A Sims) 290 WN Carson,
Auckland v Otago 1936 (445 in 268 mins for 3rd wicket with PE
Whitelaw) 289 Aamer Sajjad, WPDA v SSGC 2009
(580 for 2nd wicket with Rafatullah
Mohmand Aaron Finch scored 288* for Cricket Australia XI v New
Zealanders 2015 in a farcical match that was abandoned after the first wicket
fell. |
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An unusual run out from the distant past:
at Cape Town 1891/92, Harry Wood hit a two to go from 98 to 100. They went
for a third run and JJ Ferris was run out by ‘Flooi’
Du Toit. Wood was the first starting
wicketkeeper to score a Test century. http://www.cricketarchive.co.uk/.../Scorecards/3/3783.html ******** At Port of Spain in 2000, Chris Gayle
took wickets with the last two balls of Zimbabwe's innings, and in West
Indies first over, wickets fell with consecutive balls, including Gayle, out
first ball. So that is a strange twist on the concept of a hat-trick. Gayle,
as it happened, did not get a bowl in the second innings and so was denied an
opportunity for a hat-trick. That, in itself, must
be rare. ******** At the Wanderers in 1966, HR Lance
was out hit wicket to Graham McKenzie even though he did not offer a shot –
he somehow stepped back onto his stumps. ******** David Lloyd is the only batsman to
start his Test career with three century partnerships. The most in a row by
any batsman is five, shared by Mike Denness, Graham
Gooch, Ricky Ponting and David Warner; in each case it was across multiple
Tests. Warner did it in the first two Tests against New Zealand last season,
something I had missed when it happened. ******** At Madras in 1967, V Subramanya reached 51 with ten fours and a six, in an
innings of 61 (11x4, 1x6). While that 46 runs in a half-century has been
match or exceeded quite a number of times since, it has only one precedent,
that being Reggie Spooner at The Oval in 1905. I will update the relevant section in the
Records. ******** |
9 November
2016
Head to Head Against the
Best
Quite a few years ago, on this very blog (which has been running
for a disturbingly long time), I remarked that a head-to-head, batsmen v
bowler, analysis would be quite interesting if we just looked at superior
batsmen; that is, how do the top bowlers compare when they are bowling to the
top batsmen, with averages over 45? Back then, I found that Glenn McGrath was well ahead of
any of his contemporaries. Now I have much more data, and we can do some
historical comparison. I simply calculated the head-to-head figures for all
bowlers when they were bowling to batsmen whose career averages are over 45.
Here is the table
Qualification: 40
dismissals of top-ranked batsmen, or 1500 runs (50
dismissals for current players). I should explain that entries in italics included some estimated
data, because I don’t have all Tests ball-by-ball. This is not as bad as it
seems; in most cases where estimates are included, a large majority of the
data for that bowler is known exactly, and the estimates form a minority
component. There are no pre-1920 bowlers because almost no batsmen averaged
over 45 in those days. Readers may make of this list what they will. Obviously
pace bowlers are dominant, with Bill O’Reilly the top-ranked spinner. The truth
is that wickets for almost all spinners are weighted towards the tail end,
and even the best spinners were often hammered by the best batsmen. Brian
Lara averaged over 100 against the combined bowling of Murali,
Warne, Danish Kaneria and MacGill,
but only 27 off McGrath. I suppose that pace bowlers have one advantage in that
when top-order batsmen fail, it is sometimes before the spinners come on. I
wouldn’t think that this was an overwhelming factor though. The figures do confirm my impression that Glenn McGrath
was the most difficult bowler of the modern era. While Shane Warne was
acclaimed the “Bowler of the Century” by Wisden,
I am not even sure he was the best bowler in his team. Warne, incidentally, is 33rd of 81 bowlers on
the list with an average of 45.3. I won’t dwell on the bottom of the table
except to say that John Emburey has the highest
average of those that qualify, at 98.0. It did occur to me that in different eras, bowlers will
bowl to different sets of top batsmen. So I normalised the averages so that
instead of treating all 45+ batsmen equally, bowlers were rewarded more for
dismissing the very best batsmen. (A career batting average of 45 has no
adjustment, 50 has some adjustment, while bowling to Bradman gets a big
adjustment). The adjusted averages are below; not much different but some
changes occur.
This analysis lifts Alec Bedser
and Hedley Verity, the reason being that they bowled to Bradman, and enjoy
the greatest beneficial adjustment as a result. Verity had the best record of
any bowler against Bradman, with eight dismissals and an average of 49.8. ******** Here's a nice little find that pleases me. I have a
section in my records of bowlers who took five
wickets in fewest balls, also the subject of a recent question in Ask
Steven. The record is 12 balls by Kallis, or, if we
ignore Bangladesh, 13 balls by Laker in THAT Test. There was one uncertain
one that is a candidate: at Melbourne in 1901/02, Monty Noble took the last
five wickets of his 7/17 very rapidly, but I was unable to get an exact
number, in spite of checking numerous newspapers. Anyway, I have found an account in a newspaper called the Port Phillip Herald that settles the
matter. Noble took wickets with the last two balls of his sixth over, another
in his seventh, then two more in four balls to finish the innings. That is
five wickets in twelve balls, a match for Kallis.
The sequence was W, W, 0, 0, 2, W, 0, 0, 0, W, 4, W |
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Only once has every player in a Test
team made more than 20 runs in the match. That was New Zealand at Johannesburg in 1994,
where the minimum of 25 runs was shared by the two openers. ******** The England team at Bombay in 1964
had only 11 fit players available, the other players in the touring team
being injured or ill. Shortly after the match began, Micky Stewart also fell
ill, leaving the team with ten players. On the first day, AG Kripal Singh of India filled in as a substitute fielder
for England; on the second day, Hanumant Singh did
the duty. Neither received any chances. ******** Georgetown 1965: Garry Sobers,
batting at #6, gave
opener Conrad Hunte a 46-over head start, but
overtook Hunte’s score in 10 overs. At that point, Hunte was out for 38 off 160 balls, with Sobers then on
39; Sobers was out shortly afterwards for 42 off 56 balls. ******** On the second day of the Edgbaston
Test of 1965 (Eng v NZ) the maximum temperature in
Birmingham was 9° C. Hot drinks were brought out to the players during drinks
breaks. ******* Most wickets in a session for one
team: at Manchester in 1888, Australia lost 18 wickets during the third
morning session, going from 32/2 to 81 all out, and 70 all out following on.
There were about 2 hours of play. The match was over at that point, and I
believe there was no lunch break. In more modern times, Pakistan lost
11 wickets in the final session of the third day at Lord's in 2010. At Mumbai
in 2004, there were 14 wickets in a very long final session of the match,
four from India, and all 10 from Australia (93 all out). http://www.cricketarchive.co.uk/.../Score.../257/257231.html ******** Update on the subject of teams
appealing against too much light (see August 25)… Sreeram tells me of
a case in Women’s Tests, at Collinhgam 1986, where
the Indian (fielding) team refused to continue due to light reflecting off
car windscreens (which didn’t trouble the batters). In fact, they sat on the
pitch until all the cars had been moved. England was chasing a target on the
last day, and the over rate from the Indian team seems to have fallen to
unprecedented low levels. Reports say that, at one point, seven or eight
overs were bowled in an hour. This is slower, by some margin, than any over
rate that I have recorded in men’s Tests. ******** |
23 October
2016
Here’s a link to an article of mine that has been
published on the Cricket Monthly website. I will also post it in my Longer
Articles page I hope you like it as much as some of the people who posted
comments. I certainly enjoyed reading them! http://www.thecricketmonthly.com/story/1056115/tracking-the-misses While I have it in mind, I will add the following note: The overall average ‘cost’ of dropped catches is similar
to the overall batting average, at around 33 runs. I suppose one way to evaluate a keeper in a match is to
tally the total number of chances he receives. Then calculate how many of
these an ‘average’ keeper would be expected to drop. Take the difference
between this and the actual number of drops,
multiply by 33, and you have a runs value for the keeper’s catching. Say that a keeper received 8 catching chances in a match,
and catches 5. The average keeper would be expected to drop 15%; that is, 1.2
catches. Our keeper has dropped 3, so he has an excess of 1.8. At 33 runs per
drop, our keeper has cost the team about 60 runs. By the same calculation, a keeper who received 8 chances,
and catches them all, has gained his team an advantage of about 40 runs. Stumpings would be calculated
separately. One might also do separate calculations for pace and spin
bowling, since these have very different drop rates for keepers. This would
require ball-by-ball records. Of course, you can add in other factors, such as the value
of the batsmen dismissed. This can create difficulties, because there are
many possible factors. When you use lots of factors, the final result becomes
rather arbitrary, depending on the weight you place on each factor. ******** One-Handed Batting With the help of Sreeram and
others, I have made a list of batsmen who have batted, in effect, with one
hand, due a broken bone or other serious injury. LH Tennyson, Leeds 1921 RT Simpson, Leeds 1953 JT Murray, Sydney 1962-63 MC Cowdrey, Lord's 1963 (did not
face) MD Marshall, Edgbaston 1984 VP Terry, Old Trafford 1984 Salim Malik, Faisalabad 1986-87 A Ranatunga, Rawalpindi 1999-00 GC Smith, Sydney 2008-09 Wahab Riaz, Colombo PSS 2015 UPDATE: J Srinath, Mumbai 2001
(2nd innings) (H/T Abhishek) Talat Ali, Adelaide 1972-73 Nick Knight batted one-handed in an ODI in 1997 (Auckland) Inzamam-ul-Haq 1st
Test Harare 1994-95 The extent to which Simpson was playing one-handed is
uncertain. In the same series, there is a picture of Len Hutton hitting a
one-handed shot at Lord’s. The puzzle here is that Hutton scored 145, and
“gave full rein to his shots” according to The Times, which, although it mentions an injury (suffered while
fielding), does not mention Hutton batting one-handed. Malik batted both left-handed and right-handed during his
innings, perhaps the only batsman to do so in Tests. Cowdrey
was prepared to do so, but did not face. Terry was probably the most
seriously injured of these players; he is the only one on the list to bat
with his arm in a sling, in what was his last Test innings. ******** The fastest century makers. These are the batsmen with fastest
average balls faced to 100. (First 100 runs mind you, not whole innings).
With a minimum of 10 Test centuries, the Top Five are Gilchrist (107 balls),
Warner (116), Sehwag (119), McCullum (122), and Pietersen (139). Jayasuriya and
Botham are very close to Pietersen on 139. They are followed by Dilshan
(141), Gayle (143), Clive Lloyd (147), Viv Richards (148) and Lara (150) At 5-9 centuries there is also Afridi (104), Kapil Dev
(108), with Cairns and Prior on 125. With no minimum, there is Gilbert Jessop, whose only
century was reached in 76 balls. ******** The most runs in a calendar year is 5200 by Martin Crowe
in 1987 (first-class + List A). Jimmy Cook scored 14,167 runs in three
consecutive years, 1989-1991. It might surprise people to learn that such
players were playing more cricket 30 years ago than our supposedly
'overloaded' players do today. The most in first-class alone is 4962 by Denis Compton in
1947. Compton scored 5476 runs between October 1946 and September 1947. It will be difficult to exceed these totals because the
effect of T20 cricket has been to depress the number of runs scored and
wickets taken, not increase them. Last time I checked, the most runs in a
year that included T20 games was 3788 by JA Rudolph in 2010, so Kohli may beat that. Charles Turner took 365 first-class wickets in calendar
year 1888. I don’t think this has been surpassed in f-c, or in combined
formats. ******** |
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The highest partnerships equally
shared… At Headingley
in 1993,the fifth wicket stand between Steve Waugh
and Allan Border added 332 (unbeaten) with each scoring 157 runs. There were
18 sundries. At Adelaide Oval in 1977, Graham Yallop and Peter Toohey shared
a partnership of 120 in which each scored exactly 60 runs, with no sundries. ******** A One-Day International at the Gabba on 9 Jan 1993 was completed and all over at 12:30
pm. After an unusually early starting time of 9:00 am, Pakistan was bowled
out in 116 minutes for 71. The innings break was only 10 minutes and West
Indies chased down the runs in 84 minutes (19.2 overs). Would this be the earliest finish (in
time of day) to an international cricket match? UPDATE: Sreeram reports “The Sri Lanka
v Zimbabwe match on December 8, 2001 lasted 108 minutes and was over 'by
mid-day'. So it probably ended at 11.48 am.” ******** At the SCG in 1963, Fred Trueman hit Richie Benaud for
six and immediately appealed against the light. The appeal was turned down
and Trueman then hit Benaud
for two fours (one of which would be a six with modern boundary ropes) to
take 14 off the over. ******** |
1 October
2016
There is an update to the HOT 100 list,
the fastest and slowest batsmen in Test cricket. I only update this annually
now, since scoring speed is a relatively constant characteristic of batsmen,
and less variable than batting average. The lists
change only slowly, although David Warner has crept up a place into 5th.
Brendon McCullum also moved up, just before his retirement, thanks in part to
his extraordinary 145 off 79 balls at Christchurch. ******** I spent a little time last week in the National Library in
Canberra copying some early ODI scores that they have (the Library obtained
them from the MCC), including the original ODI in January 1971. There was a curiosity with that 1971 score. The original
team names were given as "An Australian XI" v "M.C.C.".
These names had been crossed out and replaced with "Australia" and
"England". Next to these changes is a scrawled note which is a
little difficult to read… "(Title of match [revised, or request] by Sir Donald
Bradman and Sir Cyril Hawker)" The match was scored by Geoffrey Saulez
and R.W. Bright. There certainly was some confusion at the time as to the
category of the match, and it certainly indicates that the idea of a
"One Day International" came later. Initial newspaper reports of
the match did not know quite what to call it; the odd phrase "knockout
match" was used. Wisden mostly ignored the match, giving it just a
two-line potted score and no match report. One-Day cricket was known in Australia at the time, having
started in 1969-70. However, it might have been the first such game for some
of the players. I had to look up who Sir Cyril Hawker was: he was
President of the MCC at the time. Although he had played one f-c match, his
main background was as a banker (Governor of the bank of England, in fact). ******** A Trumper Wagon Wheel I also found a wagon wheel of a major Trumper
innings, his 166 in the final Test of 1907-08. I haven’t seen such a thing
for a Trumper innings before. Most striking is the lack of runs through cover and around
to third man. Trumper favoured the straight hit or
scored on the leg side. I would think that what is called “short leg”
includes longer hits to mid-wicket. Xx
xx |
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There are a few cases of bowlers
losing grip and mis-delivering the ball, and the batsmen have
claimed right to hit the ball anyway, wherever it ended up. This is no longer
allowed – umpires nowadays are directed to call dead ball, although I don’t
quite know why that Law is necessary – but it has happened historically. Here
are a few examples in Tests, where the ball was hit to the boundary. (Thanks
to Brodibb’s Next Man
In, Ashru, and others.) ·
The winning
runs at Lord’s 1921 were hit by Warren Bardsley off
Jack Durston, from a ball that stopped halfway up
the pitch. ·
Delhi 1969:
a ball by Sobroto Guha
fell from his hand and rolled toward square leg. Encouraged by Bill Lawry,
Keith Stackpole walked out and hit it for four. ·
Faisalabad
1982: a delivery from Abdul Qadir dropped out of
his hand. Greg Ritchie claimed it and hit it for four. ·
Old
Trafford 1999: A ball from Phil Tufnell bounced away towards square leg.
Craig McMillan ran out and hit it to the boundary, but it was called dead
ball. In an ODI at Cuttack in 2003,
McMillan tried this again of the bowling of Karthik,
but he mishit the ball and was almost run out – or he might have been except
that the umpire was calling dead ball. At Old Trafford 1935, a ball from
Vincent rolled to a stop before it reached batsman Hammond. Hammond appeared
to want to go out and hit the ball, but with fielders hurrying toward the
ball, he retreated to his crease. UPDATE: Wellington 1990, a ball from
Danny Morrison slipped and rolled to square leg. Alan Border claimed it,
walked over and hit it to the boundary, with Morrison standing a few yards
away. ******** In an ODI at Harare in 1992, Ken
Rutherford played an innings of 37 that consisted of a six and 31 singles. |
17
September 2016
Few cricket fans imagine that they could be successful at
Test cricket, but there are millions of people out there who see themselves
as better at selecting Test teams than the people who have the job. The
cutting below shows that this has been the case for many generations. It is
from a Test in 1901/02 and mentions the heavy fire that faced selectors who
had named Reggie Duff and Warwick Armstrong in the Australian team.
But sometimes it is the selectors who get it right. Duff
top-scored in both innings in what was his Test debut, while Armstrong scored
4* and 45*. I came across this while trying to nail down the number of
balls bowled by Monty Noble in taking his last five wickets in the first
innings in that Test. The record for fewest balls bowled is 12 by Jacques Kallis, although that was against Bangladesh; in a proper
Test match it is 13
balls by Jim Laker. This was probably matched by Noble, but I am still
unable to come up with an exact figure. It could be as low as 12, or as high
as 14. ******** No bowler spent more time bowling to the famed ‘Three Ws’
than Jim Laker, whose encounters with the West Indies’ greats spanned almost
a decade. The curious thing is that while Weekes and Worrell both tamed
Laker’s spin thoroughly, Walcott had nothing but trouble.
The innings count is only those innings in which Laker actually
bowled to the batsman. Laker at one stage dismissed Walcott in nine
consecutive innings in which he bowled to him (there were one or two other
innings in between where Walcott did not face Laker). This is the most for
any head-to-head pair in the database. ******** Most international runs in a 365-day period. Dates are
“365 days ending”, not calendar years. Combined
totals for Tests, ODIs and T20is.
******** A curiosity that I came
across on the subject of long-distance cricket travel. Garfield Sobers played
in a Sheffield Shield match in Adelaide that ended on 13 Feb 1962, but also played
in a Test in Trinidad starting on 16 Feb 1962. In between, he made a 55-hour
flight on three airlines, covering 12,600 miles and arriving in the middle of
the night of the first morning of the Test. Without the time difference, he
would not have made it. The final drive to the cricket ground was an
additional two hours. From Adelaide, the West Indies is one of the most distant
places to travel to by air. That is true to this day. Nowadays our ‘overloaded’
players expect longer breaks than this between T20 games at the same ground. In the two matches, Sobers
scored a combined total 293 runs and took 15 wickets. The guy was
unbelievable. In the Shield match, he scored 2 and 251, and took 3/51 and
6/72. Everton Weekes was once selected to play for West Indies
(Kingston 1948), after he was previously told he had been dropped, but word
got to him so late that he couldn't make it to the ground on time, and
actually saw play in progress from the air as he flew in. http://cricketarchive.com/Archive/Scorecards/25/25321.html http://www.cricketarchive.co.uk/Arc…/Scorecards/…/25328.html |
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Blinded by the Light…The ToSH Facebook group has collected a few cases, in Tests,
of play being stopped by excessive light or glare. ·
Johannesburg
1896: the final day was interrupted for 30 minutes by "glare from a
conservatory”. ·
England v
New Zealand, Christchurch 1962/3, interrupted by evening sunlight reflecting
off a roof. It ended play 11 minutes early on the third day. Barrington appealed
against the 'light', literally. "...extraordinary glare of the evening
sun on the aluminium roof of the grandstand behind the wicket." ·
England vs
West Indies, Manchester 1995, first day; the cause of the glare was a row of
greenhouses adjacent to the ground.
Tea was taken 21 minutes early, but
no net time was lost. ·
Pakistan v
New Zealand, Rawalpindi, 1996-97: the opening day saw several hold-ups. One
was caused by sunlight dazzling the batsmen after tea. UPDATED (see October 24 2016). ******** A figure for most runs conceded
before first wicket in ODIs has become available, thanks to the unearthing
(by Ross Dundas) of a scoresheet. Asif Mujtaba took
his first ODI wickets (2 for 38) at the MCG in January 1993, in his 18th
ODI. The first wicket was taken after he had conceded 17 runs, bringing his
total to 292 runs. It was his 291st ball in ODIs, and the 12th
time he had bowled. Ata-ur-Rehman bowled at least 51 overs before his first wicket,
which is the probable record in terms of balls bowled. The exact number is
still not available. ******** |
25 August
2016
The project to upload detailed scores of all Tests from
the 1950s has been completed, and the database now covers all Tests from 1920
to early 1960. I hope to post more in the future, starting with pre-1920
Tests, but there is no schedule at the moment. ******** A couple of new discoveries… I visited Headingley more than a
decade ago, and went through all their scorebooks, and copied all the Test
matches that I could find. Time was limited, and unfortunately I failed to
fully copy the 1912 and 1965 Tests. I was unable to find the 1957 Test and
the 1952 Test in the time available. A problem was that most of the Tests were in scorebooks other than the year in question. This
was because the main county scorebook travelled with the Yorkshire team, and
Yorkshire played away while Headingley Test matches
were on. Most Test scores that I found were either in a Second XI book or in
a First XI book for a different year. There was no telling where a Test score
would turn up, so I had to leaf through every page of every book to find
them. Since then, the scorebooks have been donated to the West
Yorkshire Archive Service. After a bit of correspondence with them, they
searched the books again and found all the missing material. Well done! They
have supplied me with copies, and I have re-scored them into digital form.
The 1952
and 1957
Tests have now been posted in my Online Database.
All Tests ever played at Headingley
are now represented by scorebooks or ball-by-ball records, and have been
re-scored. Going back to 1899, this is the longest and most complete record
for any major Test match ground (although the 1902 match at Sheffield has
unfortunately not been found). Lord’s goes back to 1921, and Sydney to 1910;
in both cases earlier records exist, but there are gaps. Other major grounds
have more recent gaps (Perth is complete, but only started in 1970). The most recent Test in England that has no scorebook is
now The Oval 1951 (v South Africa). The other post-War Tests in England that
are missing are The Oval 1946 and 1949, and Trent Bridge 1947. ******** Culture Clash
This is a bit of a departure, but I thought I would post a
newspaper article unearthed by John Kobylecky, concerning an extraordinary
incident during the M.C.C. tour of Pakistan in 1955-56. This tour, perhaps
unfortunately, is not regarded as an official Test tour, although the major
matches were very much regarded as Tests in Pakistan itself. The attitude of
the M.C.C. to these matches is a strange contrast to the Tests in India of
1951-52, which have official status, even though that M.C.C. team was also
far from representative. In any case, the article describes the mistreatment of one
of the umpires, by English players including the captain, on the rest day of
the 3rd
‘Test’ in faraway Peshawar in January 1956. Although there was an attempt
to excuse the behaviour as university-style ‘ragging’, it sounds awful. It best,
gross cultural insensitivity, at worst, inexcusable
assault. The incident was reported in The Times, but only in brief outline. Some readers may already be
aware of it, but I had not heard about it before, so it might be new to
others. EXCERPTS FROM FRONT PAGE
ARTICLE ON 28 FEBRUARY HEADED: UMPIRE BEG ACCEPTS APOLOGY (full article
embraces 9 columns). Umpire Idris Beg has
accepted apologies offered by the MCC manager, Mr. Geoffrey Howard, on behalf
of all persons concerned in last night’s incident. Umpire Idris Beg was last
night forcibly taken away in a tonga by some
members of the MCC party, including Donald Carr
(captain) and Sutcliffe (vice-captain), to their hotel where water was poured
on him. During Mr. Beg’s efforts to escape from the
MCC cricketers, he had his shoulder sprained. Mr. Howard issued the following
statement after conferring with Mr. Beg. ‘I have offered Mr.
Idris Beg my apologies on behalf of all persons concerned which he has accepted
in the best possible spirit. He has told me that he regards the matter as
closed, and joins me in the hope that friendly relations between cricketers
of both the sides will be continued throughout the remainder of the series.’ According to Mr. Beg the
MCC party gagged him and dragged him in the tonga
and while he was in the room of one of the MCC cricketers he was also dealt
blows. The MCC camp, however, denied this, and it was said that only water
was poured on Mr. Beg as part of a ragging. According to our
correspondent’s version in continuation of yesterday’s story, the MCC captain
Carr and vice-captain Sutcliffe allegedly kidnapped
umpire Idris Beg from his hotel and beat him up, dislocating one of his arms.
Just past ten last night, it is stated, an eight-man party including Carr, Sutcliffe, Close, Richardson, Swetman
and Stevenson – all members of visiting team – and two others, arrived at the
Services Hotel in search of Idris. He was there standing outside on the lawn
talking to a friend when, accosted by the ‘invading’ party, he unsuspectingly
obliged only to be allegedly gagged and hustled into a tonga
and whisked away to the tourists’ hotel. With the gagged umpire
in their custody, the MCC party and their two associates, described here as the
official MCC scorer and an ex-British army officer, drove off to the Dean’s
Hotel, where the visitors were staying. In room number 18 worse was in store
for the unfortunate umpire, who had been the target of bitter British press
comments. It is said once inside room number 18, Idris Beg was subjected to
harsh handling. Whisky was, it is alleged, forced down his throat for the
first time in this teetotaller’s life, water was thrown on his person, and he
was given a thorough beating. Meanwhile, the news of
the strange ‘kidnapping’ spread like wildfire. Pakistan’s fast bowlers Khan
Muhammad and Mahmood Husain dashed off to Idris Beg’s
help and found the injured umpire lying on the veranda floor. He was picked
up and brought back to his hotel. By now the entire Pakistan team, fast
asleep after a historic day’s play, had been awakened, and at the dead of
night, things began to happen. Pakistan captain Kardar
and Cricket Control Board Secretary Cheema rushed to meet MCC Captain and
Manager Geoffrey Howard. There was heated argument at this meeting, and it is
believed the visitors’ captain Carr, offered to
apologise, obliging by admitting that a mistake had been committed. A strange sort of press
conference was summoned in the early hours of the morning at which no more
than two correspondents were present – Crawford White of the London ‘News
Chronicle’ and Omar Quershi, Radio Pakistan
commentator. The visitors’ captain is stated to have told the press
conference he realised that they (the MCC stalwarts) had done something wrong
which would lower the prestige of the game and bring upon them the wrath of
every sportsman. A message from Karachi
adds: Group Captain Cheema, Secretary of the Pakistan Cricket Board, who flew
into Karachi from Peshawar this afternoon, had a meeting with the
Governor-General, Major-General Iskander Mirza,
President of the Board, about the manhandling of umpire Idris Beg by the
touring MCC cricketers. Group Captain Cheema told the APP tonight: ‘I have placed all the
facts before the President along with the written apology of MCC skipper
Donald Carr. Major-General Iskander
Mirza would decide what is to be done about it’ The Test Match, he said,
would be played tomorrow, as scheduled. A message from London adds: No
comment is being made by the MCC, London, until a full report of the incident
involving Pakistani umpire Mr. Idris Beg and some MCC players has been
received. Mr. S.C. Griffiths, Assistant Secretary of the MCC, confirmed today
that a cable mentioning the matter had been sent to London by Mr. Geoffrey
Howard, the MCC team Manager. The cable also stated that Mr. Howard was
writing to the Lords. ‘Until we receive this
letter’ said Mr. Griffiths, ‘we can say nothing at all.’ |
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Andy
Roberts bowled three hat-trick balls at Manchester in 1976, one in the first
innings and two in the second. He is the only one on record to do so in one
Test. A catch was dropped off the third hat-trick ball. At
Ahmedabad in 1996/97, J Srinath took wickets with
consecutive balls three times in one innings, but the third instance involved
the last two wickets in the match, so he only bowled two hat-trick balls. Sreeram reports a weird case
of three wickets in three balls… “The
Durban 1969/70 Test ended with Procter getting Gleeson and Connolly in
consecutive balls. When Test cricket resumed there in 1992/93. Kapil Dev took
a wicket with the first ball. This is a weird definition of a hat-trick in a
particular ground…?” ******** The Galle
Test saw all 40 wickets fall and finished after 44.1 overs on the third day.
This was the earliest finish for a 40-wicket Test in the last 100 years.
There are a couple of 40-wicket Tests that had fewer overs overall, but they
finished later on the third day. A few
40-wicket Tests, including the original Ashes Test in 1882, finished in 2
days, but they were very long ago. The last to finish earlier than Galle was
the Headingley Test of 1912 (Eng
v SA), which finished after 12 overs on day 3. http://www.cricketarchive.co.uk/.../Scorecards/8/8776.html More
recently there was Mumbai 2004/05. The match lasted 202 overs, less than the
215 at Galle, but there were 96 overs on the third day, due to earlier
interruptions. ******** In the
Kandy Test, Mitchell Starc took five wickets on the
first day and the same again on the second. I don't have this one fully up to
date, but the only other instance in the last 100 years that I can find is
Mohammad Asif at Kandy in 2006 http://www.cricketarchive.co.uk/.../Scorecards/96/96813.html ******** |
11 August 2016
It’s been
reported in many places, but Peter Nevill and Steve
O’Keefe, assisted by Josh Hazlewood, smashed all
previous records for scorelessness, by stringing
together 154 balls without a run in the Kandy Test. While plenty of teams
have been in ultra-defensive situations like this before, this was a unique
combination of circumstances. There were no specialist batsmen so no attempt
to farm the strike. One batsman was injured and so no running was attempted.
I think that if there had been a runner for O’Keefe, occasional runs would
have been taken, so it is all due in part to the strange rule that disallows
use of runners. Nevill faced 90 balls without scoring, just shy
of the 95 by Bruce Mitchell in 1931. The number for Mitchell, unfortunately,
is only an estimate; however, I would say that, at the low end, it is a
fairly precise estimate, but the exact number is not known (could be a bit
higher). It is quite unlikely that Mitchell faced 90 balls or less. However, Nevill batted 108 minutes without scoring, and that is
without doubt the longest time without scoring in a Test innings. In the next Test,
at Galle, Nevill was out first ball in the first
innings and scored off his second ball when he batted again. This gave him a
total of 92 consecutive balls without scoring. So Tony Lock’s record of 115
balls across multiple innings remains safe. O’Keefe, for his part, has an
open-ended sequence of 76 balls without scoring to continue. Hope he gets the
chance. The Unusual
Records entry has been updated. ******** Here are the
fourth-innings scores at each fall of wicket, closest to the target, by teams
losing the Test match. Most of these
records were set in the original Ashes Test of 1882, but Manchester 1902 and
a couple of others also turn up
15/1 (70 runs: target 85) Eng v Aus, The Oval 1882 68/2 (56 runs: target 124) Eng v Aus, Manchester 1902 51/3 (34 runs: target 85) Eng v Aus, The Oval 1882 53/4 (32 runs: target 85) Eng v Aus, The Oval 1882 92/4 (32 runs: target 124) Eng v Aus, Manchester 1902 66/5 (19 runs: target 85) Eng v Aus, The Oval 1882 70/6 (15 runs: target 85) Eng v Aus, The Oval 1882 70/7 (15 runs: target 85) Eng v Aus, The Oval 1882 109/7 (15 runs: target 124) Eng v Aus, Manchester 1902 75/8 (10 runs: target 85) Eng v Aus, The Oval 1882 110/9 (7 runs: target 117) Aus v SAf, Sydney (SCG) 1993/94 184/10 (2 runs: target 186) Aus v WI,
Adelaide 1992/93
The Tied Test in
Brisbane would beat some of these if you want to include it
226/7 (7 runs: target 233) Aus v WI,
Brisbane 1960/61 228/8 (5 runs: target 233) Aus v WI,
Brisbane 1960/61 232/9 (1 run: target 233) Aus v WI, Brisbane
1960/61 232/10 (1 run: target 233) Aus v WI,
Brisbane 1960/61 ******** I have been
studying some old ODI scores, and have come up with some interesting material
on Simon O’Donnell, one of the more underrated ODI players. Bowlers taking
wickets in five consecutive overs in an ODI (where known)
Also in 1990,
O’Donnell played an innings of 74 off 29 balls in an ODI at Sharjah against
Sri Lanka. At the time, his 50 off 18 balls was an ODI record. The innings,
as recorded on the scoresheet, makes unusual reading 0,0,1,6,1,1,1,2,6,2,2,4,6,4,6,1,6,1,1,1,2,1,1,4,1,4,3,6,W O’Donnell
actually scored his 74 runs in the space of 26 balls, without a dot ball. In
that innings, runs were scored off the bat by the Australians for 43
consecutive balls, with the exception of the ball that took O’Donnell’s wicket. Only Sanath Jayasyuriya (76 off 28
in 1996, setting a new record with 50 off 17) and Brendon McCullum (using a
super bat) have played higher innings off fewer balls than O’Donnell. Against Zimbabwe
in 2012, McCullum (119) scored off 30 consecutive balls faced, as did Ian Trott (112) against New Zealand in 2013. Neither scored
as many runs as O’Donnell without facing a dot ball, but Chris Gayle (215)
equalled it with 74, scoring off 23 consecutive balls without a dot ball
against Zimbabwe in last year’s World Cup. (For this analysis, sundries are
considered dot balls.) O’Donnell,
incidentally, hit the longest six ever accurately recorded at the MCG. It was
in a Sheffield Shield match in 1993, off the bowling of Greg Matthews. The
shot reached the third level (out of four) of the Great Southern Stand. The
location has been marked by a yellow-coloured seat that can even be seen on
Google Earth. The distance is equivalent to 122 metres (unimpeded). |
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http://www.cricketarchive.co.uk/.../Score.../709/709461.html Shoaib Mailk
scored 53* off 61 balls in 2006, but his first 50 is not recorded. http://www.cricketarchive.co.uk/.../Score.../109/109963.html There have
been a few innings of similar length that did not reach 50 runs, the most
extreme was Naeem Islam in 2010 http://www.cricketarchive.co.uk/.../Score.../289/289533.html Aslam
Siddiqui reports: PN Weekes
probably faced more than 60 balls in this match. http://cricketarchive.com/Archive/Scorecards/79/79874.html There have
been a number of innings of similar length in T20 cricket that have not reached
50, including a 35 off 63 balls by Lategan again… http://www.cricketarchive.co.uk/Archive/Scorecards/844/844298.html ******** During the
record-breaking partnership of May and Cowdrey in
1957 (411 off 1146 balls), the West Indies took a second new ball after 96
overs. It would appear that no further new balls were taken after this, even
though the innings lasted 258 overs. The 162 overs would appear to be the
most overs without a new ball after a second ball was taken (where
known). A list of the longest spells without a new ball is here. |
16 July 2016
Dropped
Catches Report for 2015
I have collated a
list of dropped catches in Tests in 2015 (specifically, April 2015 to January
2016, between pauses for World Cup and World T20). This extends my analysis
of Cricinfo ball-by-ball texts that started in 2001.
For a number of Tests, I backed up the analysis by also checking the texts
archived by Cricbuzz. In general, this confirmed
the searches of Cricinfo, but a few other missed
chances were found. It is also apparent that some dropped catches are a
matter of opinion, with the sources coming to conflicting conclusions where
‘technical’ or ‘half’ chances are concerned; also whether or not balls
carried or missed the bat. The disputed or uncertain cases might amount to
about five to ten per cent of missed chances. As such, most chances are
clear-cut, but the totals are a little fuzzy, and should be interpreted with
that caveat. In 45 Tests I
found 281 missed chances (including stumpings but
not run outs). Taking the successful catches and stumpings
into account, the miss rate was 23.8%. Overall, there is a downward trend in
this figure over the years, suggesting gradual improvement in catching.
However, it is not quite as low as the 23.2% recorded in 2012. More surprising
is the improvement apparent compared to the rate of 27.2% in 2014. Some of
the changes can be seen in this summary table % Missed Chances
in Tests
While the
incidence of dropped catches appears to be falling, the high figure for 2014
remains a bit odd. Part of this is due to Bangladesh playing more Tests in
that year: Bangladesh drops a lot of catches and bumps up the average, but
even with them, the rate was still elevated. For reasons unknown, Australia
dropped more chances in 2014 than in the previous or following years. I have
checked the results with some care, but it seems to be a real result. The team results
for 2015 are as follows
I would disregard
Bangladesh in this list, because they played only five Tests and took only 25
catches during the year, a very small sample size. Bangladesh had a drop rate
of 34% in the previous year. The most striking result is Sri Lanka, whose
catching has improved enormously in the last few years, from 34% dropped in
2013 and 29% in 2014 to 21% last year. I have looked through the Sri Lanka
results carefully, using both Cricinfo and Cricbuzz, and the result seems to be genuine. Adam Voges’ 269* at Hobart appears to have been chanceless.
The highest score in 2015 by a batsman dropped was 290 Ross Taylor at Perth,
dropped on 137. The most ‘expensive’ drop of the year was 165 runs for Steve
Smith at Lord’s, dropped on 50 and went on to make 215. The only batsman
dropped on 0 who went on to make a century was Joe Root, dropped second ball
in his ashes-critical 134 at Cardiff. Zulfiqar Babar
was the most unfortunate bowler in 2015, with 17 catches missed off his
bowling. Azhar Ali dropped nine chances, mostly at
the difficult short leg and silly point positions, five of them off Zulfiqar. The dropped
catches report for 2014 is here. ******* Notes on the earliest
international tours to use air transport… The 1945-46
Australian team flew to New Zealand: "At dawn
on 26 February 1946 the team flew from Sydney. The New Zealand Air Force
provided a Catalina for the long flight across the Tasman Sea." They
returned on the 8th of April, again with the NZ Air Force out of
Auckland, but this time in a DC3. The flight over
took eight hours (Catalinas flew at less than
200kph), and the flight back on the (somewhat faster) DC3 was eventful, with
the plane turning back to New Zealand after a short time due to an oil
pressure problem, but completing the flight successfully later on the same
day. There is an odd
aspect to this: regular commercial flights between Sydney and Auckland were
available at the time, so why did the team fly on specially organised NZAF
planes? At the time, an airline called T.E.A.L., the predecessor of Air New
Zealand, had three flights a week on flying boats, and in fact had operated
them even during the war. I wonder if it
was at the insistence of the Australian Cricket Board, getting the New
Zealanders to pay? The day they got
back also happened to be the day that flights from Australia to Britain via
Singapore resumed, using civilian versions of wartime bombers (Liberators and
Lancasters). These were the first civilian planes
to use the Changi airport that had been built by PoWs.
Earlier post-War flights had taken a route via Colombo, which required a very
long trans-ocean leg. The 1946 Indian
team to England and the 1947/48 team to Australia both travelled by air. The
latter had a rather long and harrowing flight, and decided that the return
trip would be by sea. In 1947/48, Len
Hutton flew out to the West Indies as a replacement player for the MCC. It
took him 3 days to get from London to Georgetown. Information from
the fascinating "Test Cricket Tours"
website. Ashru Mishra reports that a Lancashire team
flew from Cardiff to Southampton in 1935, on a privately organised flight. The last tour to
travel by ship was the 1964 Ashes tour, although the sea leg was limited to
Perth-Colombo. The team returned to Australia by air, playing Tests in
Pakistan and India. (Thanks also to Ashru and Sreeram.) ******** Here is an
article of mine that was published in Cricket Monthly, on the subject of the
longest sixes: http://www.thecricketmonthly.com/story/1026113/the-longest-shot and here’s an interview I did for Cricket
Country, which was actually a written Q&A rather than spoken interview. In both of the
above, the headlines and photo captions were not written by me. Nor was the
introductory blurb in the interview, which I do not necessarily agree with.
The interviewer seemed to think that I had “proved” that Bradman had averaged
100, but I tried to hose that down in my comments. Also, there is
some doubt about batting orders in many very old games. For example, G Beldam
is given 31* out of 63 batting at #11 in 1800, but I doubt if he really
batted in that position. I think that some very old scorecards list batsmen
in the order they were out, not the order they came in. Given the age of
many of these records, the recent one by Glenn Maxwell is remarkable. He came
to the crease at 9 (runs) for 6 (wickets) and scored 127 off 102 balls.
The highest for a
#12 batsman is 13 out of 44 by TC Elliot for Hampshire v All England in 1848. Note also WG in
1876 1 79.2% WG Grace
126 out of 159 United North of England v United South of England, Hull 1876 |
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Here's an odd little stat Q. In the last one thousand ODIs, how
many times has the team batting second hit the last ball of the 50th over for
four? A. Zero. The last one I can find is Zimbabwe v
Pakistan at Multan in 2008. Since then there have been six
matches where the second team hit the last ball of the 50th over for six
(including the recent tie) and even one case of a five, but no fours. There was a match where Kevin Pietersen hit the last ball for four, but that was a
Duckworth-Lewis match, and not the 50th over. ******** Another odd fact: add it to the list
of records held by the very first Test of 1877. Other countries, of course, have had
wider representation. |
1 July 2016
Here’s a list of
the fastest batsmen to reach major Test milestones. “Fastest” in this context
means fewest balls faced, not matches or innings or time. The “Balls Faced”
in the table is the exact number when the milestone was reached, in
mid-innings. For example, Southee passed one thousand runs during his 61st
innings, and finished that innings with 1009 runs off 1180 balls. His one
thousandth run came off his 1167th ball.
The leader in
each category is quite clear cut, except at 9,000 runs, where Graeme Smith
and Brian Lara are extremely close. Tendulkar, of course, is alone in the
last two categories. All these players
are relatively recent. Although some data is missing for earlier players,
none of them are contenders for a place in this table, so even with complete
data this table would not change. Chances are though, that Gilbert Jessop
(1899-1912) would be the faster than any modern batsman to 500 runs (about
450 balls), but Jessop never made it to 1000. ******** After a question
on AskSteven, I became curious about the story that
Bill Woodfull refused a knighthood offered to him
for his contribution to cricket. Being of sceptical mind, I looked into it. The earliest
published source for this seems to be Chris Harte’s History of Australian Cricket (1993, p357). Hart says the offer
came on the occasion of Woodfull’s farewell match
in November 1934. Harte even quotes (after a fashion) from a “citation”.
However, there is no reference offered and no direction to any primary
source. The story is also
absent from all other older sources, including Pollard’s books, The Oxford Companion to Australian Cricket
and Robinson’s much-admired On Top Down
Under, which has a detailed chapter on Woodfull. Still sceptical,
I borrowed a copy of a Woodfull biography by Alan
Gregory, published recently (2011). However, Gregory does confirm the story,
saying that he checked it with Woodfull’s son and
daughter, who had heard it from their mother. So perhaps we
should accept that at face value. Yet it is still a stretch. Gregory also
reports that John Dew attempted (“energetically”) to get confirmation from
both Buckingham Palace and Government House (Melbourne, the supposed source
of the offer), but none was forthcoming. There are therefore still no
documents or primary evidence. Having done some
family research in my time, I would certainly say that some stories that get
circulated by word of mouth around families, and repeated decades later, are
not necessarily true! (No disrespect intended). Others have a kernel of
truth, but get exaggerated over the years. Casual chatter at an official function, perhaps? I still wonder
about other factors. In 1934, no senior player, not even WG Grace, had ever
been knighted for services to cricket; that fashion lay well into the future.
There is another element to the story – that Woodfull
responded that he would have instead accepted a knighthood for his teaching –
and this also has an odd ring. He was just 37 at the time, he had spent a
good part of his adult life playing cricket, and he was not a senior teacher
yet; it also doesn’t sound in character. Gregory mentions that no Australian
teacher had ever received a knighthood at that time either; I think Woodfull’s claimed statement sounds very unrealistic. Gregory added
that he had asked Harte about the “citation”, but Harte could not recall his
source. Refusing a
knighthood would have been a big deal in 1934, especially from Woodfull, who was a great admirer of the Crown, and
referred to England in his speeches as the “Mother Country”. I also think the
offer would have been unlikely politically, coming so soon after Bodyline. Woodfull did have an outstanding teaching career
after 1934, and did accept an OBE, for his contribution to teaching, in 1963,
after his retirement. He died, on a golf course, in 1965. ******** |
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In his last Test series, against
Bangladesh, Jason Gillespie averaged 231 with the bat and 11.3 (8 wickets)
with the ball, as ratio of averages of 20.5. No one who has taken more than 8
wickets has achieved a higher ratio, although Ramnaresh
Sarwan also took 8 wickets and had a ratio of 22.9
(301.0 to 13.1), also against Bangladesh, in 2004. The highest measurable ratio in any
series is 42.9 by Steve Waugh against Sri Lanka in 1995/96. Batting average
362.0, bowling average 8.5 (4 wickets). ******** Most overs bowled before first wicket
in ODis is probably Ata-ur-Rehman of Pakistan in 1993. Exact figures are not
available, but. Rehman bowled between 51 and 54
overs for his first wicket, probably closer to 51 than 54. The only other
bowler in contention is a team mate of Rehman, Asif
Mujtaba, who bowled between 45 and 53 overs; again,
probably closer to the 45 than 53. ******** When Mohammad Yousuf
scored 202 at Lord’s in 2006, the batsman above him in the order (Faisal
Iqbal) and the batsman next in the order (Mohammad Sami) both scored ducks. Yousuf is the only batsman to make a double century in
these circumstances. ******** Adam Voges'
375 runs against the West Indies recently is the
most by anyone in a series where he was not dismissed. Previously: 270 runs by Chanderpaul against
Bangladesh in 2014. ******** A little data on appeals in Tests ML Nkala v
New Zealand at Bulawayo in 2000 Danish Kaneria
v West Indies, Kingston 2005 MS Panesar
v Pakistan at Lord's 2006 The batsmen were PJ Wiseman, S Chanderpaul, and Abdul Razzaq.
The Nkala case involved four consecutive balls. The
umpires were Harper, Hair and Bucknor. This is obviously a rather limited
survey, and the usual caveats apply. Some appeals have undoubtedly gone
unrecorded and many others might be a matter of interpretation. As a matter of interest, the bowlers
with the highest ratio of appeals to wickets are Panesar,
Saqlain Mushtaq,Giles and Kaneria. I
don't think these names will surprise anyone. The most appeal-prone pace
bowler was Zaheer Khan. |
12 May 2016
How
Effective is the (Second) New Ball?
Here are some
statistics from the database concerning the effectiveness of the new ball in
Tests. The data covers about 280 Tests from 2007 to 2015. There were 472
innings where the new ball was available. In only 44 was it not taken at all,
whereas it was taken in the first five overs (overs 81-85) on 336 occasions. The longest innings without a new ball was 145
overs by West Indies against Australia (439/5) at Bridgetown in 2008; the
latest taking of a new ball was 146.1 overs by India at Durban in 2013. There
were only 25 cases of no new ball by the 100 over mark. In innings that
lasted at least six overs after the new ball, I compared the number of
wickets in the six overs after with the number in the six overs before. There
were 405 such innings. I also looked at ‘windows’ of plus or minus four overs
and two overs.
A ‘Ratio’ of more
than one indicates a benefit to taking the new ball. In the six overs before
the new ball, there were wickets in only 87 innings, against 195 innings
after the new ball. Overall, there were 2.72 times as many wickets in the six
overs after the new ball than in the previous six overs, with even greater
benefits with narrower windows. These numbers
suggest that early taking of the new ball is very beneficial, but it would be
unwise to read too much into this. The taking of the new ball is not a random
event: captains usually choose to do so when wickets are not falling, and
they sometimes use part-time bowlers in the overs just before the new ball. Indeed if you
look at the minority of innings where wicket(s) fell in the six overs before
a new ball was actually taken (87 cases) the number of wickets falling in the
six overs after the new ball is rather reduced – only 63 wickets. In these
cases where bowlers are already taking wickets, the new ball has had no
beneficial effect. I also looked at
overs numbered 81-86 in all innings of sufficient length, and compared those
with the new ball to those without. There were 347 innings with a new ball
and 125 without (many of which took the new ball later on). In those without
a new ball, the average was 0.68 wickets falling in the six overs, but in
innings with a new ball it was only 0.67 wickets. This suggests no benefit to
the new ball at all! However, it is not quite so simple, since a significant
number of new balls are taken late in the 81-86 over window. If you restrict
the comparison to those innings where the new ball was taken in the 81st
over” (218 innings), then the return rises to 0.78 wickets in six overs.
There is some benefit evident here, but not as much as might be expected. Overall, I would
say that captains do a competent job in choosing when to use the new ball.
Mostly. However, the effects of the new ball are sometimes exaggerated,
because captains are likely to call for it during a spell without wickets,
and particularly by the choice of second-string bowlers just before it
becomes available. ******** Highest averages
in a calendar year (Tests beginning in the year in question) DG Bradman 1932 402.0
(3 inns) JN Gillespie 2006 231.0
(3) CP Mead 1921 229.0 (2) H Sutcliffe 1931 226.0 (2) MS Sinclair 1999 214.0
(1) DG Bradman 1946 210.5
(2) Bradman also made
a score of 167 in a Test in 1932, but the Test began in 1931. If the 167 is
included in 1932, his average becomes 284.5. Add this one to
the list of unlikely achievements of Jason Gillespie. Sreeram points out that since Sinclair played
only one innings in 1999, that being his 214 on debut, he holds the record
for highest average by any batsman in the 20th Century. ******** Additions to the
1950s database will be suspended shortly. Holidays beckon. |
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Melbourne 1964: fielding side Pakistan
"appealed against the rain" on the final day; successfully, I might
add. Australia had been set 166 in 127 minutes, and was 88/2 in 71 minutes,
having scored 60 runs in the last six overs, when umpires called a halt.
Before the halt, bowler Arif Butt "stopped and
then plunged to the turf”, claiming injury. "Shepherd, at the striker's
end, looked incredulous and then threw his bat away" (Melbourne Age). The Pakistanis had earlier been
warned for slow play because they were taking five minutes to bowl an
eight-ball over, (equivalent to 16 six-ball overs an hour). How times have
changed.
******** In the Eden Gardens (Kolkata) Test of
2011/12, India v West Indies, play commenced at 8:30am local time on the
third and fourth days, brought forward after time was lost on the second day.
This is the earliest hour for play to start in a Test that I have noted. Prior to the day/night Test at
Adelaide Oval, the latest finishing time that I had recorded was 8:06pm at
Wellington in 2001/02 (v Bangladesh). In the day/night Test, close of play was
at 9:25pm and 9:18 pm on the first two days respectively. ******** |
12 April 2016
A little
discovery to share. Clyde Walcott
scored a century in a session between lunch and tea, Auckland 1951/52. He
went from 12 at lunch to 115 at tea, at which point he was out and the
declaration was made, with West Indies at 546/6. I believe that this century
in a session has not been previously recognised. I only just found
this while sorting through my notes of that series. One source (found in NZ
last November, the Wellington Evening
Post) gave Walcott's score at lunch and another source had the score at
tea, but no source gave both, or mentioned a century in a session. ******** Latest introduction of Bowlers, by Bowler
Number (Tests)
******** Fall of the Unconquered Every significant
unbeaten innings leaves open the question of how many runs might have been.
Statistically, the answer is, on average, similar to the batsman’s batting
average, but in specific innings one can never know. If the next innings by
the player is any guide, there have been some major unbeaten innings that are
followed up by complete failures. The list that follows shows the largest
unbeaten innings where the batsman was out to the next ball he faced. Often
this was in a different match; in the case of the leader, Bradman, it was in
a different series. Both Tests, if
applicable, are listed in the table. Michael Clarke holds the record for
largest not out first innings followed by a golden duck in the same Test. Large unbeaten innings
followed by a golden duck
******** Highest ratio of Teams’
first innings: first-class matches The following
table shows the most one-sided first innings in first-class matches, led by
Pakistan Railways 910/6 decl v Dera
Ismail Khan 32 at Lahore in 1964/65
In my opinion,
both the leading matches are of dubious first-class status. The first was the
only f-c match ever played by the Dera Ismail Khan
team, and the only f-c match for most of the players. |
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Peter Nevill
took a catch off his first ball in a T20 international. Nevill,
of course has played 12 Test matches, so it wasn't his first international
overall. In Tests, it hasn't happened to a
keeper, but two fielders have taken catches off the first possible ball in
Test cricket. One was PP Ojha in 2009, although he
had previously played in ODIs so it wasn't his first international, and the
other was AF Lissette at Dunedin in 1955. http://www.cricketarchive.co.uk/Archive/Scorecards/21/21877.html http://www.cricketarchive.co.uk/Archive/Scorecards/260/260283.html Lee Germon and
Luke Ronchi, as keepers, took catches off the first
ball of their ODI debut, although Ronchi had
previously played T20i cricket. http://www.cricketarchive.co.uk/Archive/Scorecards/59/59744.html http://www.cricketarchive.co.uk/Archive/Scorecards/132/132677.html In t20 internationals, Subash Kakurel of Nepal (a
keeper) and Saqlain Haider
of UAE (a fielder) took catches off the first ball on debut. Haider had previously played ODIs. http://www.cricketarchive.co.uk/Archive/Scorecards/591/591366.html http://www.cricketarchive.co.uk/Archive/Scorecards/938/938528.html ******** |
16 March 2016
Going
Online: the Test Matches of the 1950s
I am embarking on
an extension of the Test Match Database
Online. The intention is to upload most of what I have on Test matches from the
1950s. It will follow the structure of the 1920s to 1940s material that
is already available. I have started
with the 1950
England/West Indies series, and I will proceed gradually through the
decade. The 1950 series
was an important series, introducing "Calypso Cricket" to England
along with a winning West Indies team. Less well recognised is the
establishment, on England's part, of the grindingly slow batting adopted by
most teams in the 50s, perhaps in response to the permanent institution of
five-day Tests in England. Some slow scoring records were set including (at
Lord's) the team record for most consecutive balls without scoring. Check out Washbrook and Simpson taking
125 overs over a partnership of 212 runs at Trent Bridge. That would take
a day and a half at modern over rates, but the slowness was masked somewhat
by Ramadhin/Valentine et al getting through up to
140 overs per day. In those days the
consensus was that tight spin bowling could not be scored from without risk. ******** Dismissed by the
only ball faced in Test cricket
In McMaster’s
case, it was the only ball he faced in first-class cricket,
such was the very dubious status of this series. ******** |
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An oddly
hot topic last week was four bowlers in one T20 innings
conceding the same number of runs, with three of them having identical overs,
runs and wickets. There wasn’t much in the way of precedent in T20
internationals, but here's a T20 match with four bowlers with identical overs
and runs conceded http://www.cricketarchive.co.uk/.../Score.../455/455244.html Here's one
with three identical overs, runs, and wickets http://www.cricketarchive.co.uk/.../Score.../818/818690.html Four
bowlers conceding the same number of runs was a first for T20 internationals,
but it has happened in ODIs http://www.cricketarchive.co.uk/.../Score.../185/185984.html Also in
Tests http://www.cricketarchive.co.uk/.../Scorecards/23/23776.html |
3 March 2016
Bowlers taking
last two available wickets in consecutive balls in a Test match; thus
deprived of a chance for a hat-trick…
More than 50
other bowlers have done it once. As far as I can
tell, none of these bowlers took a wicket with his first ball of the next
match, thus claiming a ‘non-hat-trick’, except for the special case of George
Lohmann in 1895/96, who finished the first Test
with a hat-trick, then took a wicket with his first ball of the second Tests,
thus taking four in four. So it appears
that these ‘non-hat-tricks’ are extremely rare. Hardik
Pandya of India recorded one in the past week, playing T20s against Pakistan
and then Sri Lanka. Apart from Lohmann, there are
no other similar cases at all in my database of Tests, ODIs and T20i. This
data is, of course, not complete, but with about 75% of matches available
(almost five thousand matches), it gives an idea of how rare this must be. Waqar Younis took
three wickets in four balls across two Tests against West Indies and Sri
Lanka in 2002. In Ashes Tests, Jason Gillespie took five wickets in seven
balls across two Tests against England that were 2 years apart, starting at
Perth in 1998/99. He was dropped from the team between the two Tests, but
also played against other countries during those two years. ****** Here is some
complete data placing Adam Voges’ record-breaking
sequence of runs without dismissal in context. The “RUNS” section is covered
in standard record lists, but the “Balls Faced” and “Minutes Batted” records
are more complete than you might find elsewhere.
I will post these
lists in the “Unusual
Records” section. ******** |
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The following 6-ball overs had shots
off the bat for 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 (not in that order) West Indies (535) v England Kingston
1935, 117th over. 046123 West Indies v England Antigua 1986,
37th over, during Viv Richards record century.
136240 England (400) v West Indies, Chester-le-Street 2007, 75th over. 263410 Australia (401) v England Brisbane
2013/14, 53rd over. 263401 There are a couple of cases with
12346 (out of order) but no 0s (two singles). Most remarkable was Mumbai 1951/52,
when India hit 4, 0, 1, 2, 3, 8 in the 44th over, 1st
innings. There were no overs found containing
shots for 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. ******** In the first T20 against Australia, Hardik Pandya bowled five wides in the first over of his
international career, three of them before he could bowl a legal ball. I can't find any previous instances
of five separate wides in any over in T20 internationals. There are a couple
of cases of four wides plus one no ball, by Kemar
Roach and by Dale Steyn, both in 2010. http://www.cricketarchive.co.uk/Archive/Scorecards/79/79170.html This appears to be the most
productive ‘youth’ game, in these terms, played to date. It is possible that
more players will be selected for internationals from these or other teams so
the record could change. |
1 Feb 2016
For a change of
pace, I thought I’d share what I have decided is one of my favourite cricket
photos. It shows Lawrence Rowe being caught by Ian Chappell off Jeff
Thomson at the MCG on Boxing Day 1975. Those familiar with Australian cricket
photography will not be surprised to learn that it was taken by Patrick
Eagar.
The occasion was
the morning of one of the first Boxing Day Tests. Some 85,000 people were
present, and in those days the MCG stands were physically smaller than now.
Such was the crush of spectators that large numbers were sitting even right
behind the sight screen. As you can see,
the photo is on the cover of a Bill Frindall book
of scores from that time. While it is not a rare book, it is by no means
common and so I hope that no one concerned will mind the reproduction.
Unfortunately, my copy is worn by use, and so I have photoshopped
out some scratches and abrasions. Why do I like it?
Unlike most cricket photography, it presents a dramatic moment in a Test
match much as a spectator experiences it, with a wider field of view than
normally seen. Many modern telephoto shots, usually taken from the boundary
at ground level, are so extreme that they sometimes struggle to get even the
batsman’s face and bat into the same frame. I like the
elevated viewpoint and the composition. The participants are placed neatly,
and all eyes are on the ball, directing the viewer’s attention to the main
action. The power of Thomson is suggested by his position, still in mid-air
even though the ball has reached the slip fielder. The catcher’s position is
also dynamic, and shows perfect technique. The packed crowd looming at the
top of frame increases the sense of drama. I also really
like the lack of intrusive advertising (although I will admit to photoshopping out one small ad). I did not go to
that match, but I did see, with my brother, the equivalent day in the Sydney
Test. Even though we got into the ground more than an hour before the start,
there were no seats left in the stands (tickets were not numbered or
pre-sold) so we sat on the steps of the Sheridan stand, among 53,000 people;
the SCG would never see such a crowd again. Jeff Thomson retired hurt three
different batsmen that day; for atmosphere and drama, I have not been to a
day’s cricket since that quite matched it. I believe that
only fragments of video of these Tests have survived. ******** An article on the
most extreme Test performances of the last 50 years, combining batting
and bowling performances on the same scale. This is an extended version of an
article written for Cricket
Monthly online. It should be stressed that my list is ‘most extreme’, in
a statistical sense, rather than ‘greatest’. ******** Some notes on the
question: in 1975, did Denis Amiss break the ODI record score before Glenn
Turner? On 7 June 1975
the ODI record stood at 116 (David Lloyd in 1974). That day, Amiss scored 137
and Glenn Turner 171*. Both opened the batting in World Cup matches, with
simultaneous starting times, one at Lord's the other at Edgbaston. At lunch (1pm),
Amiss was 98 in 35 overs and Turner 82 in 40 overs. Amiss reached 100 off 112
balls. None of the reports available say exactly what happened next, but it
is very probable that Amiss would have reached 116 first. The partnership
between Amiss and Fletcher was very fast in the latter stages and would have
reached a crescendo going from 150 to 230 after lunch. Turner, however, also
scored extremely quickly after lunch. Less certain is
whether Amiss still held the record when he was out. Again there are no exact
figures, but Amiss was out in the 51st over, while I calculate from the later
falls of wicket that Turner was about 142 in 54 overs. However, the over rate
was higher in Turner's case, so his 54 overs may well have preceded Amiss' 51
overs. Minutes batted data would be useful here but
is lacking. Amiss, who had
scored the first two ODI centuries in 1972 and 1973, before ceding the record
to Lloyd, had probably retaken the record, but for less than half an hour,
and perhaps only for the time equivalent of five or six overs. ******** Australia has
selected a touring team to New Zealand with all six states represented. Using
place of birth, all six states were last represented in a Test at Bangalore
2010. (Players born overseas were not counted.) MJ Clarke NSW SR Watson QLD MG Johnson QLD NM Hauritz QLD PR George SA RT Ponting TAS TD Paine TAS BW Hilfenhaus TAS MJ North VIC SM Katich WA MEK Hussey WA At the Oval in
2005 and various earlier Tests, there were players from all six states, plus
the Northern Territory (Damien Martyn). There were all six plus ACT in some
Tests when Michael Bevan was playing, including Karachi 1994. Martyn and Bevan
never played together in Tests, and there are no cases with all eight states
and territories. However, it has happened in ODIs, including a game in Cairns
in 2003, and for good measure at that game there was also Andrew Symonds, born
in the U.K. http://www.cricketarchive.co.uk/Archive/Scorecards/77/77630.html I don't have
enough data to answer the question in terms of which teams the players were
playing for at the time.
Bowley was an opening batsman in the era of
Hobbs and Sutcliffe. At the age of 39, he filled in for Hobbs in a couple of
Tests against South Africa in 1929. Jimmy Cook is the
father of Stephen Cook, who has just been selected for South Africa after
scoring over 11,000 runs. Does not include
players who played no Tests. Alan Jones (36000+ runs) represented England in
matches against Rest of the World in 1970, but Test status for these matches
was later withdrawn. Jones scored 17,774 runs before the first Rest of the
World match. *** Most Test runs in
an Australian home season 2003/04 RT Ponting (6 Tests) 965 2003/04 ML Hayden (6) 952 2005/06 ML Hayden (7) 949 2005/06 RT Ponting (7) 944 1928/29 WR Hammond (5) 905 2012/13 MJ Clarke (6) 892 1952/53 RN Harvey (5) 834 2015/16 DA
Warner (6) 818 1936/37 DG Bradman (5) 810 The off-season
Tests in Cairns and Darwin are excluded, but the World XI Test in 2005/06 is
included. In 2003/04,
Ponting scored 1034 runs and Hayden 1013 if you include the off-season Tests
against Bangladesh. |
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Homebodies: FS Jackson (20 Tests) and H
Ironmonger (14 Tests) played all their Tests at home. For players who
eventually played away, the most home Tests from start of career is 13, by
several players including WG Grace, DR Doshi and Eoin Morgan. The Most for an Australian is 11 by Merv Hughes. AJ Traicos
played his first and only away Test 23 years after his debut. ******** After his 1* in the Melbourne ODI,
James Faulkner has now hit the winning run nine times in only 35 ODI innings
(25.7%). While he is way behind the likes of Dhoni
(24 out of 236 innings) in total number of winners, his percentage is higher
than anyone in this century who has played more than
five innings, and way ahead of any major player. Dhoni (10.2%) is
the leader among players with at least 50 innings. Data from 1999 onwards only. The somewhat maligned Mick Lewis,
never seen again after the 870-run slogathon in
Johannesburg in 2006, appears to be the only player on record to hit the
winning run in his only ODI innings (in matches between Test-playing countries).
All possibilities before 1999 have been checked. ******** |
18 January, 2016
Winning All Out
While there were
fluctuations in the past, the most recent results show a sudden and
significant fall-off.
Some questions
from Ask Steven: In the 2nd ODI between NZL and SL, Sri
Lanka spinner Jeffry Vandersay conceded 26 runs in
his debut over. (3 sixes and 2 fours). No one has else
has conceded 26 or more runs in an over on debut or during the first ODI in
which they bowled. Matthew Hayden conceded 18 runs in his only over in ODIs,
and I can't find anyone else since then who has conceded more in their first
over. ******** Dean Elgar and Stiaan
Van Zyl were the last two South African bowlers
when England was bowled out in the 2nd innings of the 1st test and then they
opened the innings for Proteas. Is it a unique event in test cricket when
both the opening bowlers were the last two bowlers to finish opponents innings? It's quite rare,
when circumstances are exactly as described. At Chittagong in 2009, Imrul Kayes and Tamim Iqbal bowled the last two overs of an innings
against Sri Lanka, and then opened the batting immediately afterwards.
However they did not bowl the opposition out; there was a declaration. There
are one or two similar cases in the last 20 years, where an innings ended in
a declaration. There are one or two other occasions where a pair of opening
batsmen bowled the last two overs of an innings, but these were last two
overs of a drawn match. At Rawalpindi in
1994, Taylor and Slater bowled the last two overs in Pakistan's second
innings and then opened. In this case, Pakistan was bowled out. I can't find
any other cases in the last 30 years and 1200 Test matches. Slater, who took
the last wicket in that innings, bowled only 4.1 overs in his whole Test
career. http://www.cricketarchive.co.uk/Archive/Scorecards/59/59528.html ******** Longest wait to complete an over in a Test: A couple of extreme cases were very
recent. Against Bangladesh last year, Dale Steyn waited 4 days to finish an
over. However, he never did finish it as the match was washed out. For
bowlers who did eventually complete their over, Josh Hazlewood
waited three days in the Sydney Test just a couple of weeks ago. Hazlewood's over was interrupted at about 1:40 pm, so he
had to wait about 2 hours short of a full three days. Chris Martin also
waited until the third day at Johannesburg in 2000, but his over was
interrupted at 6:26 pm and restarted at 10:45. Tony MacGibbon waited 4 days, including a rest day, at Dunedin
in 1955, but when play restarted, England declared, so he didn't complete the
over. ******** CA Roach WI v Eng, Georgetown, Guyana 1930 DG Bradman Aus
v Ind, Adelaide Oval 1947/48 DCS Compton Eng v
Pak, Nottingham (Trent Bridge) 1954 NJ Astle NZ
v Eng, Christchurch 2001/02 MS Dhoni Ind v Aus, Chennai (Chepauk) 2012/13 BA Stokes SAf v Eng, Cape Town 2015/16 |
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A recent research trip to New Zealand
met with some success. A total of eight Test match scores were found that
were previously thought lost, one from Christchurch and seven linear scores
from Auckland between 1967 and 1981. I also photographed more than 120
original scores of ODIs form the 1990s. I now have over 300 such scores from
prior to the Cricinfo era and hope someday to
extend back in time ball-by-ball knowledge of one-dayers.
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18 December, 2015
Re-writing
some Slow-Moving Records
Most of the
records for slowest scoring Tests date from many years ago, with few recent
additions. It seemed to be getting less and less likely that such records
would be much added to, what with the modern game dominated by flat-track
bullies using super bats on shrunken grounds. But then the
South Africans came along with an innings of 143 in 143.1 overs at the Delhi
FSK ground. The only real parallel was India’s 187 off 185 overs at
Bridgetown in 1962. The details of the South African innings challenge and
sometimes even surpass anything from olden times. Hashim
Amla’s 25 off 244 balls (10.25 R/100 b) and AB de
Villiers 43 off 297 (14.48 R/100b) rival anything from earlier times. Here are some
other slow innings in the same range, not on Cricinfo: 8.97 Hanif Mohammad
(20 off 223 balls) Lord's 1954 11.76 HL Collins (40 off 340) The Oval 1921 12.36 WH Scotton (34 off 275) The Oval 1886. Bizarre to think
that de Villiers started off the year by hitting a century off 31 balls in an
ODI, more than twenty times faster than his Delhi marathon. ******** Fewest runs by
individuals in a complete session (minimum two hours, 24 overs) 4 (90 balls) MD Crowe (19*), Colombo 1983 Day 5, Session 2 5 (78 balls) Arshad Khan (9*), Colombo 2000, Day 3, Session 2 6 (113
balls) HM Amla
(25), Delhi 2015, Day 4, Session 2 7 (124 balls) AC Bannerman (41), Melbourne 1892, Day 3, Session 2* 8 (~135 balls) B Mitchell (58), Brisbane 1931, Day 5 8 (93 balls) MC Cowdrey (27), Lord’s 1956,
Day 4, Session 3 8 CPS Chauhan
(79), Kanpur 1979, Day 1, Session 1 8 (99 balls) RC Russell (29*), Johannesburg 1995, Day 5, Session 2 8 (49 balls) GA Gooch (84), The Oval 1988, Day 3, Session 1 *possibly less than 2 hours, but about 45
overs were bowled. TE Bailey scored 8
in 121 minutes (135 balls) after lunch on Day 5, Leeds 1955. The match ended
when he was out. WR Playle scored 2 runs off 110 balls before lunch, Day 5,
Leeds 1958, batting for all but 2 balls of the session. PI Pocock scored 7 runs in a session of 31 overs but less
than 2 hours, Georgetown 1968. SCJ Broad (6)
scored just 2 runs in the first two hours of an extended session, Auckland
2013, Day 5 Session 3. He was out before the end of the session. Danny Morrison
scored 7 runs off 68 balls in a session of about 2 hours but only 21 overs at
Faisalabad 1990/91. Chris Tavare scored 18 runs in two sessions (9+9) at Chennai in
1982. The sessions were 90 and 120 minutes. ********
62 Amla and de Villiers, 3rd wicket, SAf
v Ind, Delhi 2015 58 Rabone and Poore, 6th wicket, NZ v SAf
Durban 1953/54 58 Hanif
Mohammad and Waqar Hassan, 2nd wicket,
Pak v Eng Lord’s 1954 53 Edrich and
Parkhouse, 5th wicket, Eng v WI Lord’s
1950 51 Younis Khan
and Azhar Ali, 2nd wicket, Pak v SL
Sharjah 2011 This is very much
a “where known” record. ******** Most balls faced
to reach double figures…
These are figures
from the bbb database only (73% of Tests), and I have
not hazarded any guesses for innings outside that set. Putting this together
was occasioned by the discovery of the Turner innings, which included a
stretch of 58 balls on a score of 6; the Auckland 1968/69 Test scoresheets
were among a recent find from a recent research trip to New Zealand. Some of
the other figures are uncertain, due to imprecise placement of byes and leg
byes in the originals. The Moses figure is from an over-by-over analysis
only. The innings by
the ‘dashing’ Compton is a surprise.
******** I have added two
new record categories to the Unusual Records files: slowest
teams to reach 50 and 100. In the latter, the Delhi marathon beats all
comers, with previous records being clustered around the ‘funereal’ period of
the fifties and early sixties. This is a
difficult area to nail down definitively, because many extreme cases tend to
come from an era that is poorly represented by detailed data. However, I have
done as much checking as possible, and I think there would be few cases that
escape notice completely. Estimates of some sort are possible in most cases
where scorebooks or other exact data are not available. Here is a part of the
tables…
********
Balls estimated
for Engineer: 30-35. Times do not include change of innings or breaks in
play. Dowlin and Surti’s
dismissals were in different sessions; Iddon’s and Trumper’s were on different days, almost 24 hours later
in Trumper’s case, in a heavily rain-affected
match. |
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Reaching ODI century with a six: Since 1999, de Villiers has 6, with
Gibbs, Kallis and Jayasuriya
on 3. Kallis and Jayasuriya
could have one or two more before 1999, but there is no bbb
data and no mention in Wisden reports. When Jayasuriya
reached 100 off 48 balls in Singapore in 1996 and hit 11 sixes, he reached
100 with a single. ******** Teams with most captains: in 1996,
Pakistan regularly fielded ODI teams with six past or present captains. The
first occasion was at Old Trafford. SInce then,
Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka have also fielded six; Sri Lanka did so in the World
Cup against Australia this year. The only team with seven was
(technically) a 'World XI' at MCG in 2005. Their opponents, an 'Asian XI' had
six, making 13 in all in the match. ******** Only one maiden was bowled on the
first day of the first Test against New Zealand (Australia 416 for 2). When
Australia scored 494 in a day against South Africa in 1910, there were no
maidens in the first 85 overs, but the day finished with five in 99 overs. There were no maidens on the first
day at Durban in 1938/39 (third Test, not the 10-day Test) in 76 overs.
However, they were 8-ball overs, so it was harder to bowl maidens. There were only 2 maidens in 87.3
overs on the first day of the Kolkata Test of 2011 (India/West Indies). ******** A question on Ask Steven: In NZ's
domestic T20 competition, Canterbury Kings fielder Peter Fulton took 5
outfield catches and their wicketkeeper Cameron Fletcher took 5 dismissals
also. Has it happened previously that two fielders have accounted for all 10
dismissals in any innings in any first class format? I can find a grand total of one
previous case that meets the criteria, Griqualand West v Easterns
in 2001 http://www.cricketarchive.co.uk/Archive/Scorecards/73/73236.html In a couple of others, the dismissals
were shared between 2 fielders but the keeper took nearly all of them. That's
it for all of senior cricket. At the other end of the scale, here's
an innings where 10 catches were taken by 10 different fielders. http://www.cricketarchive.co.uk/Archive/Scorecards/29/29098.html |
27 November 2015
A
few occasional notes
Victorian opener
Travis Dean now has a first-class average. After becoming the first batsman
in first-class history to make unbeaten twin centuries on debut, he then
scored 84 and 19 when he next batted. When he was out for 84 his first-class
average stood at 347.0. This was the highest average on record, at the end of
an innings, in all of first-class cricket (previously 325.0 by W Jaffer, and
320.0 by PS Clifford). His average briefly reached 366 just before he was out
for 19 in the second innings. The highest (transient) averages ever reached
are 392.0 SJE Loxton
1947 (232*, 73, 87) 389.0 HO Rock
1925 (127, 27*, 235) 371.0 Jiwanjot Singh 2012 (213, 158) 366.0 TJ Dean
2015 (154*, 109*, 84, 19) 354.0 W Jaffer
1997 (11, 314*, 29) ******** The most
consecutive ducks in f-c cricket that I can find is six, by several players,
including Albert Wright of South Australia in 1905-06, who did so in the
first six innings of his career. VHD Cannings, W Worsley. RR Richards and IM Kidson made six consecutive ducks and 7 consecutive 0s
including one 0 not out. RR Richards IM Kidson AP Sedara Mark Robinson of
Yorkshire failed to score in 12 consecutive innings, seven of them not out. Michael Jones
wrote today that Pakistan has two current players named Imran Khan. One of
them has played 7 Tests, the other 3 T20is... and yet neither has scored a
run. ******** First scoring
shot in Tests a six: here's some players, not necessarily a complete list
(but mostly complete, I think) EW Freeman
(second ball) Al-Amin Hossain* CA Best DM Richards Jahurul Islam KM Dabengwa MD Craig (first
ball faced) *not on debut: he
failed to score in his first Test. JH Sinclair
apparently cleared the boundary with his first scoring shot in 1896, but at
the time the shot only counted for four. ******** Some early
declarations in f-c cricket
4/2 Glamorgan v Worcestershire, Worcester
1935 17/3 Glamorgan v Hampshire, Bournemouth 1981 23/4 Middlesex v Yorkshire, Leeds 1906 26/5 Eagles v Dolphins, Durban 2008/09 21/6 Glamorgan v Notts,
Cardiff 1924 24/7
Windward Is v Leeward Is, Roseau, Nov 2015 43/8 Cambridge U v Warwickshire, Cambridge 1953 44/9 Sussex v Gloucestershire, Cheltenham 1968 44/9 Victoria v WA, Melbourne 1975/76 Previously the
earliest declaration with 7 wickets down was 32/7 – in a Test match, Aus v Eng Brisbane 1950/51. ********
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Test centuries with strike rate greater than a run per ball from the
very first ball:
******** Dismissed on overnight score… http://www.cricketarchive.co.uk/.../Scorecards/54/54006.html http://www.cricketarchive.co.uk/.../Scorecards/71/71803.html In total, it appears to have happened
to Misbah five times, including the two in the
current match. Four of those have been in the last 12 months. I calculate six each for Chris Cairns
and Jacques Kallis. MIsbah
joins DBL Powell, RS Dravid, MA Atherton and GA
Gooch on five. Martin Snedden
scored a three-day duck at Trent Bridge in 1990. He was 0 not out on the
first day and again on the second (only 5 overs were bowled), then out for 0
off 29 balls on the third morning. The highest score by a batsman
dismissed on his overnight score is 223 by Bradman in 1930/31. The thousands
who turned up to see Bradman continue his double-century were not best
pleased. Clyde Walcott (152) was run out as non-striker on the first ball of
the second day at Delhi in 1948. Conrad Hunte, on
debut, batted right through his first day of Test cricket, but was out for
142 first ball next day (Bridgetown 1958). ******** A reader on the Ask Steven Facebook
page noted that in a recent Australia A v India A match in Chennai, Gurinder Sandhu Took wickets by all available means:
bowled, caught, lbw, stumped and hit wicket. In
modern cricket, this is a rare event. I appears that
it hasn't happened in a Test match, which is a bit of a surprise. In f-c
cricket, there are quite a few cases (more than 100), but there are very few
in recent times.[It seems that hit wicket was more common long ago than it is
now, so fewer bowlers get all five. Stumping is also less common.] The most recent prior case that I found (and
this is a case of all five in one innings) was BGK Walker in this match in
1998. http://www.cricketarchive.co.uk/.../Scorecards/65/65295.html ******** |
29 October 2015
A
Very Long Wait Indeed
Most Balls Bowled Before
First Wicket in a Test Innings Zulfiqar Babar of
Pakistan gave this record a good shake in the recent Test in Abu Dhabi.
Zulfiqar finished with figures of 72-17-183-1.
*8-ball overs. Italics indicate
timeless Tests. Verity took two
wickets in his last over of that innings in 1939, having previously gone wicketless for the equivalent of 73 overs. Figures that are
undetermined include: >350? DR Doshi Auckland 1981. ? AB Howard
Georgetown 1972 >350? SA Durani Kingston 1962 ~350 AV Mankad
Peshawar 1955 There may be
others, although I doubt if there are any undetermined figures that would
rank in the top 6. At Bridgetown in
1962, Lance Gibbs bowled 225 balls before his first wicket, but finished with
8 for 38. Most balls in an
innings without taking a wicket: 432 By DS Atkinson (72-29-137-0) at
Edgbaston 1957. 179 M Prabhakar,
Lord’s 1990 166 RK Chauhan, Colombo 1997/98 159 I Sharma Edgbaston 2011 156 PR Adams Johannesburg 1996/97 ******** Chancy Triples With assistance
from Michael Jones and Christopher Hilton’s “The 300 Men” I have compiled a
list of known chances (catches and stumpings) for
batsmen making Test triple centuries.
The most
expensive misses can be listed 324 runs: Hutton
364 (stumping) 323 runs: Hanif 337 (unconfirmed) 316 and 307 runs:
Taylor 334* 297 runs: Inzamam 329 297 runs: Gooch
333 293 runs:
McCullum 302 The results
emphasise an element of luck in making huge scores. Depending on how one treats
‘technical’ chances, only about 21-39% of these batsmen reached 300 without
giving a chance. By contrast, about 50% of century-makers reach 100 without
any chance (higher if you don’t count technical chances). Many of these
innings, possibly a majority of them, also included misadventures in running
between wickets and near run outs, but these have not been included. The
usual caveats apply as to what constitutes a chance and what does not:
opinions will vary, particularly across the years. Before television, there
would be extra uncertainty about some chances. |
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A couple of intriguing
(non-first-class) matches from India, unearthed by Sreeram
from the trove in Cricket Archive. One was a timeless university match that lasted
for eight consecutive days, with a fourth innings of 611. The other was a schools match with a team
innings of 1025, a first innings lead of over one thousand and a margin of an
innings and 925 runs. The latter match does not have a full score: it would
be most interesting to find one. I did find the close of play scores
in the university match: Bombay was 268/9 on the first day,
out for 343 on the second with Delhi 160/2. Delhi was out for 241 and Bombay
(second innings) 99/2 and 501/5 on the 3rd and 4th days. Bombay was out for 625, setting Delhi
728 to win. Delhi was 125/1 on the 5th day, 343/4 on the 6th, 567/6 on the
7th day, and out for 611 on the eighth day. The two second innings thus
spanned six days. ******** Siva Teja has
done some interesting work on the geography of international cricket grounds.
He found two grounds that are virtually antipodean to one another: Whangarei
in New Zealand and Tangier in Morocco, some 20,020 kilometres apart. The
closest two that still exist are the two grounds in Quetta, Pakistan, which
are across the road from one another. Only a handful of internationals have
been played there. The cities (pop 100,000+) that are
most distant from any international ground are Honolulu, Hawaii (from Whangerei) and Punta Arenas, Chile (from Georgetown,
Guyana). ******** The official paid attendance on the
final day at Adelaide Oval in 1967/68 was 17. India was already 9 down, and
only 6 overs were bowled. This is the lowest non-zero attendance figure for a Test day in my
database. |
16 October 2015
I have updated
the “Hot 100” list, the
fastest-scoring and slowest-scoring batsmen in Test cricket. I do this about
once a year. It is a characteristic of most batsmen that their scoring rates
change from year to year much less than their batting averages, so there has
been only slow change in the rankings. The notable movers are Brendon
McCullum, up eight places after a stellar year, and Shakib
al Hasan of Bangladesh. [Note that, due
to a subtle error, Chris Gayle and a couple of others were left off last
year’s list.] ******** The list of
batsmen reaching an ODI century off the last possible ball has been updated (19
August 2015). At Kanpur, AB de Villers
became only the fifth confirmed case of achieving this with a six: Mohammad Yousuf (twice), Kevin Pietersen
and UPDATE UPDATE. Rajneesh Gupta adds the following: -Javed Miandad did so in a
43-over game (Pak v WI, Georgetown, 1988) -One
more ball was bowled in Zimbabwean innings after Sikandar
Raza reached his hundred off a no-ball. Raza lost the strike while taking the
single to complete his hundred. -Ramiz
Raja was out obstructing the field on 99 while going for the second run
(which would have taken him to his 100) in a 44-over game (Pak v Eng, Karachi, 1987). ******** I wrote some time
ago that the first batsman to hit sixes off consecutive balls was Warwick
Armstrong at the MCG in 1908. There is, however, an earlier example. JJ Lyons,
at the Oval in 1893, hit five consecutive balls faced for four (two off
Briggs and three off Lockwood. He was out next ball). The last two hits,
although they only counted four at the time, cleared the boundary and would
be regarded as sixes today. The first of these hits “he drove straight to the
roof of the pavilion, the ball bounding over.” That was one mighty hit,
perhaps exceeding 115 metres. Runner run out in
Tests, where known (Batsman given out named, runner in brackets) Steve Waugh was
run out only four times in Tests, and it turns out that one of those involved
his runner. Waugh’s partners were run out on 23 occasions. MacLeod and Jones
were run out after being bowled by the no ball, but left the crease not
hearing the call, and thinking they were out. Macleod was nearly deaf, and
his run out has to be described as “just not cricket, old chap”. ******** In his 245 in the
Test at Abu Dhabi, Shoaib Malik made scoring shots
for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. I have records of about 60 other cases, but there
are probably a couple of dozen others not recorded. The smallest score to
include all these shots is 39 by EA Brandes for
Zimbabwe at Auckland in 1996. No one has added a 7 to the complete set,
although Andrew Sandham scored both a five and a
seven in his 325 in 1930. However, he hit no sixes. |
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Since 2000, I have logged the following numbers
of slip catches off pace bowlers in Tests... keeper 3184 1st slip 696 2nd slip 707 3rd slip 266 4th slip 26 gully 540 "Slip" 449 These are from text descriptions, which
are sometimes imprecise. "Slip" means that the exact
position was not specified in texts or reports. While 2nd slip gets more
catches in the above table, I would expect that a large majority of catches
at "Slip" were actually 1st slip. Some recorders do not mention a
slip number if only one slip is in place. Most expensive overs with no
boundaries or extras… There was an 8-ball over at SCG
1963/64 that went 0,3,2,3,3,0,2,2 = 15 runs. Peter
Pollock bowling, O'Neill and Lawry facing. There was a 6-ball over at Lord's
1982 that went 3,3,1,3,0,2 = 12 runs. Doshi bowling, Randall and Botham facing. This is "Where Known".
There could be others. ******** In the recent Colombo Test, Ishant Sharma, in his 65th Test, was the most
experienced player in the match, at the young age of 26. This is unusual but
not unprecedented. At Karachi 1959,
Garry Sobers (25th Test) was the most experienced player at age 22. At
Rawalpindi in 1997, Waqar Younis,
age 25 in his 45th Test, was the most experienced. Mohammad Ashraful was the most experienced player at age 25
against West Indies in 2009, in Tests where the senior West Indies players
had gone on strike and had been replaced. I don't think there are any others
before their 26th birthday, except some special cases in the 1800s which I
have excluded because nobody had played more than a handful of Tests.
Tendulkar played four Tests at age 26 where he was the most experienced
player, and Alan Knott played five. ******** Batsmen involved in run outs: In Tests,
I get 29 for Border (12 times out), 27 for Dravid
(13 times out) and Steve Waugh (4 times out: in one of those his runner was
run out), 26 for Chanderpaul (4 times out). Ponting
was involved in only 20 run outs, but was out himself on 15 of those occasions.
Inzamam was run out
only six times in Tests, and saw his partner run out ten times. In ODIs ,
there is Mohammad Yousuf (79/ 38 times out), SR
Waugh (78/ 27), Inzamam (76/ 40) and Tendulkar (76/
34), Dravid (74/ 40). Atapattu,
run out more than any other batsman (41 times), is down the list a bit on 65/
41. |
10 September 2015
Here is some
further data on the subject of the follow-on. I also looked at this subject
on 17 February 2014 . It
occurred to me that a primary factor behind the success of follow-on
decisions by captains might be the amount of time left in the match, rather
than the runs lead. So I looked at
the outcomes of matches where a follow-on was available,
in terms of the stage of the match where the follow-on decision was made. The
data in the table covers matches since 1995; Tests involving Bangladesh or
Zimbabwe, which have inevitable results, have been excluded. Win % in follow-on
situations, according to session of play
Not surprisingly,
the more time is available, the higher the likelihood of winning the match. Leading
by over 200 with more than 3 days to play just about guarantees a win,
regardless of the decision. However, there are some interesting differences
in the outcomes on the third and fourth days. Enforcing the follow-on: with each successive session, from the
beginning of the third day, the Win % declines. The decline is gradual, and
enforcing the follow-on on the fourth day still has good positive outcomes. Not enforcing the follow-on: there are excellent outcomes on the third
day, but the success rate plummets on day four. Bottom line: do
not enforce when time is available on the third day, but enforce the
follow-on when time is short (day four). Given that follow-on situations
arise more frequently on the third day, it is better in general NOT to enforce the follow-on. Teams not
enforcing have a 100% record if the decision comes up before tea on the third
day. This is quite remarkable when you think about it; at the very least you
would expect the occasional such Test to be washed out, but no trailing team
in the last 20 years has managed to recover from this, if asked to bowl
again. There is some
surprise in this data, in that it runs counter to the observation that it is
easier to win a Test by wickets than runs if time is an issue, because you
only need to score one extra run for a wickets win. The tiring of a bowling
attack when the follow-on is enforced seems to be a very important factor. ******** Shane Watson has
retired from Tests after a successful if oddly unsatisfying career. One aspect
of his play that has received negative comment are claims that Watson
overused the DRS system, and asked for too many improbable reviews of LBW
decisions. This is something that can be checked with stats. There have now
been more than 150 Tests that used the DRS system. In those Tests, on-field
umpires have made 781 lbw decisions (initially) against batsmen. Batsmen have
challenged those lbw decisions a remarkable 459 times, 59% of the time. For
top order batsmen, the percentage is even higher, about 65%. Decisions were
overturned in the batsman’s favour 126 times, representing 27.5% of the
reviews (about 29% for top-order batsmen). So how does
Watson compare to other batsmen? He was given out lbw (initially, on-field)
15 times, which places him third after Alistair Cook (19) and Brendon
McCullum (16). Watson challenged eleven of those decisions, so his percentage
of 73% is indeed higher than the typical top order batsman. In two out of the
eleven challenges, the decision was overturned, or 18%, which is rather lower
than the 29% of other similar batsmen. The sample size getting quite small
here, so don’t read too much into those last figures. Nevertheless,
this is evidence that Watson did overuse the system, but not radically so. I
would say that the data does not strongly support the complaint, given that
half of all batsmen will, by definition, have more than average number of
challenges, so Watson has plenty of company. One other factor is that Watson
was more prone to lbw than most other batsmen, so the review situation arose
more often, and so attracted more notice. Watson was also subjected to lbw
reviews by bowling teams more often than any other batsman: 17 times, ahead
of Ian Trott on 16. Only two of these resulted in
overturns, and Watson’s dismissal. Watson has not
been the leading challenger of decisions: Misbah-ul-Haq
has challenged 13 out of 14 decisions against him, with three overturns.
Curiously, Alistair Cook has challenged only seven out of 19 lbw decisions
against him, with two overturns. ******* Top Order Batsmen Making their Maiden
First-Class Century in a Test match. It has happened
occasionally with Zimbabwe players like GW Flower, BRM Taylor and AG Cremer,
and some Bangladeshis. But in the last 30
years I daresay the most prominent player who meets the criteria is (believe
it or not) Kumar Sangakkara. Sangakkara's
maiden first-class century came in his 10th Test match; it was his 50th
first-class match and 76th innings. Remarkable. He played 103 innings before
making a first-class century that was not in a Test match, and 140 innings
before doing so in Sri Lanka. Perhaps 20
players from the last 30 years also fit. Most of them ore not particularly
prominent, but Salman Butt had a highest score of 60 and only one fc
half-century (average 13.7) when he opened for Pakistan v Bangladesh in 2003.
David Warner, of
course, played for Australia before he played first-class cricket, but that
was in T20. He had a few fc centuries by the time he played Tests. |
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Here’s something I noticed while
reading some reports of Tests in 1888. It is relevant to the little mystery
why most countries refer to a cricket score as, say, 100 for 4 (runs-first),
whereas in Australia it is 4 for 100 (wickets-first). I appears
that in the 19th Century, reports in England generally used the wickets-first
style (at least in The Times). By
1907-1912, this style had changed in most cases to the runs-first style. In
between, in 1902, both forms seem to have been in use. In one 1902 report
(third Test, first day), both styles are used in the same paragraph. It would appear that the Australian
style is the retained original (or archaic) style, and that the English moved
away from it in the early 20th Century. The original style is
still seen in bowling figures, which are still given wickets-first
everywhere, as are falls of wicket on standard scorecards. ******** I have records of about 80 cases of
bowlers bowling
consecutive wides, but Mitchell Starc
at Trent Bridge is the first to do it
in both innings of one Test. Guy Whittall did it
twice in the same innings against India at Harare in 2001. Mohsin Kamal bowled
three consecutive wides to Mark Taylor at Rawalpindi in 1994, as did RJ
Peterson to Alex Doolan at Centurion in 2014, and MB Owens of New Zealand at Moratuwa in 1992/93. This data covers only about 80% of
Tests. ******** In another remarkable Test, Sri Lanka
defeated India at Galle even though they were five wickets down and still
trailing in the third innings of the match. Apart from the immortal Headingley 1981 Test, when England were still behind with
seven down, I found only three other teams that were behind with five down in
the third innings and who went on to win the match: Colombo 92, Hamilton 93
and Sydney 94. These Tests are oddly clustered together but I don't think
there are others. None of these other three were as far
behind with five down as Sri Lanka in the recent match.
|
19 August 2015
Here are a couple
of recent published articles. From the excellent Between Wickets journal, Winter 2015. Cricket
Fatalities Some shocking historical statistics on the number of people
killed playing cricket. This is a subject covered previously in the blog, with
some extra information. Jackschon, Fergie and the Genesis of Advanced Cricket
Scoring. The story of the pioneers of advanced scoring techniques, which are
so ubiquitous in the modern game. (edited version). ******** If
You Thought You had Never Seen Such a Collapse…
You were right.
Australia’s loss of five wickets in the first 4.1 overs of the Trent Bridge
Test was unprecedented, not only on the first morning of a Test match, but in
any Test innings. The 25 balls bowled beat the old mark of 28 balls by India
(6 runs, 5 wickets) at The Oval in 1952. Even Bangladesh’s worst – 29 balls
at Harare in 2004 – was no match. Earliest Fall of Wickets
in Test Innings
* 4-ball overs Australia was all
out before lunch for 60, with just 39 runs coming off the bat. Those 39 runs
represents the worst showing by Australia’s batsmen since 1902, bowled out
for 36 (33 off the bat) on an unplayable pitch at Edgbaston. Stuart Broad (8
for 15) made a mess of all previous records for bowling on the first morning
of a Test. I have updated various sections of the “Unusual Records” that
were affected by this assault. Note that most of the other entries of this
type involved at least some tail-end batsmen. The most astonishing aspect of
Broad’s demolition is that it involved so many top order batsmen. Incidentally,
England’s declaration before lunch on the second day is unprecedented for a
team batting second, with the exception of one Zimbabwe Test. ******** Reaching 100 on the last possible ball of
a (full length) ODI innings (UPDATED)
*reached century
with a six. There are
possibly one or two others in early ODIs that have been overlooked, but
unlikely. Pietersen is the only one to do it in the
second innings; not surprisingly, he hit the winning runs with the same ball.
McMillan and Williamson benefited from a second crack at the last ball
because the bowler bowled a no ball. |
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At Wellington in 2001/02 (NZ v
Bangladesh), play on the fourth day did not end until 8:06 pm local time.
This is the latest stumps time that I have recorded for a Test match day.
Play had been washed out on the previous day, and did not start until 1:00 pm
on the day in question. Even so, 88 overs were bowled in the day. There was a period in the late 90 and
early 2000s when day lengths were very flexible when making up lost time, and
days could run up to 7.5 hours play or even more. Eventually (by 2005) this
was limited to a maximum 7 hours – or 6.5 hours, if no time had been lost –
with maximum 30 minutes extension at start and finish in most countries. I
think that play in England never starts early, but can extend 60 minutes at
the end of the day to make up lost time. ******** The most balls bowled between wickets
by an individual bowler in Tests is 952 balls by
Maurice Tate spread over two series in 1929. A Queensland medium pacer named
Alfred Ryan went wicketless for more than 1112
balls in fc cricket in 1936. Can't say the exact number, or if it is the
record, but it seems to be the only case of more than a thousand if you just
look at complete innings. ******** A search for most boundaries conceded
in a Test produced an interesting result. Brett Lee conceded 44 boundaries at
the SCG in 2003/04. Next highest is 42 by Jason Krezja
on debut at Nagpur, John Gleeson at Port Elizabeth in 1970, and Tim Southee
at Lord's just last May. Lee also has most in an innings with
35, equal with Bill O'Reilly at Old Trafford in 1934. There are some other possible
candidates for which there is no data, but most of
the 'most likely' cases have been covered. That includes cases like OC Scott
in 1930, Fleetwood-Smith in 1938, and Fazal Mahmood
& Khan Mohammad in 1958, all of whom conceded fewer boundaries than the
above. Sri Lanka’s 952 in 1997 is also covered. |
5 August 2015
New Membership of the 400 Club
I know this has
been talked about elsewhere, but here is a simple table of the bowlers who
have reached 400 wickets in Tests. There are various ways of comparing a
bowler’s importance. Wickets per match (the normal metric
in this case) is one, but runs conceded and balls bowled also provide
interesting comparison. Stats for the 400th
Wicket
Figures as they stood at the taking of the
400th wicket. (Hadlee’s runs conceded is not precise, and may be ± 5 or 10.)
Number of years figures are rounded. The increasing
frequency of Test matches is reflected in Hadlee’s
third position in number of matches, but 13th in time taken. ******** Virender Sehwag hit a
boundary from his first ball 25 times in Tests, and leads the field ahead of Sangakkara on 18. In ODIs, Sehwag (25) is behind Shahid
Afridi (27+). Data is incomplete for Afridi, due to lack of data before 1999.
Dilshan is next on 23. In T20i, Mohammad
Hafeez leads with 10. In total, Sehwag on 53, leads Dilshan on 46, Sangakkara on
40, and Afridi on 39+. Data since 1999
is not absolutely complete for ODI and T20i, but will be close to complete. For first ball of
team innings in Tests, GC Smith (10) leads Sehwag
(5). Sehwag often batted at #2 in Tests. Gambhir (8), Gayle (6) and Trescothick
(7) are also ahead of Sehwag. In ODI, Sehwag (20) leads Watson and Gilchrist each on 10. |
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I had a look for Test
series that contained 2 consecutive Tests that were decided in the last
possible hour of the match. For 5-day Tests since the War all I found was 1978/79 Pakistan v
India Lahore and Karachi 1985/86 Australia v
New Zealand Perth and Sydney 1993/94 Pakistan v
Zimbabwe Karachi and Rawalpindi The 2015 New Zealand
Tests in England may qualify, but I believe that there was more than one hour
available for play in the second match.(UPDATE:
there were 19.1 overs to play, and the day ended at 4:55.) Last year two
consecutive Tests in England (v Sri Lanka) had very close finishes but one
was drawn. This is tricky to
research so if anyone can think of others let me know. ******** A Somerset wicketkeeper
named Seymour Clark in 1930 had a complete first-class career of 9 innings, 2
not out, 0 runs, avge 0.00. He never bowled either,
but he did take eight catches. A fellow named Faisal Yasin has failed to score in his last 11 first-class
innings. His career started with 2, 1* and 1* in his first 3 innings, but his
batting went downhill from there, with just 1 run in his last 14 innings. He
has a respectable bowling average of 32, so he may yet play again. ******** In the 2011 Georgetown
Test (West Indies/Pakistan), there were 30 dismissals that required an
umpire’s decision. There were 20 lbws, five caught behind, three caught at
short leg, one run out, and one catch at second slip that required a third
umpire decision. This appears to be the most ‘appeal dismissals’ in a Test
match. Billy Bowden exercised that crooked finger sixteen times. There were
six dismissals, not given on the field, where the OUT decision came from
‘upstairs’, and 17 reviews requested by the players (four were overturns). I have assumed here
that the majority of bowled and caught dismissals in Tests do not involve an
umpire decision. ******** |
9 July 2015
I have been away
for a few weeks, including a brief visit to England to visit family. I have posted a picture I
took of a cricket match, which shows cricket as it is perhaps meant to be. A
lovely setting and village green atmosphere. The bowler is my brother, still
bowling fast(ish) at age 55. At mid-off is his son,
also a quickish bowler. The match was at Wells,
Somerset. One modern aspect: it was a Twenty20 game that started at 6:30 pm
and still finished before sunset. You can’t do that everywhere. ******** The Longest Overs
I have compiled a
list of the longest single overs in the database, those with more than 10
deliveries. It is restricted to six-ball overs; there are quite a number of
eight-ball overs that qualify, but I have excluded those. None of those
eight-ball overs had more than 12 deliveries. Most Deliveries in a Six-Ball Over, where
known
The two
appearances by Ambrose occurred in the same innings. The Sparling over was
all legal deliveries, and was thanks to a severe miscount by the umpire. Most
of these overs are concentrated in the time after the front-foot no ball
rule, but before the decline in no ball counting in this century (partly
because some umpires don’t seem to bother much with watching for no balls any
more). Still, it is surprising that no cases since 1997 can be found. I have not
included the two ‘double overs’ known in Test cricket (Armstrong in 1921 and
Moir in 1950/51), where a bowler was mistakenly allowed to bowl two
consecutive overs before and after a break. There are a
number of other cases where a bowler bowled a full over to end an innings and
then bowled the first over when a follow-on was enforced. Merv
Hughes did this twice. Technically, the most consecutive balls bowled by the
same bowler in Tests was 17 by Ray Lindwall in 1946/47. He finished one Test (the third in
Melbourne) with a nine-delivery over (eight balls plus one no ball) and
started the next Test with an eight-ball over. ********
The unfortunate
batsmen dismissed on the seventh ball of an over were Dale Steyn and Kemar Roach. |
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Mohammad Azharuddin
played a total of four Tests during his career with no batting or bowling or
keeping. He took a catch in one of them. Hendren
and Mahanama also had 3 Tests without batting,
bowling or taking a catch. Mark Boucher played 11 Tests during
his career where he didn't bat or bowl. He kept wickets and took catches in
all of them. ******** Here is a list of first-class matches
in which a batsman was left stranded on 99* when the captain declared the
innings closed. Some data from Aslam Siddiqui… M Howell, Free Foresters v Oxford U,
Oxford, 1934 (was captain) GOB Allen, Free Foresters v Oxford U,
Oxford, 1952 (captain - ERT Holmes) P Bainbridge, Gloucestershire v Kent,
Bristol, 1983 (captain - D Graveney) TN Lazard, W Province v N Transvaal,
Cape Town, 1988-89 (captain - AP Kuiper) CEB Rice, Transvaal v W Province,
Cape Town, 1990-91 (was captain) NR Taylor, Kent v Nottinghamshire,
Nottingham, 1995 (captain - MR Benson) M Klinger, Victoria v Tasmania,
Hobart, 2000-01 (captain - PR Reiffel) G Welch, Derbyshire v Somerset,
Taunton, 2005 (captain - LD Sutton) Also... JWH Makepeace, Sussex v Lancashire,
Eastbourne 1907 (AC MacLaren) JG Dewes,
Combined Services v Indians, Portsmouth 1946 (JGW Davies) WR Endean, Western Province v
Transvaal, Cape Town 1950/51 (EAB Rowan) WGA Parkhouse, Glamorgan v Essex,
Newport 1952 (W Wooller) LF Outschoorn,
Worcestershire v Glamorgan, Dudley 1954 (RE Bird) HL Johnson, Sussex v Derbyshire,
Worthing 1961 (DB Carr) P Willey, Somerset v
Northamptonshire, Taunton 1970 (RM Prideaux) H Gidwani,
Delhi v Punjab, Delhi 1976/77 (BS Bedi) SM Davies, Gloucestershire v
Worcestershire, Cheltenham 2008 (VS Solanki) For Willey, Klinger and Makepeace, it
was their highest fc score at the time, although all went on to make
centuries later. Klinger's team actually lost the match. Incidentally,
Bainbridge (who had prior centuries) had been out for 99 in his previous
match, five days earlier. In his 99*, he failed to score off his last 7
deliveries with a declaration impending. ******** Since the early 1960s, it has been
the Australian custom for the opening pair to exchange the #1 and #2
positions in the second innings, so there is no favouring of one position or the
other for any opener. (There are some exceptions, including Simon Katich.) For Australia since 1961, the #1 position has
averaged 41.1 and the #2 has averaged 40.7 - virtually no difference. England and other countries have
tended to give the more senior batsman first ball, so there is a tendency for
#1 to have a better average than #2. |
20 May 2015
Dropped Catches Report for 2014
I have completed a survey of missed chances
mentioned in Cricinfo commentary texts for Tests in
2014, including a few in early 2015 before the World Cup. As in earlier
years, I looked for all possible references to dropped or missed catches and
missed stumpings. “Technical” and “half” chances
were included, as were any incidents reported where a fielder failed to reach
a catch but should have. The surveys now extend across 15 years and more
than 600 Tests. There was a surprise result. After trending
slowly down for some time and reaching a new low of 25% missed chances in
2013, the incidence of misses jumped up to 27.5% in 2014-15. Part of this was
due to the more Tests for Zimbabwe (with their poor catching), but mostly it
is a bit of a mystery. There is always the possibility that the search
protocols are unreliable, but it is hard to see why, and I can’t really test
that. A critical change was a leap in the number of
catches missed by Australia. An incidence of 19% in 2013/14, the best
one-year result for a team since I have been doing the surveys, soared to 27%
in 2014/15. This is rather baffling, but I think it is consistent with my
impression, that Australian fielders were dropping a lot more catches than
usual in series against Pakistan and India. Super-reliable hands like David
Warner started recording some drops, usually in the ‘very hard’ class. Anyway here are some figures by country
Beneficiary of the year was Kane Williamson,
missed five times, including a stumping, during his 242* against Sri Lanka
(actually in Jan 2015 but included here). This equals the luck of Blignaut (84*) in 2005, Amla (253) in 2010, and Taufeeq Umar (135) in 2011. The most expensive miss was a “relatively easy”
chance at silly mid-on when Brendon McCullum was on 9 at Wellington. He went
on to make 302. The fielder was Kohli, the bowler
Mohammed Shami. The 293-run gap is just shy of the
297-run benefit enjoyed by Inzamam-ul-Haq (329,
dropped on 32) in 2002. MS Dhoni added seven
more misses to his career during the year, and now leads the 21stcentury
with 66. Alastair Cook (56) has now edged past Rahul Dravid
(55) to lead among non-keepers. Cook’s tally includes 17 misses at short leg,
the most difficult fielding position. Parallels: Australia’s drop rate in 2014/15 was
27.5%. The rate recorded for Australia in Bill Frindall’s
scores from 1975 to 1977 was 27.6%. Batsman missed most times in 2014/15: M Vijay 11,
K Sangakkara 10. Most runs scored after being missed in 2014/15
(totals): BB McCullum 1055, KS Williamson 855. Surprisingly, McCullum’s
figure is not the highest since I have been collecting data: Mohammad Yousuf benefited from missed chances to the tune of 1116
runs in 2006. [These figures treat all drops as separate and additive, so
that the ‘runs cost’ in a single individual innings can exceed the size of
the innings if, say, a batsman is dropped twice early in his innings.] Bowlers suffering most missed catches: HMRKB Herath 16, NM Lyon 14. Spin bowlers often lead in this
category: there are various reasons, including the number of chances at short
leg catches and c&b, which have very high drop
rates, and the difficulty wicketkeepers have in taking chances off spinners,
and effecting stumpings. Fielders with most misses: BJ Haddin
and Mushfiqur Rahim with 11. Note that for 18 of
the 353 misses, the name of the fielder was not recorded. |
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There are no cases of
a Test in a series beginning the next day after after
another ended. There are 34 cases of one day off in between; the last time it
happened was the 1st and 2nd Tests of Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka in 1994/95. In 1956 Australia
played Tests in and against two different countries (Pakistan and India) with
only one day off in between. One was on a matting wicket and the other on
turf. They had a sequence four Tests and 18 days play with only four days
off, and it would have been only three days off except that one Test finished
a day early. This happened during a period when there were no Tests at all in
Australia for four years. Strange. In 1961/62 England and
Pakistan went 85 days between two Tests of the same series. England played
five Tests in India in between. |
24 April 2015
A “Burlesque Cricket Match”
On the occasion
of the ANZAC (25 April 1915) Centenary… Just today I read
a remarkable
document, unearthed by my cousin Kath from the massive archives of the
Australian War Memorial. It describes a rest and recreation spell in the
midst of the Great War. It is from the 5th Australian Field
Ambulance Brigade, who after a hard slog in the forward trenches,
was granted 14 days relief in June 1918. It highlights the
importance of sport, particularly cricket, in maintaining morale, and perhaps
even sanity, in these extreme circumstances. No fewer than 40 cricket matches
were played. We see sport and cricket as a valuable therapy, a way of holding
on to humanity in what must have been an insane environment. I particularly
liked the “burlesque cricket match…anyone with any knowledge of cricket was
prohibited from playing”, and the attempt by Captain H.W.L. Kelly to bat
twice, the second time in “camouflage”. It appears that the officers and men
were equally enthusiastic. While the drama
and sacrifice of the War outside is not by any means the subject, the spirit,
and the sense of release, hints at the horrors that they had faced, and would
return to. From a personal
perspective, the greatest interest is in the author, lance-corporal W.N.
(William Norman) Davis, who is in fact my grandfather. This is the first
document of any substance that we have found that was written by him during
his service. Like many of his comrades, he spoke little of his War experience
in later years. As a stretcher bearer venturing out into No Man’s Land, we
can barely imagine the things that he saw. He died in 1953, before I was
born. [I came across a
picture (a team photo) of my grandfather as captain of a premiership-winning
A Grade Churches Cricket team, St Clement’s
Marrickville, taken some time in the 1920s. Back then, Churches cricket was a
very substantial league. Winning A Grade would have required some pretty good
cricketers.] ******** And here are a few other lines I wrote, also in connection with the
Centenary The 24th April 1915 marked the start of the pogroms and
massacres of the Armenian community in Ottoman Turkey. The veil of war
brought to a head a long history of oppression of this (civilian Christian)
minority, which reached a frenzied level later in 1915. The massacres and
deportations continued for several years. The death toll is disputed, but was
certainly well over one million, with many more losing their entire families
and escaping with nothing but their lives. Now I doubt if anyone in the ANZAC front line had any inkling that
they might have been helping the Armenians. That was not the aim, but it was
an effect. They were fighting for something. While the campaign
failed, it was not futile or pointless. Better planning, and seizing the
opportunity for victory at Suvla Bay, might have overthrown
the Ottomans and turned the war on its head, and saved countless lives. As awful and evil as war is, there are some things that are even
worse. The prevention of such evil is something worth fighting for. |
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Highest innings in first-class
cricket consisting entirely of boundaries (where known). For a time, this was
thought to be an innings of 46 by John Emburey in
Tasmania in 1986/87. However, here is one case of 52 runs that appears to be off genuine
bowling: SHT Kandamby
in 2004. Mark Pettini for Most series by a
captain who won them all is four by Salim Malik, although he was also losing
captain in a one-off Test against South Africa. Notable is Richie Benaud's record: 5 wins, no losses, 1 draw. It is a pity
about that draw: Australia would probably have won the series if Benaud had chosen to chase a straightforward target of
242 off about 90 overs in the final Test of 1962/63. I have excluded
one-off Tests. To qualify, the player had to be captain in both the first and
last Test of a series. For the least
successful, look no further than Bangladesh. |
10 April 2015
Cricket Fatalities: Casting a Wider Net
The death of
Philip Hughes was an especially shocking event. Not only did it occur to a
batsman wearing the protective gear that has made serious injuries relatively
rare, but it had no precedent in Australian first-class cricket, even in the
days before helmets. However,
precedents can be found by casting the net wider. On his blog, “Cuts
and Glances”, Gideon Haigh shared
some results of a search of the Trove Australian Newspaper database.
Haigh simply searched for articles containing the words “killed”, and
“cricket ball” and came up with a remarkable number of hits. I extended this
search with other combinations (death + cricket + ball, and fatal + cricket +
ball), weeded out the duplicates, and compiled some statistics on the
results. As Haigh noted,
there is no way of knowing how comprehensive such a survey would be. However,
given that all were unusual and tragic events, and the fact that most cases
were reported in multiple newspapers, I would expect (and hope, given the
numbers) that a majority of cases have been uncovered. Some papers in those
days would record all cases emerging from Coroner’s reports, and deaths of
this type would certainly attract the attention of Coroners. The number was
surprising, even alarming. Over ninety separate cases were found of men,
women, and children killed by cricket balls in Australia between 1880 and the
1950s. (The Trove database in its current state peters out after about 1954.)
These cases are specific to blows from cricket balls, and do not include
death from other causes during cricket matches. There were, incidentally,
very few incidents reported during the World Wars; at other times, more than
one per year was commonplace. Some victims were
umpires or spectators, but most were players, and most of those were batsmen.
While most incidents happened during organised matches, others happened at
practice or in people’s backyards. In a few cases, the blow may have
exacerbated a previously existing health problem, so the blow was only an
indirect cause of death. The most striking
feature was how young many of the victims were. Excluding non-participants,
the median age was just 18. Half the victims were that age or younger.
Thirty-three cases were under 16 years old. Even allowing for their lower
skill level in avoiding such blows, it appears that the young may be
particularly vulnerable to serious injury when struck. Some of the
non-participant victims were also children, as young as eleven months (Annie
Denison, killed in her family’s backyard in 1894). About 70 percent
had head injuries; most of the others were struck on the chest (“over the
heart” is a common phrase). It was notable that at least ten were hit ‘behind
the ear’, presumably like Hughes. There were more fatalities from this type
of blow than on the temple (seven). In some 27 other cases, the head injuries
were unspecified and without further detail in the reports, so it is very
likely that there were more cases similar to the Hughes injury. Perhaps
Hughes’ fate was not quite so rare as we thought. In about ten
cases, the player was pronounced dead on the field. Most died later; in some
cases the seriousness of the injury was not realised at the time. A few of
the victims walked off the field, or even walked home. “Don’t worry, I’m all
right” were among the last words of David Mitchison
after being struck in 1933. Most freakish
perhaps was a batsman, Robert Parker, killed by a ball hit from another game
on an adjacent ground, at Artarmon in Sydney in 1925. In 1903, the
unfortunate A.J. Collins died after being struck on the ankle; he somehow
contracted blood poisoning. We don’t have
much data since the 1950s, but deaths would certainly have continued in
subsequent decades, until protective equipment improved. A friend of Jeff
Thomson named Martin Bedkober was killed in a club
match in the 1970s. Haigh also notes
that the frequency of these tragedies was unknown to authorities or any
experts who were asked. Unlike the recent tragedy, these events attracted
only fleeting attention, with a few lines of reportage, and no follow-up. In
the few reports where any implications were discussed, no one seemed aware of
more than a handful of prior cases. It was certainly a surprise to find how
many times this happened, and how young the victims often were.
Substitute Collection I have put together a complete set of 768 catches by more than 200
substitutes in Tests (up to late 2014). The incidence of “c sub” has waxed
and waned over the years. The numbers reached a peak, about one every second
Test, in the 1980s and early 90s, coinciding with the peak in batsmen
retiring hurt. Since then the numbers have subsided to about one in every
four Tests, similar to pre-War rates. The most catches by substitutes are
UDU Chandana effected five catches and three
run outs as a substitute. My recollection of Harper is of one of the very best catchers that I
ever saw. He only played 25 Tests, being a spinner in the age of mighty West Indian
pace bowlers, so he had few opportunities. He was, not surprisingly, a
popular choice for substitute fielder. Most catches by a player who never made a starting appearance in a
Test match is three, by Iqbal Sikander (who did
play ODIs for Pakistan) and also Sheldon Gomes, brother of Larry. In all,
more than 90 players have taken catches as subs without ever playing in a
Test XI. Most of them took only one catch: their appearances were fleeting,
it would seem. I haven’t checked thoroughly, but I don’t know of anyone who has taken
a catch as Test substitute and never played senior cricket. Chris Sabburg, who famously took a sub catch after being on the
field for only two balls at the Gabba in 2013, has
still not played first-class cricket, although he has appeared for Brisbane
Heat in Big Bash cricket. SH Copley, a member of the Trent Bridge ground
staff who took a fine catch in 1930 to dismiss Stan McCabe, did play one fc
match. Interesting that the leading Australian 12th men, Andy Bichel (19 times) and Michael Kasprowicz
(16), never took any substitute catches. For Australians, being 12th
man means fetching and carrying duties only. There are three instances of a player taking four substitute catches
in one match
Younis Khan’s catches were all in the same
innings. Gursharan Singh, who made only one full appearance
in a Test match, was also credited with a run out in the Test at Ahmedabad.
[Note: a case of four sub catches by Chanderpaul at
Old Trafford in 1995, as reported
by Cricket Archive, is not correct. Two of the catches went to SC Williams.
Thanks to Shahzad for the correction.] |
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